Tolerance and Tension: New York and Amsterdam in the 17th Centuryat The New York Historical

This year marks a noteworthy convergence: the 400th anniversary of New Amsterdam, the city that became New York, and the 750th anniversary of Amsterdam’s founding. These milestones offer an opportunity to reflect on two cities that helped shape our modern ideas of toleration, diversity, and freedom of conscience, while also pondering the limits and contradictions of those ideals.

Tolerance and Tension brings together leading scholars, thinkers, and artists for a day of discovery and debate. Through three provocative panels, a keynote from world-renowned Spinoza scholar Steven Nadler, and a slate of live performances, the symposium explores questions of pluralism, migration, and the fragile promise of liberty that are pressingly relevant today.

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Credit: Johannes Lingelbach, View of Dam Square with the New City Hall Under Construction [De Dam, gezien naar het Noorden, met het Stadhuis in aanbouw], 1656. From the Collection of the Amsterdam Museum