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In 1992, when institutions around the nation were celebrating the 500th anniversary of Columbus' landfall in the New World, the Library mounted the exhibition "1492: An Ongoing Voyage." The point was to look back as well as ahead. The exhibition examined the first sustained contacts between American people and European explorers, conquerors and settlers. Following Columbus' voyages, Africans also arrived in the hemisphere, usually as slaves. |
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All of these encounters, some brutal and traumatic, others more gradual, irreversibly changed the way in which peoples in the Americas led their lives. According to the exhibition catalog, "The dramatic events following 1492 set the stage for numerous cultural interactions in the Americas that are still in progress -- a complex and ongoing voyage." |
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