During the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic rose to
maritime and mercantile predominance, sending an ever-growing
fleet to trade around the globe. This exhibition brings together
many material signs of the Netherlands’ international success,
including trade goods from China, Japan, India, and Indonesia
brought back by the famous Dutch East India Company. In
addition, it examines the Dutch thirst for knowledge about the
peoples, plants, animals, and geography of far-flung places, as
reflected in illustrated books and maps created by artists and
scientists who sailed on Dutch voyages of trade and
colonization. Along with opening new markets, this process of
collecting knowledge was a virtual means of exerting global
control and keeping ahead of the Netherlands’ bigger European
neighbors. Objects and knowledge brought back to the Netherlands
from abroad also had a profound effect on art-making and
collecting in the Dutch Republic. The practice among the wealthy
of assembling rariteitkamers, or cabinets of