Heaven & Earth: The Blue Maps of China - New Exhibition Opening May 11

We are excited to introduce Heaven & Earth: The Blue Maps of China, our newest exhibition debuting May 11, 2024 at the Leventhal Map & Education Center.

This exhibition considers two series of large-format maps printed using Prussian blue—one terrestrial and one celestial. Heaven & Earth puts these two maps, never before exhibited together, into the context of China during the Qing Dynasty, and reveals them as unique in the global history of mapmaking.

The exhibition is guest curated by Dr. Richard Pegg, Director and Curator of the MacLean Collection in Chicago, IL. Check out our interview with Dr. Pegg for an in-depth look at the show.

Read the interview → 

Small Grants Proposals Are Open for 2024-2025 Season

Are you working on a scholarly project that would come alive for the public through an interactive digital publication?

The Leventhal Map & Education Center’s Small Grants Fund for Early Career Digital Publications is open for applications for the 2024-2025 academic year. The Small Grants program supports early career scholars through the process of producing a publication for general audiences in a digital format. The program is designed to catalyze creative projects which utilize a digital medium to present scholarly work through engaging, accessible, and experimental communicative modalities. Read about our 2023-2024 cohort of Small Grant awardees here.

Apply by May 20 → 

Processing Place: How Computers and Cartographers Redrew our World - Coming in September 2024

In September, we’ll open Processing Place: How Computers and Cartographers Redrew our World, an exhibition which explores the ways computers have fundamentally changed how cartographers create, interpret, and share spatial data to make maps. Curated by LMEC staff Ian Spangler and Emily Bowe, this exhibition features objects from the Leventhal Center’s unique collections in the history of digital mapping since the 1960s and invites visitors to recognize the significant impacts of digital mapping for environmental management, law and policy, navigation, national defense, social change, and much more.

Read the prospectus → 

From The Vault: March Highlights

From The Vault is a biweekly event series featuring collections objects selected by Leventhal Center staff. Each program revolves around a theme to explore in the collection, and objects are on display in our Learning Center for the afternoon. No registration is required!

In March, we hosted three From The Vault events: Women in Cartography, Bird’s Eye View, and Bus Routes of Boston, the latter in collaboration with the transit advocacy group TransitMatters. Take a look at what we pulled from the collections in these roundup articles, and make sure to drop in to our upcoming From the Vault programs.

Read the highlights → 

Featured Visitor Maps from Getting Around Town

If you’ve made an in-person visit to Getting Around Town, you may have seen our invitation to make your own maps of Boston or other parts of the world. We’ve gotten to see how creative and detailed our patrons have been and we’d like to show off some of our staff favorite maps from the exhibition!

A staff member will feature their favorite maps in every newsletter going forward through to the end of the exhibition. Check back on social media or in future newsletters to see if your map made it to our feature. There’s only a few weeks of Getting Around Town, be sure to visit before April 27th!

These featured maps were chosen by Ian Spangler, our Assistant Curator of Digital & Participatory Geography:

Burlington, Vermont by Unknown

Yummy by A Hungry Pacman

Visit Getting Around Town →