L.A. Unfolded: Maps from the Los Angeles Public Library

October 15, 2008 – January 22, 2009
Central Library – Getty Gallery

The exhibition focuses on Los Angeles and California and features topographic surveys, tourist guides, real estate maps, pictorials, illustrations and more. Highlights include a 1791 Spanish explorers’ California coast map; a 1975 Goetz Guide to the Murals of East Los Angeles; and Artist-Historian Jo Mora’s masterly illustrated 1942 city map. The exhibition draws exclusively from the Los Angeles Public Library’s own map collection, one of the largest collections owned by a public library in the U.S.

The exhibition will also display the winning entries of neighborhood maps created by student participants in the Los Angeles Public Library’s 2008 teen summer reading program. Along with the exhibition, free ALOUD lectures called the “Ground Truth” series will take place on three Sundays this fall in Central Library’s Mark Taper Auditorium. The series takes its name from the practice of checking the accuracy of a map or aerial image by visiting the actual location.

Also, in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), family festivals are scheduled for Nov. 2 and Jan. 18, 2009. Families can view the exhibition and then join LACMA artists to create their own maps in the Central Library’s second floor Rotunda. For information, call (213) 228-7500.

Baist’s Real Estate Atlas of Surveys of Los Angeles
G. Wm. Baist
1921

Mother Lode
Robert Cormack
1931

More Information

• Press Release
• Aloud "Ground Truth" series events
• Family Festival events
• Central Library Information

“L.A. Unfolded: Maps from the Los Angeles Public Library” is presented by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles for the Los Angeles Public Library. Exhibits at the Central Library are made possible in part through a grant from The James Irvine Foundation.