BROWNVILLE - The Schoolhouse Art Gallery in Brownville will host the History Unfolds: Regional Antique Maps exhibit from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, May 5.

Many of the early maps included Brownville, Nemaha, Richardson and Otoe counties and illustrate numerous Native American communities.

The maps, used for fur-trading, railroad lines, wagon trains and other uses, depict cultural and social trends of their time.

Here is the art gallery press release

History Unfolds: Regional Antique Maps

  

This special exhibit presents an extraordinary array of historical maps, many of which are specifically focused on historical Brownville, Nebraska including Nemaha, Richardson, and Otoe Counties, regional and the United States.  Included in this exhibition is an extraordinary visual documentation which beautifully illustrates the numerous Native American communities in the North American continent.

 These historical maps, drawn and printed in the past, fosters informative study and comprehension of the geographical ideas of the time and place in which they were produced.  The maps depict and illustrate past interpretations of reality and events, reflecting culture and social trends of the time and offer artistic value. 

Some early maps were developed by private commercial interests that engaged in surveying and mapping areas; first because of fur-trading activities, which were based in St. Louis, and later as railroad investors raced to conquer and inhabit the west.  Grids of property lines, town surveys, railroad lines, wagon trails and county boundaries, all crisscrossed the land in reality and on paper.  Maps provided guides, discovery, and growth, as seen by the explorers, engineers, artists and residents. 

Maps are symbolic representations of selected characteristics of a place illustrated and drawn on a flat surface and present observations of the world in a simple, visual way.  They teach about our world by showing directions, distances, locations, sizes, shapes, places, water features and their surrounding regions. 

This historical map exhibition is on loan from the Flatwater Folk Art Museum and will be on view at the Schoolhouse Art Gallery, 427 Main Street, Brownville, NE on Sunday, May 5, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.