The Creative Compass
The compass and imagination have been essential tools for geographers, explorers and travellers over the centuries; resulting in maps and illustrations of encounters and ‘discoveries’ that connect the world’s peoples, places and environments.
In the 21st century, the Society’s Collections of over a million maps and atlases, the earliest dating back 400 years, have provided the starting point for artists Agnès Poitevin-Navarre and Susan Stockwell’s new commissions.
Their engagement with the Society, and its Collections, reveals the map and mapping as a format through which to explore the power, authority and hidden narratives that histories of mapping have produced.
This exhibition and an accompanying programme of talks and workshops was funded by Arts Council England, and took place between 6 May & 10 August 2010.
Exhibition Catalogue
32 page illustrated colour catalogue, featuring an essay by Dr Harriet Hawkins, University of Exeter and artist interviews by Paul Goodwin, Goldsmiths College and Tate.
Priced at £8 + £1.50 p&p (per copy).
To request a copy please email exhibitions@rgs.org (include a contact number) or call 020 7591 3052.
Hidden Histories of Exploration
Hidden Histories of Exploration reveals the contribution of people such as Juan Tepano, Mohammed Jen Jamain, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, Nain Singh and Pedro Caripoco to the history of exploration. Find out about their role and its lasting significance, as illustrated in the paintings, books, maps photographs, artefacts and manuscripts of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).
Materials from Africa, Asia, the Arctic and the Americas are respresented, with highlights including paintings by Thomas Baines, Catherine Frere's sketches of women on an African expedition, and film from the 1922 Everest expedition.
The exhibition took place at the Society between October and December 2009.
Online Exhibition:
Crossing Continents: Connecting Communities
Crossing Continents: Connecting Communities, a series of four exhibitions, reveal a selection of hidden histories through community partnerships, new touring exhibitions and educational work with young people.
View the Project Summary Booklet (PDF) »
Exhibitions for Hire
Many of the Society's past exhibitions are now available to hire. These include:
Antarctic Witness
Changing climate, changing lives?
Imaging Everest: The Sherpa's tale
Lost Landscapes
Unseen Island Life
Visions of the World
With Scott to the Pole
Woolf in Ceylon 1904-1911