RETURNS FROM THE SEA – MBA

The sea has forever been a subject of fascination and fantasy. Dreamers, poets, travellers, colonizers, traders, navigators… all have developed a unique, intimate relationship with this infinite mirror of water.

Based upon the museum’s collections accumulated over the years, the “Returns from the Sea” exhibition explores the history of Dunkirk’s – and, more generally, the West’s – relations with the world. Comprising for the most part donations made by inhabitants of Dunkirk or the surrounding region (far sailing captains, ship owners, consuls, explorers, traders, collectors, etc.), these collections take us on a journey from one continent to the next, from Oceania to the Americas, North Africa to Greenland, West Africa to the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

In this manner, the Dunkirk museum – like the museums of many other French port towns (Boulogne-sur-Mer, Dieppe, Marseille, Nantes, La Rochelle, etc.) – evokes the history of trade and exchanges among men and peoples, beyond the seas and borders, whether marked by curiosity or commerce, solidarity or brute force.

Designed around several emblematic oeuvres and maritime maps, the exhibition sheds light on man’s at times ambivalent relations with the sea: on the one hand, the fear and terror that it engenders (tempests and tsunamis, shipwrecks, etc.), the violence to which it is a theatre (naval battles, the slave trade, boat people, etc.), and the dominations that it facilitates (conquests, colonization, commercial exploitation, etc.); and, on the other hand, the sea’s invitation to travel, the dreams it arouses, and the encounters and discoveries it encourages. “Returns from the Sea” also evokes the manner in which maps are being redrawn by today’s globalization.
http://www.musees-dunkerque.eu/

When:

6th april 2014

Time:

14:00 – 18:00

Place of meeting:

Brugge Central Station at 13:00

Price:

Free!

Contacts:

Phone – 0474.30.59.49 (Svitlana)

E-mail – info@ccub.eu