Pequot Library In Southport Awarded CT Humanities Quick Grant

Information from Pequot Library:

FAIRFIELD, CT — Pequot Library has been awarded a $4,999 “quick grant” from CT Humanities (CTH) to support its upcoming exhibition, Charting Your Course: Cutting-Edge Navigation and Seafaring, which opens February 24 and remains on view through May 11, 2024. The exhibition and related programming explore revolutionary inventions and advancements in measuring and mapping the globe and sailors’ location on it, pairing Pequot Library’s 16th to 19th century manuals, maps, and atlases with manuscript workbooks in which students in Connecticut learned the latest principles of navigation.

Pequot Library Executive Director Stephanie J. Coakley said, “We’re grateful to receive Connecticut Humanities’ support for Charting Your Course, an exhibition for all ages that touches on many popular areas of interest, including sailing, maps, watches, astronomy, and local history. Connecticut Humanities support is critical to supporting our mission of making art and culture ‘Free as air to all,’ in the words of our founder, Virginia Marquand Monroe.”

The CTH grant will help underwrite the exhibition, including promotion and marketing, and
guest speaker Dava Sobel, renowned historian, scholar, and author, scheduled to present on April
26 at 6:00 p.m. Other associated programming will include speakers from peer cultural and
academic institutions throughout New England, such as the Connecticut River Museum, Yale
University’s Naval Reserve Officer Training Corp, Mystic Seaport Museum, and others. CTH has recently supported Pequot Library through two Connecticut Cultural Fund Operating Support Grants and a COVID Relief Fund for Museum Grant that helped sustain the library during the pandemic. CTH also helped underwrite the library’s 2021 exhibition, Magic, Mayhem, and Maturity: The Growth of Youth Fantasy Literature and the 2023 exhibition Alphabets, Bedtime Stories, and Cautionary Tales: Children’s Books and the Shaping of American Identity.

ABOUT CONNECTICUT HUMANITIES:
Connecticut Humanities (CTH) is an independent, nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment
for the Humanities. CTH connects people to the humanities through grants, partnerships, and
collaborative programs. CTH projects, administration, and program development are supported by state and federal matching funds, community foundations and gifts from private sources. Learn more by visiting cthumanities.org.

ABOUT PEQUOT LIBRARY:
Founded in 1889, Pequot Library’s mission is to enrich lives by serving the cultural, educational,
and intellectual needs of the entire community. Its annual programs for adults and children serve
more than 45,000 participants a year. As a public association library 501(c)(3) nonprofit
organization, the library relies on the generosity of individual donors and foundations, special
event fundraisers, grants, corporate and community partners, and Friends of Pequot Library
memberships. Follow Pequot Library on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

ABOUT CHARTING YOUR COURSE:
How can human innovation and ingenuity change the world? Until the late 1700s, sailors and
navigators had no reliable way to measure longitude at sea, costing time, money, and lives. When the British Longitude Act of 1714 offered an impressive £20,000 reward to anyone who could solve this problem, self-taught carpenter John Harrison began a life-long pursuit of the solution. Unlike renowned scientists including Galileo and Newton, who believed the answer could be found by measuring the celestial movements of the clockwork universe, Harrison created a mechanical alternative: the marine chronometer.

Charting Your Course: Cutting-Edge Navigation and Seafaring explores the revolutionary
inventions and advancements of Harrison and others, pairing Pequot Library’s 16th to 19th
century manuals, maps, and atlases with manuscript workbooks in which students in Connecticut
learned the latest principles of navigation. Together, these materials illuminate the ways that
ideas, innovation, and geography shaped Connecticut’s culture and economy in ways still felt
today.