The Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map and Education Center exhibition “BENDING LINES: Maps and Data from Deception to Distortion” presents a timely analysis of data manipulation over the past 500 years.
When statistics are thrown left and right across all online platforms, identifying how data manipulation influences public opinion is a crucial lesson in today’s world.
The digital exhibition, currently experienced on the Leventhal Map Center website and to be staged at the central Boston Public Library when it reopens, explores examples of ways maps have presented a distorted view of the world, what the mapmakers’ motivations may be and how those maps then influence public opinion.
In an ongoing weekly lecture series around the show, Garrett Nelson, curator of maps and director of geographic scholarship at the center, ties the show in with the current protests for racial justice.
“We think a lot at the map center about the way that maps, data, visualizations of geography, have both shown and reinforced the patterns of segregation, inequality, injustice that characterize American history,” says Nelson.