Visitors to USM’s Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education (OML) are often struck by the storytelling power of maps. As one of the largest publicly accessible map libraries in the country – about a half a million maps, globes, atlases, and other cartographic items – the Osher Map Library has infinite ways to show and tell how different cultures mapped their world over the centuries. Today, philanthropy is making it possible for OML to broaden its storytelling capabilities through art.
Osher Map Library Collections
The Osher Map Library is now home to two paintings by the acclaimed multimedia artist and filmmaker, Billy Gérard Frank, who incorporates maps in artworks that explore history, memory, identity, and place. The first Frank acquisition, Indigo: Entanglements, No. 6, was acquired in 2024 with the assistance of the Osher Map Library Foundation and is on permanent display in the Osher Map Library Seminar Room.
More recently, OML acquired Indigo: Entanglements, No. 11, thanks to an anonymous philanthropic gift, and the help of the Elizabeth Moss Galleries (Falmouth and Portland, Maine). It’s currently on exhibit at the Crewe Center for the Art’s Great Hall Gallery until 1/23/26, when it will rest in storage at the OML until its next exhibition. Both paintings are part of Frank’s ongoing Indigo: Entanglements series, which explores the drama and tragedy of New World Slavery and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
While Indigo: Entanglements, No. 6 explores the connections of Maine and New England to the Atlantic Slave Trade, No. 11 focuses on New York’s Dutch colonial legacy and weaves together symbolic markers of that history. For example, Frank layered and collaged the logo and headquarters of the Dutch West India Company, an image of Willem Usselincx (one of its founders), and an historic map of New Amsterdam. The composition overlays silkscreened images, natural pigments, vintage African textiles, newsprint, and acrylic onto the surface, creating complex juxtapositions that speak to the entangled legacies of colonialism, migration, and resistance.
The anonymous donation coincided with Frank’s appointment as the inaugural Peggy L. Osher Visiting Artist Fellow for 2024-2025, hosted by OML. During two campus visits, he spent time researching in the library’s collections, working with USM and Casco Bay High School students and educators, and screening his 2022 Venice Biennale short film: Palimpsest: Tales Spun from the Sea and Memory. (You can watch the trailer here.)
Born in Grenada, West Indies, Frank is known for challenging conventional narratives and creating counter-histories through his work, which has been showcased in solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum (2020) and the Butler Institute of American Art. His art is also part of several private and museum collections, such as the National Academy Museum of Fine Arts and Design, Farnsworth Art Museum, and now the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, among others.
During his time as a visiting artist at the Osher Map Library, Frank discovered historic maps, charts, and geography books that “carried memories and stories of distant voyages, adventure, migration, loss, and exile.”
OML’s acquisition of two of Frank’s paintings – and the philanthropy that made it possible – ensure that these remarkable tales can be told in deeper and broader ways than ever before.
Interested in learning more about the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education? NPR did a deep dive on their Weekend Edition Sunday program, heard on December 7, 2025. You can listen and read the story here.