Souvenir Maps and Plates

April 22 through September 24, 2011

For more than a century, tourists have visited attractions and admired sub-tropical landscapes. Some travelers returned home with a souvenir plate—a fun and portable keepsake. Souvenir plates feature a picturesque scene, often surrounded by a decorative border. While some have become highly collectable antiques, others are simply fun kitsch—mementos of a vacation in the sun.

Tourists also acquired pictorial maps as souvenirs of their vacations. Colorful pictorial maps—decorated with tiny and often whimsical drawings of people, animals and landmarks—were especially popular during the mid-twentieth century. They have also become “collectibles.”

Some of the most charming souvenir plates and pictorial maps in the museum’s collections will be shown in this exhibition—most for the first time. The exhibition is sure to appeal to the collector in all of us.