‘Mapping the Underground: 1863–2023’: London Exhibition Announcement

This new exhibition at The Map House in London’s Knightsbridge focuses on the capital’s underground railway, the first in the world. Mapping the Tube: 1863-2023 (opening October 25–November 30, 2024) charts 160 years of making cartographic sense of the tangle of lines, stations, and interchanges that were carved out of London’s clay, only to emerge from the surface and reach deep into the capital’s suburbs, north, south, east, and west.

Part urban history lesson, part celebration of London’s Underground system, the exhibition includes maps dating back to the opening of the Metropolitan Line in 1863, an event that gave cartographically minded Victorians the chance to create new guides to the lines beneath their feet. Some of these chaotic but charming maps are on display, and the vast majority have attempted to squeeze a literal diagram of the system into something that would be geographically accurate.

For fans of early 20th-century design, the highlight of the exhibition is the inclusion of key works by Harry Beck. It was Beck who shaped the subway map as we know it today, spending two years developing it before it was first published in 1933; after many evolutions and revisions, it remains a very important part of the subway aesthetic. Beck’s engineering background supposedly gave him the idea to abstract a spaghetti of tangled lines, laying everything out as if it were a circuit diagram.

Imitators abounded (a 1939 map of the Sydney Suburban and City Underground Railway is on display in the exhibition) and extends to the present day. The abstraction gives no clue to the urban landscape above, but Beck concluded that subway passengers were more interested in connections and routes than their precise locations. This shift in mentality probably changed perceptions of the city itself, not just the subway.

The exhibition includes examples of subway maps from 1933 to 2023, as well as a collection of drawings and manuscripts belonging to Beck. They come from the collection of his friend and biographer, the late designer, writer and educator Ken Garland, and provide special insight into the design process, which Beck saw as a complex puzzle that could be endlessly solved for decades to come.

Beck’s work, completed under the supervision of advertising executive Frank Pick and seen alongside Charles Holden’s architecture, gave London Underground what we would now describe as a ‘corporate identity’, a unified design approach that encompassed everything from the stations to the seating, fabrics, signage, typography and even the artwork that encouraged customers to visit London’s many attractions by tube – a coherent approach that endured all the way to the Elizabeth Line.

The Map House Gallery dates back to 1907 as a cartographic shop and specialist publisher for explorers, travellers and the military. The gallery, which has been based in Beauchamp Place since 1973, has recently reopened its publishing business and hosts frequent sales exhibitions. All the works on display in Mapping the Tube are for sale if you want to own your own piece of London transport history.

Mapping the Tube: 1863-2023 will be at The Map House, 54 Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge, London, SW3 1NY, from 25 October to 30 November 2024. Home page, @themaphouse