"From the earliest Spanish explorers to Texas tourists, New Mexico was made for maps.
Visitors to "Between the Lines: Culture and Cartography on the Road to Statehood" can trace the state's route from territory to vacation destination at the Governor's Gallery beginning Thursday.
More than geography, maps document historic development as well as the political, economic, social, cultural and scientific circumstances across generations. To celebrate the state's 100th anniversary, the exhibition showcases 25 maps from the mid-16th century to the present. These documents represent the periods of the Spanish Entrada, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the New Mexico Constitutional Convention.
Curator Merry Scully has divided the exhibition into four themes: land, boundaries, territory and statehood. Culled from both state and private collections, the maps tell the stories of the land and its changing political and physical definitions, of its native people and the arrival of and interactions with Europeans."
