Purchased with funds from the Seventeenth-Century Room Fund, Elizabeth Borden, The Winston-Salem Foundation, The Camp-Younts Foundation, The John and Mary Camp Foundation, and various donors, by exchange
Celestial Globe is a symbol of the European worldview in the 17th century. It is a big, heavy object that would have been used for decoration and study. World maps were much easier to carry, so they were used for navigation. Both maps and globes provide clues about the point of view of the people who made them. This globe was made by a European artist when Europe was colonizing people in other parts of the world. The artist’s cultural perspective informed the globe’s design. The constellations on this globe are labeled with names from European history and Greek mythology rather than their original names. They had been named by nonwestern cultures centuries before this globe was made.
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