The land of the brave and home of the free has always been bearish about borders, about who gets in, who stays out. And it’s always been evident culturally in, for example, the kind of art our museums have brought through the door. The Museum of Modern Art’s long but sporadic pattern of collecting 20th century Latin American art offers a constructive gauge. Art markets went bust. And in the confusion, walls began to come down as the permission-giving shake-up called multiculturalism — pro-diversity, anti-essentialist — arrived.

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Persons: essentialist — Organizations: MoMA