Voices From Our Communities:
Perspectives on a Decade of Collecting at El Museo del Barrio
(El Museo del Barrio, 2001)
 The early history of El Museo del Barrio is complex, intertwined with popular struggles in New York City over the control of education and cultural resources, and the national civil rights movement. Through public demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, and sit ins held between 1966 and 1969, African American and Puerto Rican parents, teachers and community activists in Central and East Harlem demanded that their children who by 1967, composed the majority of the public school population receive an education that reflected their diverse cultural heritages. In 1969, they obtained their goal of decentralizing the Board of Education, gained community participation in structuring the school curriculum, and directed financial resources towards ethnic specific cultural programs that enriched their children’s education. Through the energy and dedication to social justice of East Harlem’s Puerto Rican community, the founding of El Museo del Barrio was made possible.
June 1969
Martin W. Frey, Superintendent of School District 4, under pressure from parents and community activists to implement cultural enrichment programs for Puerto Rican children, appoints artist/educator Rafael Montañez Ortiz, to create educational materials for schools in District 4 on Puerto Rican history, culture, folklore, and art. In 1969, District 4 covered parts of Central Harlem and East Harlem. Montañez Ortiz was primarily hired to serve the population of East Harlem, known as “El Barrio,” where the majority of the Puerto Rican population lived. As an artist, activist, and teacher at the High School of Music and Art, Montañez Ortiz was aware of the urgent need to create cultural resources for Puerto Ricans of all Ages. Montañez Ortiz reconceives Frey’s project as a community museum, dedicated to the Puerto Rican Diaspora in the United States, that he calls “El Museo del Barrio.”
Montañez Ortiz has stated, “The cultural disenfranchisement I experience as a Puerto Rican has prompted me to seek a practical alternative to the orthodox museum, which fails to meet my needs for an authentic ethnic experience. To afford me and others the opportunity to establish living connections with my own culture, I founded El Museo del Barrio.”
Summer 1969
Montañez Ortiz travels to Puerto Rico to conduct research on Puerto Rican culture and make institutional contacts with museum directors and anthropologists.
Fall 1969
Funded by the Community Education Center (a state financed program providing supplementary services for children and adults), El Museo del Barrio begins operations in a schoolroom at P.S. 125, located at 425 West 123rd Street. P.S. 125 also housed the office of District 4. During his first year as Director, Montañez Ortiz reached out to the East Harlem community by discussing plans for El Museo del Barrio with parents, teachers, the Young Lords Political Party, and The Real Great Society (a collective of architects and urban planners based in East Harlem).
Montañez Ortiz also contacted Puerto Rican artists such as Marcos Dimas and Adrian Garcia who were members of the Art Workers Coalition, a political action group. Dimas and Garcia participate in the first Advisory Board of El Museo del Barrio and later form Taller Boricua, an artists collective that is still in operation. In addition, Montañez Ortiz visited museums in New York City to research their collections of Puerto Rican art and artifacts.
Winter 1969/Spring 1970
Montañez Ortiz appoints Puerto Rican art historian Marimar Benitez as his co Director. Montañez Ortiz and Benitez organize two exhibitions on behalf of El Museo del Barrio, at P.S. 206 on East 120th Street and Pleasant Avenue. The first exhibit was on women’s needlework and the second on Puerto Rican graphic arts.
Fall 1970
El Museo del Barrio relocates to P.S. 206 on East 120th Street and Pleasant Avenue, as a result of a citywide reorganization of school districts.
January 15, 1971
Montañez Ortiz incorporates “El Museo del Barrio” as a not for profit institution dedicated to Puerto Rican heritage.
Spring 1971
Community Activists at District 4 hold hearings on the future of El Museo del Barrio. Artist/educator Marta Morena Vega is appointed second Director of El Museo del Barrio by the school board. Morena Vega continues the dialogue begun by Montañez Ortiz with parents, teachers, artists and other museum directors in the city about the need to support a community museum for Puerto Ricans in East Harlem. Hiram Maristany, a photographer and member of the Young Lords Party, as well as Adrian Garcia, Manuel Otero, Armando Soto, Sammy Tanco and Nitza Tufiño (all members of the artist collective Taller Boricua) help El Museo del Barrio by volunteering to organize exhibitions and workshops.
September 16, 1971
Moreno Vega reincorporates the museum as “Amigos del Museo del Barrio.”
Fall 1971
El Museo del Barrio relocates to a brownstone on 206 East 116th Street. A successful series of workshops and exhibits, including the first exhibit of Taino artifacts, are implemented during the year. School groups from all five boroughs of New York visit El Museo del Barrio. Ongoing discussions with Irvine MacManus, Education Assistant for Community Programs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, result in a collaboration between both institutions in the organization of a groundbreaking historic survey of Puerto Rican arts, entitled The Art Heritage of Puerto Rico: Pre Columbian t the Present, presented first at El Museo del Barrio and then at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. El Museo del Barrio’s first Board of Trustees, under the incorporation of Amigos del Museo del Barrio, becomes active. The Board of Trustees is composed of artists and staff.
1972
El Museo del Barrio relocates to a series of storefronts on Third Avenue and 106th Street. During its planning stages, The Art Heritage of Puerto Rico: Pre Columbian t the Present is awarded major funding from The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, and Con Edison.
April 30, 1973
The Art Heritage of Puerto Rico: Pre-Columbian to the Present opens at El Museo del Barrio and is attended by over 18,000 people. The show includes over 200 works of art that range from Taino artifacts, wooden santos, 18th and 19th century paintings, and prints and paintings by contemporary Puerto Rican artists.
The exhibition was based on the scholarship of Dr. Ricardo Alegría, Executive Director of the Instituto del Cultura Puertorriqueña; Dr. Osiris Delgado, Director of the Museo de Antropología, Historia y Arte de la Universidad de Puerto Rico; and Dr. Arturo Dávila, Curator of La Colección del Arzobispo de Puerto Rico. The exhibition team from the Metropolitan Museum of Art included Henry Geldzahler, Curator, Twentieth Century Art; John Howat, Curator, American Paintings and Sculptures; John McKendry, Curator, Prints and Photographs; Theodore Rosseau, Curator in Chief, and James Pilgrim, Assistant Curator in Chief. The entire project was supervised by Harry S. Parker III, Vice Director for Education, and coordinated by the Department of Community Programs, which included in its staff Catherine Chance, Dora Rubiano, and Maria E. Somoza. Irvine MacManus, Education Assistant for Community Programs, was responsible for bringing the exhibition successfully to fruition. From El Museo del Barrio, the team included Marta Morena Vega, Director; Carmen Morgan, Education; and the artists Lorenzo Homar, Carlos Osorio, and Rafael Tufiño.
May 1973
Proposed cuts in state urban education funds threaten El Museo del Barrio’s financial support from the New York City Department of Education. The staff elects to work without pay until additional funding sources can be secured.
July 25, 1973
The Art Heritage of Puerto Rico opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (in the galleries now designated the Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries of Southeast Asian Art).
Fall 1973
El Museo del Barrio expands by leasing a firehouse at 175 East 104th Street with the help of the Manhattan Borough President, Percy Sutton.
Late 1973
El Museo del Barrio begins receiving donations from artists and other supporters to establish a permanent collection. They initiate a tradition that continues to the present.
1974
Internal debates arise concerning the infrastructure of El Museo del Barrio. Half of the six member staff and Board of Trustees want El Museo del Barrio to run as a collaborative effort while the others prefer a traditional hierarchical structure with the Board of Trustees acting as an independent body from the staff. A lawsuit ensues between the factions. Morena Vega resigns as Director of El Museo del Barrio.
1975
Hiram Maristany is appointed Acting Director by El Museo del Barrio’s Board of Trustees.
1976
A new Board of Trustees, composed of artists, writers, educators and business professionals, is formed after a New York Supreme Court hearing rules that El Museo del Barrio’s staff cannot also act as Trustees.
July 1977
Jack Agüeros, poet, novelist, playwright, and former co director of Cayman Gallery (with Nilda Perazza), is appointed Director of El Museo del Barrio by the Board of Trustees Cayman Gallery in Soho was one of the first galleries dedicated to Puerto Rican and Latin American art in New York City.
Fall 1977
Agüeros negotiates with Boys Harbor, a non profit youth services agency, to relocate El Museo del Barrio to its present location the main floor of the Heckscher Building, a multi-tenant, city owned property at 1230 Fifth Avenue between 104th and 103rd Streets. Already tenants on the second floor, Taller Boricua members help move El Museo del Barrio into the building.
Winter 1977
El Museo del Barrio joins the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) through a decree from Edward I. Koch, Mayor of New York City. The Cultural Institutions Group is an association of thirty three organizations housed in city buildings; including the Metropolitan Museum of New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, The Museum of the City of New York, The American Museum of Natural History, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Wave Hill.
January 1978
Agüeros begins El Museo del Barrio’s annual tradition of organizing a Three Kings Parade in East Harlem.
April 28 - June 30, 1978
El Museo del Barrio inaugurates the new galleries in the Heckscher Building, with Resurgimiento 78, a group exhibition of contemporary Puerto Rican and Latin American artists working in New York.
1979
Agüeros implements a series of capital improvements and gallery expansions throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the help of artist and staff member Federico Ruiz and architect William Bowles. Expansion and cataloguing of the permanent collection begins.
Spring 1979
El Museo del Barrio opens an art school in the firehouse, with a faculty largely composed of local artists.
June 1979
El Museo del Barrio co-founds the annual Museum Mile Festival on Fifth Avenue with ten major institutions. The participating institutions include: Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of the City of New York, Mount Sinai Medical Center, The International Center of Photography, The Jewish Museum, The Cooper Hewitt Museum, The Church of Heavenly Rest, The National Academy of Design, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and Goethe House. The first festival was held on June 10, 1979.
August 1979
El Museo del Barrio gathers 2,300 petition signatures from the local community, successfully halting the city’s sale of the firehouse that housed its art school.
March 1980
Teatro 4, a theater organization that had helped El Museo del Barrio with renovations on the firehouse, opens their first production, Gimme Five, on its ground level.
May 1980
Board member George Aguirre helps El Museo purchase the firehouse from the City of New York with a grant from Con Edison. His leadership is also crucial to the growth of the permanent collection.
1981
El Museo joins the American Association of Museums.
May 29 - August 31, 1981
El Museo del Barrio collaborates with Ballet Hispanico and Intar Theater to produce The Golden Age of Spain, a celebration of art, drama and literature of 16th and 17th century Spain. The Golden Age of Spain commemorates the three hundred year anniversary of Spanish playwright Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s death, and was organized by Gladys Peña, El Museo del Barrio’s Curator since 1979.
February 10, 1984
El Museo del Barrio hosts a traveling retrospective of work by the Puerto Rican painter, Francisco Oller, a major but little known nineteenth century master. Francisco Oller: A Realist Impressionist was curated by Marimar Benitez, former co Director of El Museo del Barrio, for Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico.
November 1985
Bess Myerson, Commissioner of Cultural Affairs of the City of New York, freezes El Museo del Barrio’s funding. The Department of Cultural Affairs begins investigations into El Museo del Barrio’s fiscal management.
Winter 1986
The funding freeze forces staff layoffs. Curator/artist/art historian Rafael Colón Morales volunteers to work without pay in order to keep with institution open and protect its permanent collection. Colón Morales becomes Acting Director as the investigation of El Museo del Barrio’s finances continues.
March 14, 1986
El Museo del Barrio’s Board of Trustees dismisses Jack Agüeros.
April 1986
Robert Esnard, Deputy Director to Mayor Edward I. Koch, appoints Gladys Peña as Interim Director of El Museo del Barrio. (By this time, Peña is Director of Public Arts Programs for the New York City Arts Commission.)
October 4, 1986
Petra Barreras, Grants Manager at the New York State Council on the Arts, is appointed Executive Director of El Museo del Barrio by the Board of Trustees. Barreras rebuilds El Museo del Barrio’s staff and undertakes important new initiatives for the care and management of the collection. She also establishes ongoing relationships with the Ford Foundation and the National Arts Stabilization Program.
March 26 - May 22, 1988
Rafael Montañez Ortiz: Year of the Warrior: 1960 Years of the Psyche 1988 is the first major retrospective of the work of the vanguard artist and founder of El Museo del Barrio. Rafael Colón Morales curates the exhibition.
August 1989
El Museo del Barrio receives a three year, $625,000 Ford Foundation Grant for collections care and management.
September 15, 1989 - April 15, 1990
Taller Alma Boricua: Reflecting on Twenty Years of the Puerto Rican Workshop: 1969 1989. Artist Diogenes Ballester curates the group exhibition that documents the chronology and impact of the artists’ collective, whose history is closely related to that of El Museo del Barrio.
1990
In bi weekly discussions that last over a year, El Museo del Barrio’s staff and board draft the institution’s first long range, strategic plan to stabilize the institution. Under the leadership o chair Michael Janicki (1990 1997), and subsequent chairs Estrellita Brodsky (1997 2000), and Tony Bechara (1997 to present), El Museo del Barrio expands and diversifies its Board of Trustees to include non-Latinos and Latinos of all national backgrounds.
May 2 - August 4, 1991
Susana Torruella Leval, Chief Curator of El Museo del Barrio since 1990, curates Con to’ los Hierros: A Retrospective of the Work of Pepón Osorio. Osorio was an artist in residence at El Museo del Barrio for five years prior to the opening of the exhibit.
September 1992 - January 1993
Antonio Martorell & Friends: La Casa de Todos Nosotros/A House for Us All, curated by Susana Torruella Leval, introduces the work of the Puerto Rican printmaker and installation artist, Antonio Martorell, to New York audiences.
March 1993
Susana Torruella Leval is appointed Interim Director of El Museo.
El Museo del Barrio closes its galleries in order to implement the following renovations: redesign of the entrance to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act; the renovation of the admissions area and galleries; preparation for the installation of climate control systems; and the creation of a reading room. The work is completed in May 1994.
November 1993
Susana Torruella Leval is appointed Executive Director of El Museo del Barrio.
Spring 1994
El Museo del Barrio’s Board of Trustees organizes the first annual gala dinner, a major fundraising event for the general operations budget that continues successfully to the present.
May 5, 1994 - August 13, 1995
El Museo del Barrio opens its renovated galleries and celebrates its 25th anniversary with a three part exhibition entitled Artists Talk Back: Visual Conversations with El Museo, curated by Susana Torruella Leval. Part I: Reclaiming History is held May August, 1994; Part II: Recovering Popular Culture is held September 1994 March 1995; and Part III: Reaffirming Spirituality is held April August 1995.
August 1994
El Museo del Barrio presents its first long range plan in a document entitled Visiones, the culmination of the planning process by staff and Board begun in 1990. Visiones introduces a broader vision of the museum’s mission statement that reads: “El Museo del Barrio’s mission is to establish a forum that will preserve and project the dynamic cultural heritage of Puerto Ricans and all Latin Americans in the United States.” The 1994 mission first included Latin Americans in the United States as part of El Museo del Barrio’s constituency.
December 1994
The National Arts Stabilization Fund awards El Museo del Barrio a grant of $363,716 to improve and stabilize its financial position.
1996
El Museo del Barrio’s Board of Trustees creates a Mission Task Force composed of Board and staff members to reconsider the wording of the 1994 mission statement.
January 25 - April 7, 1996
Portrait, an installation by Venezuelan artist, Carla Preiss, inaugurates the Contemporánea series, dedicated to site specific, commissioned installations selected for their polemic and innovative formats.
 June 1996
The Mission Task Force rewords the 1994 mission statement. The 1996 mission statement reads, “El Museo del Barrio will collect, preserve, exhibit, interpret and promote the artistic heritage of Latin Americans, primarily in the United States.”
November 1996
Santos Sculptures Between Heaven and Earth, organized by Fatima Bercht, Curator of El Museo del Barrio, begins a five year series of installations highlighting El Museo del Barrio’s large collection of Santos. This project seeks to make the diverse aspects of this collection accessible to the community. The first part focuses on Santos made in Puerto Rico.
El Museo del Barrio is awarded a Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fun Collections Accessibility Grant in the amount of $800,000 over five years, for a series of initiatives, exhibitions, publications, education programs and outreach activities to make its collection accessible to a larger public.
September 27, 1997 - May 3, 1998
Taino: Pre Columbian Art and Culture from the Caribbean, a groundbreaking exhibition and catalogue, organized by Project Director Fatima Bercht, Associate Curator of El Museo del Barrio, with Estrellita Brodsky, and Guest Curators Dr. Ricardo Alegría, Dr. José Juan Arrom and Dr. Dicey Taylor.
May 30 - October 25, 1998
Beatriz González: What an Honor to Be with You At This Historic Moment, Works 1965 1997, curated by Carolina Ponce de León, Curator of El Museo del Barrio. This major exhibition of Columbian artist Beatriz González presents the well known Latin American artist to the New York public as part of the FOCOS series, highlighting the contributions of mature artists.
June 1998
Artists, educators, and community leaders associated with the task force, Puerto Ricans for the Next Millennium (PRFNM), communicate expressions of disappointment regarding the omission of Puerto Ricans in the 1996 mission statement of El Museo del Barrio. PRFNM requests that Puerto Ricans, as the founding community, be specifically mentioned in the mission statement, and that El Museo del Barrio preserve itself as a Puerto Rican institution. Discussions among the Trustees and staff are renewed on the wording of the 1996 mission statement.
September 1998
The Institute of Museum and Library Services awards El Museo del Barrio a General Operating Support Grant of $112,500 for outstanding professionalism and services.
1999
PRFNM continues to advocate that Puerto Ricans be acknowledged in El Museo del Barrio’s mission statement. Debates continue regarding the expansion of El Museo’s mission statement to include Latin Americans.
April 9 - June 30, 1999
The S Files/The Selected Files, conceived and curated by Carolina Ponce de León (former Curator) with Deborah Cullen, Curator of El Museo del Barrio. The S Files is El Museo del Barrio’s biennial group exhibition that presents new and innovative Caribbean and Latin American artists, living and working in the New York area, selected from their submissions to El Museo’s Artist’s Archives. This series activates El Museo’s relationship with a wide range of emerging artists in the metropolitan area.
September 24, 1999 - January 9, 2000
Pressing the Point: Parallel Expressions in the Graphic Arts of the Chicano and Puerto Rican Movements, is co-curated by Yasmín Ramirez, Consulting Curator of El Museo del Barrio, and Henry Estrada, Guest Curator. This exhibition is a major contribution to the scholarship analyzing the affinities between Puerto Rican and Chicano graphic arts movements during the 1960s and 1970 in the United States.
December 1999
El Museo del Barrio receives a one million dollar endowment grant from the Ford Foundation, the first in El Museo del Barrio’s history.
 February 2000
The Board of Trustees approves a mission statement that acknowledges the special role of the Puerto Rican founding community while including peoples of diverse Latin American heritages. The current mission statement reads: “The Mission of El Museo del Barrio is to present and preserve the art and culture of Puerto Ricans and all Latin Americans in the United States.”
October 27, 2000
Taino: Ancient Voyagers of the Caribbean opens. A permanent installation of pre-Columbian Art from the Caribbean and the most comprehensive presentation of Taino culture in the U.S., it is Guest Curated by Dr. Dicey Taylor, and coordinated by Fatima Bercht, Chief Curator of El Museo del Barrio.
January May 2001
El Museo del Barrio launches Phase I of an Oral History project to documents its early history. Phase I includes twenty six interviews with Puerto Ricans who contributed significantly to the early history of El Museo del Barrio. Phase II, in 2001-2002, will continue research with additional interviews of key longtime and current contributors to El Museo’s evolving history. |
