The Arctic: Impossibility of Art (symposium)

In 1596 two Dutch ships laden with trade goods left Amsterdam for Siberia, intending to navigate a Northeast Passage to China. They never arrived. The ships mistimed the winter ice; the vessels were soon trapped off the west coast of Nowa Zembla, deep within the Asian arctic. This is the beginning of a story told in a forthcoming book by the art historian Christopher Heuer, who is visiting UW-Madison to speak about works of art produced as the result of encounters with the Arctic in the 16th cen