to
Center for Brooklyn History
This exhibition was originally organized and published by the Brooklyn Historical Society.
A partnership with BRIC Arts Media, this exhibition explored maps as historical documents and inspiration for new art forms.
A prime impetus for visual artists has been to better understand and interpret the world around them. In contemporary practice, artists observe, collect, explore, interact, depict, and diagram. Cartographers follow similar impulses in seeking to give visual form to geography and to physical space.
Mapping Brooklyn juxtaposed the work of contemporary artists working with historic maps, with examples of maps themselves, suggesting the myriad ways that maps can represent, on the one hand, such practical matters as way finding, property ownership, population shifts, and war strategy, and on other, the terrain of the metaphorical, psychological, and personal. In the galleries at both venues, historic maps and contemporary works were in dialogue, suggesting common themes "the desire to explore, chart, and analyze territory”and highlighting the innovative ways that contemporary artists use mapping, cartography, and exploration, to reveal data, ideas, and emotions.
A partnership with BRIC Arts Media, this exhibition explored maps as historical documents and inspiration for new art forms.
A prime impetus for visual artists has been to better understand and interpret the world around them. In contemporary practice, artists observe, collect, explore, interact, depict, and diagram. Cartographers follow similar impulses in seeking to give visual form to geography and to physical space.
Mapping Brooklyn juxtaposed the work of contemporary artists working with historic maps, with examples of maps themselves, suggesting the myriad ways that maps can represent, on the one hand, such practical matters as way finding, property ownership, population shifts, and war strategy, and on other, the terrain of the metaphorical, psychological, and personal. In the galleries at both venues, historic maps and contemporary works were in dialogue, suggesting common themes "the desire to explore, chart, and analyze territory”and highlighting the innovative ways that contemporary artists use mapping, cartography, and exploration, to reveal data, ideas, and emotions.