“Cartographies of Time”

Every so often, scholars dramatically revise and expand our knowledge of particular visual phenomena. The designer Jessica Helfand did so recently with her entertaining survey of information wheels, suitably titled Reinventing the Wheel (2002). Last year, the historians Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton performed a similar feat with their book Cartographies of Time, on the history of timelines. This small exhibition, drawn primarily from the library collections at Princeton, where Grafton teaches, is a welcome reminder to look beyond fine art for revelatory, informative visual experiences. New Yorkers seeking a final summer day outside the city should consider a trip here.

Ranging widely if selectively from medieval illuminated manuscripts to late-nineteenth-century memory aids, the small show treats visitors to thinkers who gave numerous forms to the concept of time. There are depictions of the past as a gazebo, a mandala, a temple, and the statue of Nebuchadnezzar described in the Biblical book of Daniel. One book, published in France in 1629, compiles various calendar systems; it’s open to a page explaining the cycle of Aztec rituals. As you circle the gallery, traversing the centuries, the shift from explaining biblical events to recording secular culture is apparent. So, too, as you reach the nineteenth-century objects, can you sense a change in tone. The solemnity of assumed importance gives way to something more jocular—games and “cheat sheets” abound. In that spirit, I envisioned Joseph Priestly’s mid-eighteenth-century compendium of famous lives shorn of its tiny type, leaving behind horizontal washes of color reminiscent of Agnes Martin’s abstractions. How might Martin’s works tell time? In his wonderful “Teaching Notes: 4-Dimensional Design,” the artist Paul Thek asked his students: “Can you suggest a project, for yourself or for a group, or for any number, which might deepen your sensitivity to time?” This exhibition and book are good places to start.