Charting the Universe

Kresge Library (3rd floor, Fairchild Hall)

Ongoing

This installation, curated by Elizabeth Neill '13 as a Presidential Scholar working with Professor Richard Kremer, showcases the Hood Museum of Art's noted King Collection of Historic Scientific Instruments, including especially those that contribute to our visual understanding of the universe. Featured objects range from a depiction of an armillary sphere from sixteenth-century Italy to a Rand McNally globe made in Boston in the 1930s. Taken together, they provide a picture of how scientists and amateurs have documented the universe over the centuries.

Assembled by former physics professor Allen King, who died in 2003, the King Collection contains more than three thousand instruments dating from the 1770s to the present time.