This site will be developed and added to over the coming months to publish the research results of the project ARCVIS.

The research project “Arctic Visible: Picturing Indigenous Communities in the Nineteenth-Century Western Arctic” (ARCVIS) investigates the visual representation of Indigenous peoples and their local environment during expeditions to the Northwest Passage in the nineteenth century, a period that saw intense exploration in the region. Hundreds of sketches, paintings, and prints of Indigenous people in the Arctic were created by travellers from lower latitudes, particularly by those in British naval maritime expeditions. Yet, the dominant and enduring imaginary of the Arctic is of a space devoid of people. The project seeks to present the peopled western Arctic (Greenland, Canada, Alaska) encountered by maritime ‘explorers.’ The project’s objective is to create an online resource that gathers together representations of Indigenous people in the nineteenth century and links them to real places in the Arctic.