One of the great gifts that multiculturalist thinking gave us was final freedom from the tyranny of purity. Simply put, that old ideal was revealed as an illusion. It doesn’t exist, at least not in art. There, in reality, everything is a mix. Wonderfully, the longer and closer we look, the richer the mix becomes. And this has always been true. Globalism, which we take to be so 21st century, with its networks and mash-ups, is as old as the hills.

– from “Review: ‘Made in the Americas’ Explores Globalism From Way, Way Back” by Holland Cotter, published in The New York Times on August 27, 2015