Not Possible IRL: David Rumsey's Maps: Nathan Babcock's interactive sculpties bring cartography to life

Not Possible IRL: David Rumsey's Maps: Nathan Babcock's interactive sculpties bring cartography to life: "Thursday, February 7, 2008
David Rumsey's Maps: Nathan Babcock's interactive sculpties bring cartography to life

There's a new place on the grid that is so lovingly rendered and detailed, so flawlessly planned and scripted, and so very pleasing to the eye, that it is a credit not only to the people behind it but to virtual worlds, as well.



David Rumsey has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University and was a founding member of Yale Research Associates in the Arts. He has been an Associate Director of the American Society for Eastern Arts in San Francisco, a lecturer in art at the Yale Art School for several years, and a real estate developer. And then... around 1983, he began to collect maps. The fact that he has been living in the Bay Area comes as no surprise to me. As a book collector myself, I can tell you that many of the best rare books and ephemera stores in the world are found in that vicinity.

Today, and 150,000 historical maps later, David Rumsey Maps is one of the largest private map collections in the United States. Mostly, he has focused on cartography of the world of the 18th and 19th Centuries, but he has also gathered atlases, globes and maritime charts of Oceania, the America, Asia and Europe."