New York Before New York: The Castello Plan of New Amsterdam // Curator Confidential

Recorded March 14, 2024.
Join Russell Shorto, director of the New Amsterdam Project and curator of "New York Before New York: The Castello Plan of New Amsterdam," as he provides unique insights on the special installation.
In commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the Dutch founding of a colony that would give rise to New York, this special installation is organized around the Castello Plan, a map depicting New Amsterdam around the peak of its settlement circa 1660. While modest in size, the map provides a remarkably rare glimpse of everyday life in New Amsterdam, revealing a complex colony of about 1,500 people at the southern tip of the island of Mannahatta.
The installation unpacks the Plan, highlighting the remarkable global reach of the tiny settlement, its dense mix of ethnicities and languages, the Dutch ideas of tolerance that undergirded it, and the dark legacies of slavery and of the dispossession of Native Americans that it relied upon. Through documents and objects, and a 3D model, the installation explores how settlers, Indigenous people, and enslaved Africans experienced the world illustrated in the Castello Plan.
Russell Shorto is the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New-York Historical Society. He is the author of seven books, including the national bestseller The Island at the Center of the World.
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