About this event

Take a look at these political-satirical maps during this From the Vault! Depicting geographic locations as animals or animalistic caricatures of people, these maps often leave viewers on their own to make sense of their meaning. While these maps may not be the most helpful for getting around, they provide a fascinating window into the opinions of their creators and the common moods of their time. Animal symbolism can transcend language and cultural barriers, and these cartographers used their medium to make a statement that can be understood even in the absence of words. As these maps were frequently created to spread propaganda, we will consider the choices they made to manipulate public opinion, who their target audience was, and what stories they were ultimately trying to tell.

Content Warning: The maps shown may contains offensive imagery. The collections of the Leventhal Map & Education Center and the Boston Public Library are shaped by nearly two hundred years of collectors, archivists, curators, and library administrators deciding what documents qualified as historically significant objects. What you see on historic maps reflects the attitudes of the people who created these materials—and this includes attitudes that we today consider offensive for the ways in which they may show stereotypical, demeaning, or inaccurate depictions of people and places. In our educational programs, exhibitions, and public interpretation, we try to show how and why certain representations of the world came to provide the dominant visual language of cartography.

This drop-in showing will be hosted Friday, August 2 from 2-4 pm in the Learning Center with a staff member from the Leventhal Center available to answer questions.

No advance registration is required.

From The Vault

The Leventhal Map and Education Center cares for more than a quarter million cartographic and geographic objects, including maps, atlases, charts, globes, gazetteers, ephemera, research texts, and data sets. With such an extensive collection, it is likely that many of these objects will never be included in exhibitions for public viewing. Our latest series, From The Vault, attempts to remedy that limitation. From The Vault is a biweekly, casual collections showing of objects selected by Map Center staff. These drop-in sessions do not include a formal presentation, though Map Center staff will be available to interpret objects, chat, and answer questions.