Help bring stories of the world to life We value your continued support 01
COVID-19 has changed all our lives and livelihoods. For the museum, this has led to a $10 million loss in self-generated revenue. So now, more than ever, we rely on your generous support to preserve and conserve important items in the National Maritime Collection and to tell their stories.
TWO VITAL PROJECTS needing urgent support are coincidentally linked by the name Willem Janszoon and both explore the stories of the Dutch in our maritime history. The first is the conservation of the Blaeu Celestial Globe – the oldest European object in the museum’s collection. Thanks to generous gifts from three donors, the globe entered the collection in 1990. Created in 1602 by one of the most important 17th-century cartographers, Willem Janszoon Blaeu, the globe is one of only six surviving examples. Our conservation team has carried out visual and photographic analysis to work out how the plaster and pâpier-maché globe was made – and what has happened to it over the last 400 years. Now the painstaking conservation begins, and for this we need your support. 24
Signals 134 Autumn 2021
The second project supports the creation of education programs for another recently donated item to the museum – the Duyfken replica. More than 164 years before James Cook’s arrival, the original Duyfken, captained by Dutchman Willem Janszoon of the Dutch East Trading Company (VOC), arrived in Cape York. This was the first recorded European visit to the continent. Observations from a similar, earlier voyage were used by Blaeu in creating his celestial globes. Students from all over Australia and throughout the world will be able to view Duyfken when a virtual reality tour is created as part of a range of digital resources to support teachers. The guided experience will be led by an expert storyteller and explore the deep impacts of these early contacts between our First Peoples and the Dutch traders and sailors aboard the vessel.
