LAPORTE – A new exhibit on loan from the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis puts the LaPorte County Historical Society Museum on the map.
The museum at 2405 Indiana Ave. in LaPorte will display the cartography-themed "Indiana Through the Mapmaker's Eye" through Aug. 31.
"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 museum said in a press release. "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."
Maps on display will include an 1833 tourist's Indiana pocket map, a 1913 Sanborn Company Bloomington fire insurance map, an 1881 bird's-eye view of Mount Vernon, Indiana, and a late 19th-century scale-model map of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend. The Indiana Historical Society will provide a handout with a bibliography of the maps on display, mapmaking terms, recommended sources on the history of maps, and mapmaking resources at the Indiana Historical Society museum on the canal in downtown Indianapolis.