Mapping Outside the Lines
October 9, 2025 – February 14, 2026
Newberry Library, Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL, USA
Details Lines are foundational to how maps communicate. They guide you home from a new restaurant, tell you how tall a mountain is, and warn you not to stray too far in the wrong direction. They sometimes even tell you about the life a map has lived. Over centuries, mapmakers have developed (and abandoned) an amazing variety of ways to use lines to bring our world to life. This exhibition follows lines on maps to their extremes in examples from mundane textbooks to avant-garde art. Through these lines, maps rationalize their world view, even as they reveal perspectives that are neither universal nor neutral. Mapping Outside the Lines is generously supported by Rand McNally. Curator David Weimer, Robert A. Holland Curator of Maps and Director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography Exhibition-Related Programming Public Programs at the Newberry are free and open to all. Registration required in advance. Folded Map™ Project Screening and Discussion, November 6, 5:30pm Join us for a screening of Folded Map™ Project – The Movie followed by a discussion led by Tonika Lewis Johnson.