The Map as Art October Display in Bracken Library

The Map as Art Display in Ball State University Libraries

The Ball State University Libraries’ GIS Research and Map Collection (GRMC) on the second floor of Bracken Library includes a variety of cartographic resources in addition to the over 145,000 maps and atlases in the collection.  Some of these resources include books about cartography. 

The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography by Katharine Harmon and Gayle Clemans was featured in O: The Oprah Magazine as a celebration of maps as artwork.  The book is available in the GRMC and includes 360 colorful, unique maps and accompanying essays.

The image above (click to enlarge) is called Man Cutting Globe, a lithograph from the Charles Cowles Gallery in New York by Vernon Fisher.  Fisher paints “highly realistic maps—or, in this case,…the vaguely menacing act of carving a globe as if it were a Halloween pumpkin.”  A copy of the lithograph will be featured on display in the windows of the GRMC through October 31.

For more information about cartographic resources, please contact the GRMC at 765-285-1097.