NEWSLETTER
With evocative 3D interiors in the Old Masters, New Amsterdam Exhibition
May 1 through August 30, 2026
New York, NY (April 10, 2026) — This spring, the New Amsterdam History Center (NAHC) brings its expanded Mapping Early New York 3D digital installation back to The New York Historical, enhancing the major exhibition Old Masters, New Amsterdam, on view May 1–August 30, 2026 and curated by Russell Shorto, Director of the New Amsterdam Project at The New York Historical, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Senior Advisor to The Leiden Collection.
Four hundred years ago, the Dutch established New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. At the same time in Europe, artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, and Jan Steen were painting vivid scenes of everyday life. This exhibition brings those worlds together, featuring Dutch paintings along with an immersive 3D digital reconstruction of the city that would become New York.
An Interactive Window into 1660 Manhattan
The exhibition seamlessly blends fine art with cutting-edge digital scholarship. It invites visitors to use an interactive touchscreen to explore a detailed 3D model of the city’s 1660 Castello Plan. Streets, homes, gardens, public buildings, and centers of trade come vividly to life, inspired by the 17th-century Dutch paintings on view.
New interior reconstructions of the Kierstede House offer a closer look at daily life in a prominent New Amsterdam household that also served as an apothecary. Here lived Sara Kierstede, a tradeswoman and interpreter who spoke Algonkian languages and moved between Indigenous and European communities. The model also includes enslaved African and Indigenous people, reflecting their likely presence in the household. Visitors can also explore the Indian Trading House, a key place of exchange between Indigenous traders and European settlers.
International Collaboration and Support
The new interiors were designed by 3D modeler Eduard van Dijk, with guidance from leading scholars and NAHC’s Mapping Early New York team, led by Director Vanessa Bezemer Sellers. Author Russell Shorto assisted with the descriptive texts.
Major support for Mapping Early New York is provided by the Society of Daughters of Holland Dames, Dutch Culture USA, a program by the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the United States, Ken Chase, The Society of the First Families of New York, The Netherland-America Foundation, and the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation.
About the New Amsterdam History Center
Founded in 2005, the New Amsterdam History Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to sharing the history of New Amsterdam through lectures, tours, and digital projects. Its Mapping Early New York Project is an innovative research platform that brings together three core components—Encyclopedia, Interactive Time Slider Maps, and 3D models. Drawing on thousands of translated Dutch documents, detailed datasets, and ongoing scholarship, the Mapping Early New York project reconstructs the physical and social fabric of early Manhattan.
For more information, visit www.newamsterdamhistorycenter.
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Image: Kierstede House Interior, New Amsterdam History Center’s Mapping Early New York 3D Model, all rights reserved.