Founded in 1969 with a purpose to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret the art and artifacts of Caribbean and Latin American cultures for posterity, New York’s El Museo del Barrio (opens in a new window) has become the nation’s leading Latinx and Latin American cultural institution. In May of 2023, it debuted a dramatic complete reinstallation of its 8,500-object permanent collection which spans more than 800 years of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino art, from the pre-Columbian Taíno to contemporary work.
“From time to time, museums should undergo the process of reconsidering the way they tell their stories to better serve their communities that are experiencing on-going growth and change. Permanent collections and their display offer important tools to do so,” Rodrigo Moura, Chief Curator, El Museo del Barrio, told Forbes.com. “‘Something Beautiful: Reframing La Colección’ is El Museo del Barrio’s most ambitious presentation of its unique and culturally diverse permanent collection in over two decades. It’s a much needed catch-up between the public and El Museo’s growing collection.”
The exhibition is the result of a three-year research initiative titled “Identity Reimagined: Reframing La Colección.” In an effort to promote and advance new knowledge, El Museo del Barrio engaged in communal dialogues with more than 40 artists, scholars, community leaders, and museum professionals to explore the rich possibilities of its permanent collection.
Emerging from these conversations and doubling down on the museum’s decolonial roots, greater emphasis in “Something Beautiful” has been placed on contributions made by the Taíno culture. The Taíno were the Indigenous people living across the Caribbean (opens in a new window) at the time of European contact with Chirstopher Columbus in 1492. They spanned an area (opens in a new window) stretching from Dominica to Cuba, covering all of present-day Haiti, the Dominican Republic (opens in a new window), the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and Jamaica.
“The Taíno perspective has always been present in El Museo’s collection, but this exhibition places this connection in its center,” Moura said. “Taíno forms, symbols, and beliefs provide a living resource for identity reclamation and cultural reconnection within the Caribbean diasporic community in New York and beyond, therefore, it is of ultimate importance to El Museo’s mission.”
In recognition of their spiritual power, Taíno forms placed in display cases were invited to the exhibition under the guidance of a community Taíno council.
“That is a new approach that moves these artifacts from their colonial, archaeological understanding, into a living resource status,” Moura explains. “Together (with contemporary artwork on view in the exhibition section devoted to the Taíno), they reflect the presence of Taíno culture in the United States and the Caribbean today and resist the notion of Taíno extinction.”
Augusto Marín, '1873 - 1973,' 1973 Linoleum block print.
“Something Beautiful” will present a total of approximately 500 artworks through regularly rotating displays over the course of its run through March 10, 2024. Additional emphasis has been placed on artworks by women, new acquisitions, and contemporary work, invigorating the presentation.
The exhibition focuses on the contribution of Amerindian, African, and European cultures as the basis of visual production in the Americas and the Caribbean.
“Unlike most mainstream art museum collections which continue to center Eurocentric values and art historical canons despite efforts to diversify, our collection is grounded in El Museo del Barrio’s decolonial project,” Moura said.
That project was initiated by artist and educator Raphael Montañez Ortiz and a coalition of Puerto Rican parents, educators, artists, and activists at the institution’s outset over 50 years ago. They noted how mainstream museums largely ignored Latino artists. El Museo del Barrio wasn’t founded by socialites and industrialists like New York’s other famed art museums–The Met, MoMa, The Guggenheim, The Whitney, The Frick – it was founded by folks from the neighborhood, the community, the barrio.
While so-called “mainstream” museum representation of Caribbean and Latin American artists and artworks (opens in a new window) has finally begun catching up with their influence on American society, thanks for that goes in no small measure to places like El Museo highlighting the glaring shortcomings.
Hiram Maristany (1945, New York, NY – 2022, St. Petersburg, FL), 'El Museo del Barrio, 206 East 116 ... [+]
EL MUSEO DEL BARRIOAdmission at El Museo del Barrio is pay-what-you-wish. The Museum is open from 11 AM to 5 PM Thursday through Sunday and located on 5th Avenue in Manhattan adjacent to Central Park one mile north of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
