Sacrifice Zones and Storage on the Boston-Revere Border

A environmental management blueprint plan showing oil tanks along Sales Creek between East Boston and Winthrop is one of the banner images in our More or Less in Common exhibition. Just a few months ago, a proposal was unveiled to redevelop this oil storage depot into a logistics center. In this new exhibition essay, Tess McCann details a century-long history of toxic land use along the urban margins, and poses the question: How inextricable is land use from the land itself?

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Call for Cartographers: Visualizing Immigration in Greater Boston

Submissions are now open for our inaugural Cartography Challenge! The mission is simple: create a static map that creatively visualizes immigration patterns in the Greater Boston area. For this challenge, we’re looking for submissions that go beyond the choropleth map. The winning submission from this challenge will be used during K-12 educational visits and programs at the Map Center.

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In-Person: Author Talk: Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on Elite Capture · Nov 16, 6:00pm ET

Join the philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò for a discussion of his new book Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else). His work explores the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests. For this discussion, Dr. Táíwò will be joined by Samia Hesni, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Boston University.

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In-Person Series: From The Vault

Looking to add more maps to your life? Join us for an afternoon of close map looking! 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.

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Featured in The Boston Globe: "From maps to manuscripts to matchcovers (and don't forget the Rembrandts), 12 highlights from the BPL"

“The BPL’s holdings cover great distances in both time and space,” writes Mark Feeney of The Boston Globe in a recent piece celebrating the reopening of the Boston Public Library’s Special Collections Department. The article highlights the BPL’s Brearley Collection and Aldino Felicani Sacco-Vanzetti Collection along with a few familiar faces from the Map Center’s Digital Collections Portal: this ~1488 circular world map and this 1989 map of architectural styles in Chinatown.

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