Mason-Dixon Lines, Past to Present: Winifred Lutz
APS Museum (on view during Museum hours)
Through 28 December 2008
How many ways can you map a place? FIND out in the foyer of the APS Museum. Three parallel bands spiral around the foyer of the museum, charting different histories of the boundary that has long been a symbolic divide between North and South.
Mason-Dixon Lines, Past to Present
charts three different ways of mapping the historic border between
Pennsylvania and Maryland at a scale of 1 inch to 1 mile. One band is a
hand-drawn version of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon's map from their
famed 1763-67 survey (included in the exhibition, along with casts of
the line markers); the second is a topographical map of the line's
terrain; the third uses detailed contemporary travel maps to show
present-day conditions of the area. Binoculars attached to a banister
above the entry level allow visitors to "navigate" the maps, moving
between the different representations, traveling from one mode to
another and from past to present.
Since these maps omit the political significance of the Mason-Dixon Line, the installation also calls attention to the limitations of any abstract mapping system that focuses on physical terrain alone.
Image: Winifred Lutz, "Mason-Dixon Lines, Past to Present." Photo: Karen Mauch
