Kaart van Zeeland en Vlaanderen, 1274 1642

Curator: Here we have “Kaart van Zeeland en Vlaanderen, 1274,” a 17th-century drawing attributed to an anonymous artist working during the Dutch Golden Age. It's ink on paper and rendered almost entirely in line and text. The first thing I notice is that rather than depicting a landscape, or person, this is an object to inform or perhaps, instruct. Editor: That’s true. Maps were scientific, almost genre scenes that depicted what was *known* about a space, right? What can this drawing tell us about the way that Golden Age Dutch artists worked? Curator: Well, the funny thing about maps from this time, is that, much like portraiture, we can almost assume the people are "fictional" because we aren't sure the draughtsman has ever seen this. The artist probably used many, competing, historical maps as the basis for this particular artwork. I love that this drawing shows how history isn't fixed, it's something we return to and redraw constantly. Editor: I love how you connected the art to that fluid construction of knowledge and the writing of history! The image is almost all text! Were the artist using the written word *as* part of the image, as image itself? Curator: You’ve touched upon a really important element. In cartography, text labels define the image; they fix the topography within language, they assert it as knowable and demarcate territories of ownership, even! You see these curving shapes defined with labels that let the contemporary reader “grasp” what's at hand... This is more than lines; it’s history made visible and negotiable, if that makes sense. Editor: Absolutely! I hadn't really thought about the politics inherent in creating a map. Thanks for sharing your perspective on this. Curator: Anytime. What starts as a boundary is a bridge between the past and what could come in the future. The beauty of a space drawn is like the promise of walking on air... and drawing our own routes as we journey through the worlds as we want them to be!