In this illustrated lecture, visual historian Libby Bischof will discuss four centuries of mapping and charting Monhegan Island, a one and 3/4 mile-long island located 10 miles out to sea. The talk will offer a glimpse into how the island has been mapped over time, with an emphasis on fishing, marine life, walking trails, wildlands, artist's haunts, and, over the past century, tourism.

Libby Bischof is Executive Director of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, Professor of History, and the inaugural University Historian at the University of Southern Maine, where she teaches courses in Maine History, History and Photography, Popular Culture, and Public History. A visual and cultural historian of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Bischof is interested in the ways in which friendship informs cultural production, especially in relation to landscape and place.

This event is free and open to the public. No registration is required. Presented in conjunction with Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands, on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art through June 1, 2025.

Image: Courtesy of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine