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As the place of first settlement in the New York Tri-State region and as the legal
wellspring of American toleration (= religious tolerance), Governors Island—a historical canvas of global meaning and
thematic substance—when revealed as America's historic symbol of tolerance upon politicial acceptance, enhances the
worth of the Statue of Liberty’s significance for all. This
Governors Island legacy and New York State's patrimony are immensely pertinent to the future of our diverse nation because
the dynamic principle of tolerance defines personal freedom (= liberty) thereby distinguishing it from “STATIC”
or “GENERIC” freedom. The innovative Tolerance Park—a
masterpiece—will recall the birth and childhood of 17th century New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware and will
reflect on tolerance issues pertaining to religion, ethnicity and race. These
topics are not about the past but are contemporary and also exceptionally pertinent to the success of our future as a pluralist,
democratic nation. Intolerance impairs democracy and may even destroy it. With a 151 feet high Tolerance Monument as centerpiece, the Park—which will use only 30%
of Governors Island—will be a place of educational significance to the nation and a showcase of the New York Tri-State’s
earliest, as well as third-millennium architectural and material culture (see Vision Statement below).
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The Amsterdam-born
philosopher Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza, a member of the Portuguese Israelite community, wrote in 1670: "Ours has befallen a rare fortune to live in a republic
where everyone is allowed complete freedom of conscience and God worship and where one doesn't consider anything more precious
and loving than liberty." In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus he
stated that "the city of Amsterdam leads the fruit of this freedom in its own great prosperity and in the admiration
of all other people. For in this most flourishing state and most splendid city, men of every nation and religion live together
in the greatest harmony...his religion and sect is considered of no importance... In fact, the true aim of government is liberty"
(Chapter 20, paragraaf 6: "Finis ergo Reipublicae revera libertas est.")
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This 1651 map was engraved from a 1648 manuscript
map produced in Manhattan. Its creation represents a historic
decision of profound importance to American history because it illustrates one’s legal right to seek redress of grievances
by directly petitioning the highest level of government—143 years before codification of that right in the First Amendment
of the Bill of Rights; “Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people to petition the government
for a redress of grievances.” For
detailed article click on "Right to Seek Redress of Grievances" (Try a
few times to awaken archived site).
The MAGNUM OPUS of the TOLERANCE
PARK The meaning of Governors Island lies in its existence as unrecognized
Conceptual Art since 1624. Its transformation to Visual Art is to be accomplished by a living museum to tolerance. It will be the nation’s first park that addresses dynamic tolerance issues as they define
“American” freedom. The Tolerance Park will be the place where 350 years of contrasts will visually dissolve harmoniously into
a new and unique village, just as divergences and boundaries melt away through the ethical force of tolerance into common
humanity. Twenty
percent of the village structures will be exclusively devoted to interactive educational exhibits on religious, ethnic and
racial tolerance. The remaining structures of the living museum village will serve as America's FIRST URBAN ARTISTS COLONY THAT FOCUSES ON ARTS AND CRAFTS WITH EMPHASIS
ON THOSE FROM BEFORE THE 18th-CENTURY. The Tolerance Park will be the premier international source for the learning and practicing of trades as performed
in the early European guilds as well as a resource for the maintenance, preservation and conservation of various nations'
artistic and cultural heritages. Visually reflecting harmony-in-difference and humility, workspace or housing will be provided behind unique facades
and along the shoreline behind authentic, seventeenth-century or in reconstructed as well as transplanted preserved buildings
or barns. The Tolerance
Park will also include formal and botanical period gardens. The 50-acre canvas for organic creativity will defend
"American" freedom intellectually and visually by linking New York's original 1624
legal-political tradition of the inseparable dual notion of tolerance and liberty with America's contemporary principles which sustain our heritage. The Park’s unique functions will serve as a magnet for people
from all over the world. Its omnipresence will guarantee an endless qualitative and positive economic, artistic
and intellectual effect on New York City while radiating the active dynamic of tolerance
as the defender and definer of freedom. As these freedoms are guaranteed
in the American Constitution, the park's exhibits will not advance or be reflective of religious, political or personal beliefs
and agendas. The park will serve as a global locus for debates, conferences and educational programming pertaining
to the topic of tolerance—a primary American value as well as a fundamental individual right under the United States
Constitution, and so acknowledged and defined as a universal value by Unesco—and will dialogue, on the intellectual
level, with contemporary society. Please address any communications to President@TolerancePark.org. For architectural sensibilities CLICK HERE.
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CREATIVE VISION STATEMENT of MASTERPIECE
on FIFTY-ACRE CANVAS (30% of GOVERNORS ISLAND) Most
European towns evolved from medieval times around a central market square. Those historical squares still form the core of
many great cities like Amsterdam, Haarlem, Antwerp, Bruges, Utrecht, Ghent and Gouda. Typically, they comprise the town’s
most important and meaningful contemporary structures such as a cathedral as cultural beacon of grandeur, a town hall, a weigh
house or statuary from the 13th through 17th centuries. Today, those
celebrated town centers often function as traffic-free oases and meeting points. They foster community and serve as magnets
for socializing among diverse layers of residents and visitors alike. Outside the perimeters of those early towns—usually typified by protective moats or walls (as in, for example,
Wall Street in 1653)—subsequent growth
was accommodated. Those urban additions—radiating outward from the town’s historical core—often emerged in concentric circles of architectural
styles unique to their period. That architectural chronology will be reversed in the Tolerance Park. Namely, the view from the water will only be on authentic 17th-century [New] Netherlandic facades.
Walking from the shoreline towards the Tolerance Park’s core, one will arrive at an inviting, warm, people-friendly
market square surrounded by ornamented facades of 21st-century architectural uniqueness and cohesiveness and therefore reflective
of harmony-in-difference—the ideal
condition of the virtue of tolerance. The
square will be built around a third millennium Tolerance
Monument of global meaning, thematic substance and 21st-century visual greatness like, for instance, a 151 ft (46
meters) high appropriation of the image of Barnett Newman’s sculpture Broken-Obelisk ( CLICK HERE) dedicated by him to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after his assassination in
1968. A copy is displayed in the N.Y. Museum of Modern Art. This iconic emblem with its implicit testimonial to racial tolerance will comprise a Tolerance Hall to include a museum
of human servitude of the 15th through 17th centuries with special emphasis on the Atlantic Arena as well as on its modern counterpart. Its height equates that
of the Statue of Liberty’s without pedestal (that is, half the total monument's height because Broken-Obelisk stands
on the ground) as Tolerance and Liberty are equal partners in American Freedom. It will highlight uplifting exhibits and narratives of Herculean courage as inspirational demonstrations of humanity’s
capacity for astonishing compassion that emerges from the depths of depravity and indifference. The color of the pyramid section
will be black to reflect its theme: "Black has an innersound of nothingness bereft
of possibilities, a dead nothingness as if the sun had become extinct" so wrote Kadinsky. Because black’s
cognate is blue, the upside-down obelisk section will be translucent to radiate blue light as a blue-sky tribute to mankind’s
power to rise and create ex nihilo. It will be situated on the same spot within the Tolerance
Park as where Fort Amsterdam
was positioned within Manhattan. Just
as when Governors Island became the region’s first crossroad of three cultures in 1613, the Tolerance Park,
when it opens in September 2009, will become a meeting point for the cultures of the world to debate on these issues of profound
importance to future generations. Consequently, the tolerance
park will link visually the 1624 historic planting of tolerance (that is, the "father"
of American liberty and the basis of successful pluralism) on Governors Island with broad 21st-century awareness of that dynamic ethical
force as being indispensable to religious, ethnic and racial liberty in contemporary American society.
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In March 1664, King Charles II resolved to annex New Netherland and
to “bring all his Kingdoms under one form of government, both in church and state, and to install the Anglican government
as in old England.” New Netherland director-general Petrus Stuyvesant received one
letter from his lord directors of the [Dutch] West India Company just one month prior to the arrival of four English frigates
on August 27, 1664. In the face of rumors of an English invasion, his superiors attempted to make a virtue out of weakness
and suggested that liberty (freedom of conscience in religion) did not need to be militarily defended and would take care
of itself. They wrote; “we are in hopes that as the English at the north (in New Netherland) have removed mostly
from old England for the causes aforesaid, they will not give us henceforth so much trouble, but prefer to live free under
us at peace with their consciences than to risk getting rid of our authority and then falling again under a government from
which they had formerly fled.” A few months later, in September that year, Stuyvesant's worst fears were
realized. However, he and his council negotiated the continuation of that explicit founding condition of toleration in New
Netherland in article VIII out of twenty-four articles of [provisional] transfer. It guaranteed New Netherlanders, under future
English jurisdiction, that they “shall keep and enjoy the liberty of their consciences in religion.”
That article was an affirmation of the existing cultural-legal tradition as the basis of ethnic diversity in New Amsterdam.
It was to become New York’s cultural heritage when—upon the insistence of New York Governor George Clinton—toleration
became codified in the American Constitution through the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights upon its reintroduction in
1789 and ratification in 1791—“Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.”
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