Essays and the catalog for an exhibition of art celebrating the 500th anniversary of the landing of Columbus.

What is the future of curatorship? Is there a vision for an ideal model, a curatopia, whether in the form of a utopia or dystopia? Or is there a plurality of approaches, amounting to a curatorial heterotopia? This pioneering volume addresses these questions by considering the current state of curatorship. It reviews the different models and approaches operating in museums, galleries and cultural organisations around the world and discusses emerging concerns, challenges and opportunities. The collection explores the ways in which the mutual, asymmetrical relations underpinning global, scientific entanglements of the past can be transformed into more reciprocal, symmetrical forms of cross-cultural curatorship in the present, arguing that this is the most effective way for curatorial practice to remain meaningful. International in scope, the volume covers three regions: Europe, North America and the Pacific.

Relics, dreams, voyages is a closely focused sequence of studies of worldwide connections in all the arts in the baroque period. Drawing on original research in libraries, collections, and archives in five countries, and in as many languages, this book draws many astonishing, unfamiliar and beautiful texts, things and events, into a cartography of the secret and strange patterns of baroque cultures worldwide. The visual arts are examined across a wide temporal and geographical span, and many subversive iconographies are decoded: at the French and English courts, in remote Scotland, in Nagasaki, in Valladolid. This books offers a new, extraordinary cultural geography of the baroque world, opening doors to many rich and strange cultural artefacts, from 'China to Peru.'

"The early years of the seventeenth century saw a great flourishing of Dutch culture. In the arts, this was the era of Vermeer and Rembrandt, as well as the development of a local art market. Commerce extended around the world, with state-sponsored trading companies importing foreign goods. Politically, the Netherlands became the first nation-state in Europe, in 1648. In this book, Claudia Swan considers all these aspects together, examining the material culture of the period-the designed, manufactured, and hand-crafted materials and wares-to show how the Dutch encounter with so-called "exotic" goods played a fundamental role in the country's political formation"--

This book raises awareness of Eurocentrism’s enormous impact and shows how, over the course of five centuries, Eurocentrism has extended its power across the globe. In the twenty-first century, Eurocentrism’s hegemony remains powerful. By exploring a wide range of sources including Eurocentric maps and images, historiography, and Rudyard Kipling’s White Man’s Burden, Wintle uncovers Eurocentrism’s gradual evolution and reveals the ways in which it functions at both seen and unseen levels. Taking a thematic and then empirical approach, Eurocentrism offers a detailed and comprehensive discussion of Eurocentrism’s problems and dangers, pays special attention to the work of Samir Amin and James Blaut and applies notions garnered in the book to discuss Eurocentrism within the context of the twenty-first-century European Union. This study questions Eurocentrism’s function, its history, and its importance, providing a fresh insight into one of the world’s most complex and powerful cultural phenomena. With its multi- and interdisciplinary analysis, this book is an indispensable tool for both scholars and students concerned with modern history, politics, visual culture and political geography.

Based on Dutch archival records and primary and secondary sources in multiple languages, this study integrates indigenous peoples more fully in the Dutch Atlantic by examining Dutch-indigenous alliances in Brazil, the Gold Coast, West Central Africa, and New Netherland.

Based on Guilliam Forchondt’s surviving business documentation in Antwerp and applying an aggregate and data-driven approach, Connecting Art Markets focuses on the role of art dealers in mediating the supply and demand for art, behaving in particular ways as to influence the markets for artworks in which they were strategically invested. Van Ginhoven presents her findings on Guilliam Forchondt’s workshop production volumes and transatlantic art trade flows, and evaluates the relationship between the production of paintings in the Southern Netherlands, their local, regional and overseas distribution channels, and the markets for these works in Europe and the Americas during the seventeenth century.