Featuring

Chet Van Duzer

Author, historian, and cartographer

in conversation with

Arthur Dunkelman

Curator, Jay I. Kislak Collection

Join Chet Van Duzer and Arthur Dunkelman as they look at the kinds of equipment available for recovering materials from shipwrecks in the late 17th century and discuss the manuscript atlases made by the English cartographer William Hack.

William Hack's beautiful maps, copied from a "derrotero" (sailing directions with maps) captured from a Spanish ship in 1680, show the locations of several shipwrecks, unusual in 17th-century maps. His later atlases also include indications of the amount of treasure on those ships. Van Duzer argues that this change was inspired by William Phips' spectacular recovery of treasure from a Spanish wreck in 1687. Phips' recovery increased appreciation of shipwrecks as a potential economic resource and the addition of information about sunken treasure to his atlases created an extra source of value in his works, as guides for the discovery of treasure.

The program will be followed by an audience question and answer session.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Chet Van Duzer is a board member of the Lazarus Project at the University of Rochester, which brings multispectral imaging to cultural institutions around the world. He has published extensively on medieval and Renaissance maps; his recent books include "Henricus Martellus's World Map at Yale (c. 1491): Multispectral Imaging, Sources, and Influence," published by Springer in 2019, and "Martin Waldseemüller's Carta marina of 1516: Study and Transcription of the Long Legends," published by Springer in 2020. His book, "Frames that Speak: Cartouches on Early Modern Maps," will be published in Open Access by Brill in July of this year. His current projects include a book about self-portraits by cartographers and another about land animals on early modern maps. Read more »

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Prior to joining the University of Miami Libraries as the Curator of the Kislak Collection, Arthur Dunkelman served as Director and Curator of the Jay I. Kislak Foundation for 24 years. In 2004 a portion of the Kislak Foundation Collection was donated to the Library of Congress; Dunkelman was responsible for managing the transition and establishing research and public outreach programs. Two exhibitions, "Treasures of the Jay I. Kislak Collection" (2005) and "Exploring the Americas" (2007 to present), highlighted the materials and brought them to national and international attention. He also edited a comprehensive catalog of the collection, published by the Library of Congress. Read more »