Welcome

In the seventeenth century, traders from the tiny Dutch Republic circumnavigated the planet, interacting with diverse cultures throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas. What were the visual legacies of these early modern exchanges? This website maps a representative selection of key sites of early modern Dutch trade and colonization with a database that facilitates comparative investigation of processes of visual interculturation — to resituate Dutch art across the vast terrain that more accurately constitutes its true milieu, and nurture new ways of thinking about art and visual culture from the seventeenth century to today.