Exhibitions

Current Exhibitions

Breathing Room: Mapping Boston’s Green Spaces

March 24, 2018 – September 30, 2018

Boston boasts some of the nation’s most recognizable and cherished green spaces, from Boston Common, to the Emerald Necklace, to hundreds of neighborhood parks, playgrounds, tot lots, community gardens, playing fields, cemeteries, and urban wilds. In this exhibition, you will learn how the country’s oldest public park grew from a grazing pasture to an iconic recreational and social center, how 19th-century reformers came to view parks as environmental remedies for ill health, how innovative landscape architects fashioned green oases in the midst of a booming metropolis, and what the future holds for Boston’s open spaces. As you explore three centuries of open space in Boston, perhaps you will feel inspired to go outside and discover the green spaces in your own backyard.

Visit the exhibition in the Map Center GallerySee the online exhibition

Upcoming Exhibitions

Crossing Boundaries: Art//Maps
October 9, 2018 – April 21, 2019

When the imaginative journeys of contemporary artists incorporate elements from a cartographer’s toolkit, these borrowings can add narrative, semi-narrative or abstract depth to a work of art.  To offer comparison and commentary to encourage exploration of each artwork, maps from several centuries have been selected from the collection of the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library. Our intention in presenting these juxtapositions is to cross the traditional boundaries of art and cartography to stimulate fresh appreciation of both media.

America Transformed: Mapping the 19th Century
Part I: May 4 – November 10, 2019
Part II: November 23, 2019 – May 10, 2020

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Past Exhibitions