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David Rumsey

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David Rumsey
Image
David Rumsey at the 2005 Where 2.0 Conference
Born1944 (age 81–82)
New York City, New York, US
EducationYale University
Known forDavid Rumsey Map Collection
SpouseAbby Smith Rumsey
ChildrenTessa Rumsey
AwardsWebby, Special Libraries Association, IMCoS/Helen Wallis
WebsiteDavid Rumsey

David Rumsey (born 1944)[1] is an American map collector, entrepreneur and philanthropist.[2][3][4] He assembled one of the world's largest private collections of historical maps,[5][6] eponymously named and numbering more than 200,000 physical items plus digital materials, which he donated to Stanford University.[7][3] It is housed at the university's Green Library in the David Rumsey Map Center, which opened in 2016.[8][9] He began making his collection publicly available in 1997, and is recognized for his contributions to cartographic research and web information systems as an innovator in digitization, archiving, public engagement and data visualization.[10][5][11][12][13] In 2002, Wired magazine commented, "Rumsey's online map collection introduced a revolutionary, accessible way for people to experience old maps by comparing them to modern geospatial data."[6] Since then his work has integrated map-exploration tools including 2-D and 3-D overlays and virtual and augmented reality equipment.[3][14][5]

Rumsey is the president of Cartography Associates, a digital publisher of maps and art, and a former real estate developer and arts professional.[6][11][4] He is based in San Francisco.[3]

Education and art career

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Rumsey trained in art at Yale University, studying photography with Walker Evans and earning BA and MFA degrees.[12][2][15] In 1966, he was an initiate into the Skull and Bones society.[16] Rumsey was a founding member of Yale Research Associates in the Arts (also known as Pulsa),[17][18] an artist collective that explored immersive public art, communal living and utopian ideas.[19][20][21][22] The group's work was multidisciplinary, involving electronic engineering, computer science, architecture, psychology, mathematics, and art, with a focus on systems and interactivity.[20][23] Its experimental light and sound environments were designed to integrate technology into the arts and to resist the commercial impulses of the art market.[21][24][25][10] During its years of activity (1966–73), Pulsa created installations at the Museum of Modern Art, Boston Public Gardens, Walker Art Center, and Cal Arts, among other venues.[26][27][28][21] Its spatial, cross-disciplinary and democratic approach would influence Rumsey's later work with maps.[29]

During the Pulsa period, Rumsey lectured in art at Yale before relocating to San Francisco in 1973 to become associate director of the American Society for Eastern Arts.[15][2][30] In 1975, he shifted career direction to real estate development.[10][30] While no longer his primary focus, he continued to produce art, including photo-collages described as "David Hockney-like,"[2] and more Pulsa-oriented works, such as the large-scale installation mounted at Burning Man in 2024 and 2026 titled The Speed of The Earth.[31] A collaboration with Wired magazine founding editor Kevin Kelly, the installation consisted of a one-mile-long line of 30 strobe lights, flashing at the rate of 1,156 feet per second to illustrate the rotational speed of the earth at the latitude of the site.[31]

Real estate and finance career

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Rumsey worked in real estate development and finance for two decades.[2][7] He became a founding member of General Atlantic Holding Company, the New York-based growth-equity firm created in 1980 by billionaire Chuck Feeney, co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers.[4][10][32] Rumsey served as president and director of several of the company's real estate subsidiaries, negotiating property deals in New York and San Francisco, among other roles.[32][10] General Atlantic was designed by Feeney to generate wealth for humanitarian purposes; it later became The Atlantic Philanthropies, one of the world's largest charitable foundations, through which Feeney ultimately disbursed his fortune.[33][4][32] His influential commitment to high-impact "giving while living" had a significant influence on Rumsey's own philanthropic efforts after he retired from real estate in 1995.[30][4][2][7]

Map collection and web activities

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Image
David Rumsey giving a guided tour of his collection.

Rumsey was drawn to maps from an early age, an interest later furthered by his background in art and real estate development.[29][34] He began collecting maps in the early 1980s and amassed more than 200,000 of them from the 16th to the 21st century, spanning the history of mapmaking across the entire globe.[35][3][7][6] He bought his first item in a rare book store in San Francisco—a small, hand-colored school atlas from 1839 that documented the secession of Texas from Mexico by showing it as a separate country.[2][34] His early collecting focused on North and South America between 1700 and 1900, centuries that saw the rise of modern cartography.[2][8][10]

The collection includes individual flat, rolled and pocket maps, atlases, globes, maritime and celestial charts, school geographies, wooden puzzle maps, and books of cartography, travel and exploration.[7][2][8][12] It has supported and spurred historical research,[36][10][11] interactive exhibits (e.g., at the San Francisco International Airport, Bruce Museum,[37][38] and online),[39][14] and collaborative projects with the Library of Congress, National Library of Scotland, and Digital Public Library of America, among others.[6][35][15]

After leaving real estate, Rumsey devoted his efforts more fully to the map collection, including cataloguing, documenting and—with the advent of digital technology and the internet—making it available for free viewing.[2][10][5] He began digitizing the collection in 1997. Rather than place it in an institutional archive, however, he launched a website (www.davidrumsey.com) in 1999 with the intent to provide viewers with an in-person, hands-on experience.[8][12][35][6] The project exploited capacity for great detail and mobility, using tools such as advanced software, high-resolution scanning, and robust compression and search engine technologies.[34][6] He collaborated with Luna Imaging, a Los Angeles-based digital-archiving company founded by Michael Ester, a former director of the Getty Art History Information Program. Luna was known in museum and academic research circles for software converting visual material into high-resolution images that could be manipulated at high speeds; in 1999 Rumsey joined the company as its director.[34][11][12] Luna's software and viewer allowed users to search, zoom, pan, print and compare historical maps from different years side by side.[12][2][11] In addition to his efforts on his own collection, Rumsey and his company, Cartography Associates, have scanned and put online the collections of others, including one of rarely seen and fragile historical maps of Japan held by the East Asian Library at the University of California Berkeley.[40][11]

In 2001, Rumsey introduced a GIS (geographical information system) browser using visualization software to the website, which allowed users to overlay old maps with current geospatial data, like roads, lakes, parks, aerial photos and satellite imagery.[6][37][39][38] He subsequently incorporated custom interfaces and mapping platforms, including ESRI, Google Earth, Google Maps and Second Life, to enhance the website's experience.[5][3][4] The interactive section of the site provides GIS-based software that, for example, enables users fly through 3-D maps of Yosemite National Park, San Francisco, and other locales.[12][11]

In 2009, Rumsey announced the intention to donate his entire collection to Stanford University;[8] it was marked in April 2016 by the opening of the David Rumsey Map Center in the school's Green Library.[9][10][41] The center houses an estimated 250,000 physical maps and more than 200,000 digital maps from 1500 to the present.[7][3][42] The San Francisco Chronicle described it as "a cross between a library and a laboratory … an arena for experimentation and education" where both laypeople and scholars can explore primary documents and their scanned, digital counterparts.[3] Its physical materials, large-display capability and over-size, high-definition touchscreens bridge historical cartographic artifacts and technological advancement.[7][8][43] Visitors can explore georeferencing, 2-D and 3-D platforms, and virtual and augmented reality equipment, which, for example, allow the digital overlay of historical maps onto modern maps or satellite views; by adjusting the transparency, visual comparisons across time can be made in terms of cultural development, land use and settlement.[3][9]

Research and service

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Rumsey has lectured widely on his online library work, at international conferences and venues including the Digital Library Federation, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Harvard University, Stanford University, and Where 2.0.[44][45][46] He is the co-author (with Edith M. Punt) of Cartographica Extraordinaire: The Historical Map Transformed (2004), a book and atlas drawing from his map collection, which connects historical cartography and narrative, exploration, information design and new technologies such as GIS.[47][2][48] He contributed the chapter "Historical Maps in GIS", co-written with Meredith Williams, to the collection Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History (2002).[49]

Rumsey has served as a board member for institutions including the American Antiquarian Society, Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), Internet Archive, John Carter Brown Library, The Long Now Foundation, Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Stanford University Library, and Yale Library Associates.[50][51][52][53][30]

Recognition

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In 2002, Rumsey received an honors award from the Special Libraries Association for making his map collection publicly available.[30] His website has won various web awards, including the 2002 International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences Webby Award for technical achievement.[54][34] In 2012 he was recognized by the Stanford University Libraries with its Warren R. Howell Award for service to the university.[30] He received the IMCoS (International Map Collectors Society)/Helen Wallis Award for cartographic contributions of merit in 2026.[15]

In 2023, a documentary reflecting upon Rumsey's life and collecting, memory, mortality and change, A Stranger Quest, premiered at the Torino Film Festival.[55][56] Directed by Andrea Gatopoulos, the film screened at more than twenty film festivals, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, and received a Special Jury Prize at the DokuBaku International Documentary Film Festival in 2024.[55][57]

Personal life

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Rumsey was born in 1944 and raised in New York City.[12] He lives in San Francisco with his wife, historian and author Abby Smith Rumsey.[58][59][60] Their daughter is the poet, Tessa Rumsey.[61] David Rumsey is the great-grandson of William Rumsey, a lawyer, New York Supreme Court judge and American Civil War soldier, and is the great, great-grandson of David Rumsey, a New York congressman.[62][63]

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ Library of Congress. David Rumsey map collection. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Ganahl, Jane. "David Rumsey made a living in real estate. Then he charted his future to match his passion: maps," San Francisco Chronicle, September 27, 2004. Archived from the original on 3 June 2012. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Picon, Andres. "At Stanford’s David Rumsey Map Center, the past, present and future converge," San Francisco Chronicle, December 26, 2021. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kim, Crystal. "The David Rumsey Map Collection," Barron's, September 8, 2012. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Naone, Erica. "Technology Review: Historical Maps in Second Life: David Rumsey's antique maps feature in an innovative build in the virtual world," MIT Technology Review, February 29, 2008. Archived from the original on 2009-09-10. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Mayfield, Kendra. "This Is a Real Quest for Maps," Wired, March 7, 2002. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mynow, Rachael. "Stanford's New Map Center Lets You Get Up Close & Personal," KQED, April 15, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Meier, Allison. "An Incredible Map Collection Gets Its First Physical Home," Hyperallergic, September 9, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  9. 1 2 3 Krasny, Michael. "Stanford Opens Massive Digital Map Archive to Public," KQED, June 14, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Miller, Greg. "Now Anyone Can Visit One of the World's Great Map Collections," National Geographic, April 19, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Lew, Julie. "In Vintage Maps, a Japan Bygone Floats Lyrically Online," The New York Times, April 10, 2003. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Roush, Wade. "Digital maps marry past and present," MIT Technology Review, July 2005.
  13. ↑ Fowler, Susanne. "Maps That Tell Their Own Stories," The New York Times, November 14, 2023. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  14. 1 2 Perera, John-Henry. "Interactive shows how maps of Texas developed over time," San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 2017. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  15. 1 2 3 4 Barber, Peter. "David Rumsey – Winner of the 2026 IMCoS/Helen Wallis Award," IMCoS Map Journal, June 2026, p. 44–45.
  16. ↑ Millegan, Kris (2003). The Skeleton Crew. Fleshing Out Skull and Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society. Walterville, OR: Trine Day. pp. 597–690. ISBN 0-9720207-2-1.
  17. ↑ Vogue Magazine. "7 Startlers: The Pulsa People of Yale University," February 1970, p. 174–75, 219. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  18. ↑ New Haven Journal-Courier. "PULSA Pulsates: New Art Form Tried at Yale," 1968. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  19. ↑ Lippard, Lucy R. "Pulsa," Arts Canada, December 1968. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  20. 1 2 O'Brien, Kerry. "Communal Experimentalism in the Sixties: The Pulsa Group," NewMusic USA, May 25, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  21. 1 2 3 McKee, Yates. "The Public Sensoriums of Pulsa," Art Journal, Fall 2008, p. 46–67. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  22. ↑ Stanford University Libraries. "Pulsa records, 1966–2019," Archival Collections at Stanford. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  23. ↑ Online Archive of California, University of California. "Pulsa records, 1966-2019, bulk 1968-1972." Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  24. ↑ Lippard, Lucy R. "Time: A Panel Discussion," Art International, November 1969. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  25. ↑ Betsch, William. "Panoptics Fill Yale Gallery," New Haven Journal-Courier, April 11, 1968. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  26. ↑ Shirey, David L. "Pulsa: Sound, Light and 7 Young Artists," The New York Times, December 24, 1970. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  27. ↑ Davis, Douglas. Art and the Future, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974, p. 92. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  28. ↑ Museum of Modern Art. "Spaces, Dec 30, 1969–Mar 1, 1970," Exhibitions. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  29. 1 2 Hessler, John. "John Hessler – In conversation with David Rumsey," The Portolan, Washington Map Society, Fall 2023, p. 27–29. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  30. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Stanford University Libraries. Warren R. Howell Award: David Rumsey, May 2012.
  31. 1 2 Mangrum, Stuart. "Kevin Kelly – Optimists Create the Future," Burning Man Live, June 25, 2025. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  32. 1 2 3 O'Clery, Conor. The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune, Public Affairs, 2007. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  33. ↑ Bertoni, Steven. "The Billionaire Who Wanted To Die Broke … Is Now Officially Broke," Forbes, September 15, 2020. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  34. 1 2 3 4 5 Sweetkind, Julie. "State of the Art: David Rumsey’s Online Map Collection," Mercator's World Magazine, September/October 2000.
  35. 1 2 3 Rosen, Rebecca J. "Oh the Places You'll Go: 38,000 Historical Maps to Explore at New Online Library," The Atlantic, April 30, 2013. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  36. ↑ Schulten, Susan. "Virginia Goes to the Birds," The New York Times, August 8, 2011. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  37. 1 2 Nolte, Carl. "Feel like honored guest at SFO of the future," San Francisco Chronicle, July 5, 2014. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  38. 1 2 Hennessy, Christina. "Antique maps, charts at Bruce show shifting world views," San Francisco Chronicle, March 11, 2015. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  39. 1 2 Hockaday, Peter. "Cool zoomable map of San Francisco in 1938: Find your street," San Francisco Chronicle, August 1, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  40. ↑ Maclay, Kathleen. "East Asian Library partners with private collector to post historic Japanese maps online," ‘’UC Berkeley News’’, February 25, 2003. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  41. ↑ LAist. "Stanford's map center is home to thousands of cartographic gems," April 26, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  42. ↑ Kahn, Eve M. "Maps Are for More Than Just Finding Your Way," The New York Times, March 9, 2024. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  43. ↑ Stanford University Libraries. David Rumsey Map Center. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  44. ↑ Rumsey, David. "Giving Maps a Second Life with Digital Technologies," Digital Library Federation Spring 2008 Forum, April 28, 2008. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  45. ↑ Geospatial World. "David Rumsey Map Collection," August 6, 2004. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  46. ↑ O'Reilly Media. "Where 2.0, a New O'Reilly Conference Showcases the Promise of Location-Aware Technologies," April 25, 2005. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  47. ↑ Foreword Reviews. Cartographica Extraordinaire: The Historical Map Transformed, November/December 2004. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  48. ↑ Rumsey, David and Edith M. Punt. Cartographica Extraordinaire: The Historical Map Transformed, Redlands, CA: Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), 2004. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  49. ↑ Rumsey, David and Meredith Williams. "Historical Maps in GIS," in Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History, Anne Kelly Knowles (ed), Redlands, CA: Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), 2002. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  50. ↑ Digital Library Federation. "Announcing the New DLF Advisory Committee Members," March 19, 2014. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  51. ↑ Internet Archive. Bios – Board of Directors. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  52. ↑ The Long Now Foundation. David Rumsey, People. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  53. ↑ Samuel H. Kress Foundation. "In Recognition of Esteemed Trustees, David Rumsey & Barbara A. Shailor," December 20, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  54. ↑ The Webby Awards "2002 Winners," Technical Achievement, 2002. Archived from the original. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  55. 1 2 Vancouver International Film Festival. "A Stranger Quest," 2024. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  56. ↑ Torino Film Festival. "A Stranger Quest," 2023. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  57. ↑ Cinema Italiano. "DokuBaku 8 – Special Mention for 'A Stranger Quest' by Andrea Gatopoulos." Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  58. ↑ Wilwol, John. "'When We Are No More,' by Abby Smith Rumsey," San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  59. ↑ Rumsey, Abby Smith. When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  60. ↑ MIT Press. Abby Smith Rumsey , Authors. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  61. ↑ Barnard College Department of English. "Women Poets". Archived from the original on 2016-07-01. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
  62. ↑ Historical Society of the New York Courts. William Rumsey. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
  63. ↑ Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. David Rumsey 1810–1883. Retrieved September 25, 2026.
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