The Dutch ‘Golden Age’

Just weeks after we had completed our initial revision of the classification in 2019, the Amsterdam Museum announced that it had dropped the term ‘Dutch Golden Age’ on the grounds that, in the words of curator Tom van der Molen, ‘The term ignores the many negative sides of the seventeenth century such as poverty, war, forced labour and human trafficking.’^{Footnote 1}

This immediately struck us as a valid and useful point of view. For example, the period presumably did not feel ‘golden’ to many, perhaps most, people living in the territories colonised by the Dutch Republic at this time. However, implementing this change in our classification scheme presented a small problem. The classmark for the fine art of the Dutch Golden Age in the initial revision of the scheme was:

• FIA6.NET.GOL

FIA indicates fine art, while 6 indicates a European country; while not meaningful in itself, the numbering allowing us to group together works about the art of a particular continent. NET indicates the Netherlands in its broader sense, including the territories that now form Belgium. What could replace GOL as an abbreviation for the period in question? This was made difficult by the section’s place in the sequence of topics in Netherlandish fine art. Here is part of that sequence:

• FIA6.NET.EAR early Netherlandish fine art

• FIA6.NET.FLE Flemish fine art

• FIA6.NET.FLO flower painting

• FIA6.NET.GOL Dutch Golden Age fine art

• FIA6.NET.MOD modern period

The replacement for GOL therefore needed to fall alphabetically between FLO and MOD to preserve the more-or-less chronological sequence. In deciding on a replacement, it was necessary to consider exactly what period is meant by the (not so) Golden Age. Economic and political historians have suggested a wide range of definitions, as usefully summarised by Martha Moffitt Peacock.^{Footnote 2} Art historians are much less likely to offer a definition and often seem to assume that the period coincides fairly exactly with the seventeenth century. However, the existence of books such as A worldly art: the Dutch Republic 1585-1718, and the life dates of artists such as Adriaen Coorte, known to have still been active in 1707, mean we are justified in thinking of the period as centred on, but not restricted to, the seventeenth century.^{Footnote 3} This in turn suggested the new classmark we eventually settled on:

• FIA.6.NET.LON long seventeenth century

It took some time to conceive this new classmark; fortunately, the matter did not seem to be of the greatest urgency. Library patrons typically pay little attention to classmarks and, even in the case of those who may have realised what GOL indicated, the term seemed unlikely to be experienced as grossly offensive in the same way as some of the vocabulary that is now happily disappearing from libraries. However, we consider worthwhile every small step towards more objective descriptions which represent more fairly the experiences of those who lived through the periods we are describing.

MENA vs. SWANA

When planning our revised scheme in 2016 and considering how to describe and delineate the area conventionally known as the Middle East, we consulted with a member of the college’s teaching staff who had heritage in the region. Together we decided to replace the element MID in classmarks with MENA, in order to make explicit the inclusion of North Africa in this part of the scheme. At the same time, choosing from the many competing definitions of MENA, we decided which countries we would include here.

At that point the newer term SWANA (South-West Asia and North Africa) was unknown to us; we began to notice it in a relatively small number of articles and blog posts in the 2020s. According to Rayya El Zein, the term SWANA ‘decenters the Americas and Europe as cartographic center of the planet.’^{Footnote 4} Other arguments for SWANA have been advanced; but El Zein’s in particular resonated with our aim of creating a geographically-decentred scheme which treats no part of the world as central. South-West Asia is South-West Asia from any perspective, but it is only the middle of the east from a particular viewpoint.

However, we paused before switching from MENA to SWANA in our classmarks, and at the time of writing we have still not made the change. SWANA is not yet a well-known term and it is unclear how much popularity it will eventually achieve. As Joud Sleilaty noted in August 2023, SWAN ‘could face challenges in replacing the firmly established use of “MENA.”’^{Footnote 5} A search of the Al-Jazeera website in August 2024 showed that, while both terms were used on the site, its contributors – or perhaps its editors – overwhelmingly favoured MENA at this point.

As of 2024, our library is adopting a wait-and-see approach. Having said that patrons rarely pay much attention to the elements within classmarks, MENA is one term that is likely to be both recognised and understood, and we are taking the view that no change should be made unless and until its rival SWANA becomes well-known. In many contexts, the longer acronym MENA/SWANA (or indeed vice versa) can be employed, as, for instance, El Zein does. However, when it comes to the label on the spine of a book, a choice needs to be made; indeed, here MENA has the advantage of being shorter. We limit the elements in our classmarks to four characters, and if possible to three, in order to allow the use of a relatively large font size, for the benefit of patrons with poorer eyesight in particular.

Caution in adopting SWANA thus seems sensible, especially as the advantages of the new acronym are rather subtle, and a pause does not seem to come with major disadvantages. While authors such as El Zein have written eloquently about the shortcomings they see in the term MENA, it is not a term that seems likely to cause serious offence to any library patrons. Of course, we need to keep monitoring the situation in case circumstances change.

The Global South and the Global North

In common with most art libraries, a large proportion of our books discuss the cultural productions of particular countries, regions or continents. How should these be organised? At the time of planning the revised scheme in 2016, it seemed obvious that these works should be classified continent by continent. A possible alternative, grouping books at the broadest level into two sections for the Global South and Global North, had too many problems to be worth considering seriously. In the years since, an acquaintance with both academic and journalistic discourse in relevant fields suggests that the term Global South in particular has steadily increased in popularity, necessitating a review of our decision. Our interest in the term Global South stems not just from its increasingly widespread use but from its potential to highlight the experiences of peoples whose lives, interests and values have been too often marginalised in the Global North. Thus, it is a framework that potentially aligns with our goal of offering a classification scheme that gives equal weight to all cultures.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest recorded usage of the term Global South is from 1968.^{Footnote 6} More recently, Pablo Palomino has provided a useful overview of its history, charting its increasing popularity from the 1990s onwards. Examining how its meanings have shifted, and continue to shift, between the geographical, the economic and the political in the work of different writers, he finds in the term a flexibility which leads both to ‘power’ and ‘fundamental vagueness’.^{Footnote 7} This openness is enthusiastically embraced by some proponents of the term; Palomino quotes Sinah Theres Kloß, who argues that ‘the Global South is not an entity that exists per se but has to be understood as something that is created, imagined, invented, maintained, and recreated by the ever-changing and never fixed status positions of social actors and institutions.’^{Footnote 8}

This rich ambiguity, this productive instability raises questions for the classificationist, who may see value in these qualities in the context of social and political discourse, but will nevertheless be looking for clarity and stability in a classification scheme. But perhaps all is not as difficult as it seems. Despite the diverse definitions of the Global South, in practice the term tends to describe more-or-less the same set of countries: ‘low or middle income [nations] that are located in Africa, Asia, Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean’.^{Footnote 9}

Nevertheless, multiple significant problems remain. The concept of the world as divided into these two halves is most applicable to the last few centuries, but our library holds works about the whole span of art history, from the deep past to the present. For example, the division of the Americas into North America on the one hand, and Central and South America and the Caribbean on the other, makes much sense when considering recent centuries, but is of limited usefulness for the millennia preceding European colonisation. Even without considering deep history, the Global South/Global North model creates problems. For example, China and North Korea are generally considered part of the Global South, Japan and South Korea part of the Global North. Thus, a group of countries which in many ways form, culturally, a coherent region is divided in two. Asia is also the continent likely to cause most problems for the South/North model in coming decades. If, as many economists predict, China and/or India soon ascend to the top of the global economic league table,^{Footnote 10} will it still make sense to consider them as part of a Global South, or will the world’s two most populous countries receive new designations?

A geographical classification based around continents, by contrast, seems likely to provide both more stability, and more clarity for patrons searching for material about particular countries or regions. For an art library, literary warrant also suggests a continent-by-continent approach, for very large numbers of books continue to be published about the art of particular continents, but few about the Global South as a whole or the Global North as a whole. For example, Design in Asia: the new wave is typical of surveys of Asian art as a whole in paying no attention to a Global South/Global North divide.^{Footnote 11} While many works discuss Western art as a whole, they tend not to include non-Western countries that are generally considered part of the Global North.

Our chosen approach is not entirely without problems. Consider, for instance, how the MENA/SWANA region embraces parts of two continents, or how both the Roman and Ottoman Empires included territory on no less than three. The MENA/SWANA region would be easier to fit into a Global South/Global North classification, though it is worth noting that both the Roman and Ottoman Empires would still be hard to accommodate. Overall, however, at present it seems hard to imagine a situation in which many art libraries would be advised to organise their collections on a Global South/Global North basis. Instead, the South/North model may be best introduced in other ways, for instance in study guides or subject headings.