Rubin Museum of Art

Mapping The History of Empires

Animated Maps for Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism

Featured Image

Purpose

To create an animated series of digital maps as a tool for visitors to orient themselves chronologically and geographically in an exhibition that spans five empires and 1,300 years of Buddhist history.

Scope

Graphic Design Video Animation

Awards

award

Press Coverage

"

The Map achieved all the goals that we wanted for this tool, as we have had fantastic responses from our visitors about the animated map."

Lizzie Doorly

Curatorial Assistant

The Rubin Museum of Art

Description

Two visitors against the light in the exhibition "Faith and Empire" at the Rubin Museum. Photograph by Filip Wolak.
Photograph by Filip Wolak

Maps attract viewers and elicit personal stories. They spark our imaginations while effectively communicating the necessary facts. Maps are also ways to mark change over time. The animated maps we created for the exhibition Faith and Empire at The Rubin Museum showed visitors the dramatic expansions and contractions of Buddhist kingdoms stretching, at one point, from the Pacific Ocean to Central Europe. They illuminated the dynamic historical intersection of politics, religion, and art in Tibetan Buddhism over 1300 years.

Each map animates the growth of one of the empires, includes an insert map showing viewers where the story of that empire is told in the exhibition, and illustrates a key object on display. As with any data visualization, maps require an iterative design process to arrive at just the right balance between the amount of information presented to the viewer and the time she needs to take it in and make sense of it, especially when the place names and the language are unfamiliar! Our designer, Carl Huebner, made it look easy.

Screenshot of the animated map.


Credits

What Others
Are Saying.

Lizzie Doorly

Curatorial Assistant

The Rubin Museum of Art

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FUN FACT 1

The Xixia empire, the smallest of these Buddhist empires, was 1,000,000 km2(390,000 sq mi) at its peak.

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FUN FACT 2

The size of the Mongol empire at its peak was 24,000,000 km2 (9,300,000 sq mi)! It was the second largest contiguous empire in history.

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FUN FACT 3

The British Empire was the largest. At it’s peak in 1920, it covered 35,500,000 km2 (13,700,000 sq mi),24% of the Earth’s total land area.

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FUN FACT 4

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