#  Colonial Networks: Remapping the “Paris” Art World in a 1786 Map of Saint Domingue 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **April 16, 2024** 

 05:00PM - 05:00PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **485 Broadway Room 422**  



 

 



 

 ![colonial_networks_mhc_poster17.jpg](/sites/g/files/omnuum4426/files/history-artsarchitecture/files/colonial_networks_mhc_poster17.jpg)

 

 This talk focuses on a [1786 property map](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.loc.gov_resource_g4944c.ar188100_-3Fr-3D0.129-2C0.343-2C0.455-2C0.232-2C0&d=DwMGaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=gvcDUd4DmE690k-g0KpjxA&m=jbwWrwtYXaPjFdWeCQBxvseODiWvPJJvH_hPBnrAavqnsCm3OuE2SzEYgQWkjkdI&s=g4gC5Od6w5pl6iBAb28D3A0HTM0aKp77YpfX4bxoMtg&e=) of the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) dedicated to the comte de Vaudreuil, a prominent Paris-based courtier and art collector whose father had governed the colony. The map records the parceling of land around Cap Français, the so-called “Paris of the Antilles,” where several of the oldest, most lucrative sugar plantations were located. Instead of place names, the map is inscribed with surnames, each belonging to a plantation owner. When we, specialists of eighteenth-century French art, first came across this map, we were startled to see that its names read like a “who’s who” of the Paris art world: although aware of some of these connections, the map had a powerful, visceral impact unlike any document we had come across. Furthermore, the deeper histories of the links it visualizes between colonial commerce and art world activities are largely unknown.

 **Meredith Martin** is Professor of Art History at New York University and the Institute of Fine Arts and a founding editor of *Journal18*. A specialist in early modern French art and empire, she is the co-author (with Gillian Weiss) of the award-winning book *The Sun King at Sea: Maritime Art and Galley Slavery in Louis XIV’s France* (Getty, 2022). Martin is also the author of *Dairy Queens: The Politics of Pastoral Architecture from Catherine de’ Medici to Marie-Antoinette* (Harvard, 2011), and a co-author of *Meltdown: Picturing the World’s First Bubble Economy* (2020), which is related to an exhibition she co-curated for The New York Public Library. Together with the choreographer Phil Chan, Martin reimagined and restaged a lost 1739 French ballet known as the *Ballet des Porcelaines* that was performed throughout the U.S. and Europe in 2021-22.

 **Hannah Williams** is Senior Lecturer in the History of Art at Queen Mary University of London. A specialist in French art and history of the long eighteenth century, she is co-author (with Katie Scott) of *Artists’ Things: Rediscovering Lost Property from Eighteenth-Century France* (Getty, 2024); author of *Académie Royale: A History in Portraits* (Routledge, 2015), winner of the Prix Marianne Roland Michel; and is currently writing a book on *Art and Religion in Enlightenment Paris*. Williams is also director of the digital mapping project [*Artists in Paris: Mapping the 18th-Century Art World*](http://www.artistsinparis.org/)*,* awarded the BSECS Digital Prize in 2020, and a founding co-editor of [*Journal18*](http://www.journal18.org/).



 

 



 

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