Published on the occasion of an exhibition of works by sculptor, painter and printmaker Nancy Graves (1939–95), Mapping focuses on her paintings and works on paper dealing with maps.

Graves investigated the subject of mapmaking throughout her career, and the collection of pieces selected here from the early- to mid-1970s offers a representative survey of her concern with maps of natural phenomena, specifically the newly available satellite images of temperature and weather patterns on the Earth, the Moon and Mars. By this point in her career Graves had already been given, at age 29, a solo exhibition at the Whitney, becoming the fifth woman to do so.

With an essay by curator Robert Storr, Mapping is published on the 50th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, and is an important addition to the literature on this prolific postwar artist.