19.4: Conclusion

Throughout this book, we have used the principle of "encounter" to structure our account of the arts in America. American art, we have argued, has developed from a series of contacts, confrontations, arid compromises between cultural traditions and across cultural boundaries. As the twenty-first century gets under way, the encounter-driven development of American art and culture continues apace. But these encounters are being accelerated- and perhaps fundamentally altered-under the pressure of changes associated with contemporary globalization. American art has always emerged from the negotiation of cultural faultlines, but the locations of those faultlines, as well as the pace, scale, and character of encounter itself, are shifting. In Corn Blue Room, we find ourselves revisiting, at a newly microbiological scale, the first encounters of European and Native American cultures that we fe atured at the beginning of this volume. Rickard's work attests to the fa ct that this early encounter was not to be a single, isolated event, but rather the inauguration of an ongoing series of complex cultural negotiations.