Fretum Magallanicum (1631) by Langenes and van den Keere.

Jay I. Kislak (1922-2018), a banker and real estate entrepreneur, came to South Florida in the early 1950s.Together with his wife, Jean, an art curator, he assembled a collection of the history and cultures of the Americas that became one of the world’s most important of its kind. Mr. Kislak’s vision, to promote public awareness of and scholarly research into the history and cultures of the Americas, led him to establish the Jay I. Kislak Foundation in 1984, and to donate a portion of its holdings to the Library of Congress in 2004. His 2016 gift to the University of Miami established a Kislak Center at the institution with more than 2,000 items in the collection. The landmark gift, focused on cultural encounters across the Americas, is in line with the University of Miami’s mission to be a hemispheric institution.

Now available to scholars and members of the public through the University of Miami Libraries’ Special Collections program in the Kislak Center at the University of Miami, the collection complements the University’s role as a hemispheric geographic and intellectual crossroads.

The books, manuscripts, maps, documents, photographs, and artifacts convey a multifaceted history of hemispheric cultural encounters beginning with Indigenous cultures and extending to modern times. The collection is particularly rich in primary source materials on the history of Florida, the Caribbean, and Mesoamerica.

The collection is available to faculty, students, staff, and visiting scholars to facilitate their intellectual inquiries.