To support “Pictures from an Expedition: Aesthetics of Cartographic Exploration in the Americas,” a two-day symposium held at the Newberry Library, June 20­–21, 2013. The symposium brought together national and international art historians, historians, and geographers to present and discuss research on the visual material created during 19th-century cartographic explorations in the Americas. The goal was to refocus attention on maps as aesthetic objects produced in dialogue with other aspects of 19th-century visual culture, such as methods of printing and production, technologies of display and distribution, and the role of government and commerce in artistic and cartographic production.