Virtual exhibition: Representing the world, after Perron and Reclus

The Cartographic Museum of Geneva (1907-1929)

Bibliothèque de Genève

At a time when digital technologies are supplanting traditional methods, the Bibliothèque de Genève virtually reconstructs part of the cartographic museum created in 1907 in its Bastions building by Charles Perron two years after the death of his master Élisée Reclus. This museum existed until 1929.

This panorama of documents provides us with an overview of geographical and cartographic knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century.

Let us wander through the selection of maps made by Perron to illustrate the first stages of the representation of the world. Like the terrestrial globe designed by Reclus for the Paris World Fair in 1900, but never built, this museum is one of the results of the fruitful collaboration between the two men in the last quarter of the 19th century and of Reclus's ambitious project to think in a radically new way about what geography should be.

Organization: Bibliothèque de Genève
Scientific Committee: Flávio Borda D'Água and Nicolas Schaetti
https://blog.bge-geneve.ch/musee-cartographique/

Cartographie