The La Porte County Historical Society is proud to announce its newest exhibit Indiana Through the Mapmaker’s Eye on loan from the Indiana Historical Society (IHS). The exhibit will run through August 31st at the La Porte County Historical Society Museum.
The ways maps can be viewed, both as documents and as mirrors of their times, are explored in Indiana Through the Mapmaker's Eye. The exhibit is drawn from IHS's collection of about 1,700 maps and atlases of Indiana and the Midwest dating from the 16th century to the present. It examines four ways people have used maps through the years: as documentation, as tools, as political images, and as art.
Some of the maps displayed in the exhibition include an 1833 tourist's Indiana pocket map, a 1913 Sanborn Company fire insurance map for Bloomington, Thomas Kitchin's 1747 map of French settlements in North America, an 1881 bird's-eye view of Mount Vernon, Indiana, and a circa 1880 scale-model map of the University of Notre Dame.
In addition, the Museum will be exhibiting local maps and map resources available for sale in the Museum Gift Shop. A handout from the IHS is available covering mapmaking terms, selected sources on the history of maps and mapmaking at the Indiana Historical Society, and a bibliography of maps exhibited.
For more information or questions, please contact the La Porte County Historical Society Museum at 219-324-6767 or info@laportecountyhistory.org. The Museum is currently open with restricted hours, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Masks are required of all visitors. The Museum is located at 2405 Indiana Avenue in La Porte.
Historical societies, museums, libraries, schools and other nonprofit organizations in Indiana can book this and other traveling exhibits through IHS’s Local History Services department. Exhibits may be borrowed for approximately four to five weeks at a time. To book an exhibit, please contact Karen DePauw at localhistoryservices@indianahistory.org or (317) 233-3110. For more information about the traveling exhibit program, visit www.indianahistory.org.