The fascinating stories told by historic maps will be the focus of two new exhibitions at North Lincolnshire Museum next month.
Colours Beneath Your Feet tells the story of William ‘Strata’ Smith, who created the first ever nationwide, detailed geological map of England, Wales and parts of Scotland.
The centrepiece will be an 1815 copy of Smith’s beautiful, hand-coloured map of parts of the UK on loan from Dudley Museum and Art Gallery and the Larwood family.
The exhibition looks at Smith’s life and times, how he created the map and why he is remembered as the ‘Father of Geology’.
The exhibition also features an installation by visual artist, Hondartza Fraga in response to Smith’s map. Hondartza works in drawing, photography, animation and video.
The piece is inspired by William Smith’s work creating the map and the museum’s collection of fossils.
To find out more about the exhibition visit William Smith – Colours Beneath Your Feet.
To complement the Colours Beneath Your Feet exhibition, museum staff have searched the stores for maps from North Lincolnshire’s own collection.
Maps have always been used to make sense of, and bring order to the world, helping us understand not just where we are, but also who we are.
The On The Map exhibition will show the development of the railway, military campaigns and changing local landscapes.
Together, they tell stories of war and conflict, power and control, our changing landscape and our priorities and identities.
The exhibitions will be launched online with a virtual tour at 5pm on Thursday 1 April 2021.
This is ahead of the Oswald Road museum’s reopening in line with the Government’s easing of restrictions.
Working alongside the museum, the On the Map exhibition programme also features artists’ responses to maps curated by Common Ground, a local young curators’ group.
Their exhibition To Form, To Follow will launch on the Common Ground website on Saturday 3 April 2021.
The three featured artists are Heidi Flaxman, who takes inspiration from landscapes to create in textiles, Molly Richards, who works with photography and interactives, and Joe McKenna, whose work involves adding illustrations to maps and charts.
For more information on the forthcoming exhibitions and launches go to the museums page on our website.