We regularly mount exhibitions in our gallery, located in the historic McKim Building the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. Exhibitions topics range from collections-centered shows on Boston bird's eye views and women mapmakers to theme-centered shows on the American Revolution, Boston immigration, and public landscapes. All of our exhibitions feature scholarly research as well as activities for families, children, and educators.
In the Gallery
Where Workshop
Where Workshop is a hands-on discovery lab for geography, history, civics, and more. This new collections-based learning experience opens up questions about geographic inquiry and invites learners into the practice of place-based discovery. Through the prism of maps, primary sources, and visual evidence, you'll learn about continuity and change in the place we call Boston in the past, present, and future—and leave with a perspective that you can bring to bear on the places you care about.
Permanent Exhibition
Becoming Boston: Eight Moments in the Geography of a Changing City
Maps trace out the complicated history of places, and we can use them to document geography in much the same way that we can use diaries and letters to document biography. In the eight cases of this exhibition, we follow the changing spatial forms of the place we now call Boston—from before the landscape carried that name all the way through the struggles, clashes, and dreams that continue to reshape the city today. These maps don’t merely depict facts about how the city looked at different moments in its history. Instead, they invite us to contemplate how geographic forces, both natural and human, have constructed the physical and social world around us, through large and small transformations that have transpired over many centuries.
As one of the most important centers of a newly independent nation, Boston spent the first half of the nineteenth century reimagining its urban form and building neighborhoods from scratch, as seen in this 1895 map.