New York City’s El Museo del Barrio will re-open on October 17 after a year-long, multi-million dollar renovation, with a new exhibition, “Nexus: New York: Latin American Artists in the Modern Metropolis, 1900-1942.” The show will look at early 20th-century Latin and Caribbean-American artists who worked in New York and were involved in the era’s avant-garde art movements.
The Museum, on Fifth Avenue at 104th Street in El Barrio (Spanish Harlem), is housed in a former orphanage. The new design, by Gruzen Samton Architects, replaces the institutional façade with a modernist entrance through the large Fifth Avenue courtyard, where a café will serve Latin food in nice weather. The building’s front wall on the ground level has been punched out and replaced with glass, creating an open, spacious feeling. Redesigned galleries will, for the first time, display the museum’s permanent collection as well as temporary exhibitions. “Our new facilities will help us to better serve our community, the public at large and all those who love the arts,” says Julián Zugazagoitia, the director of El Museo.
The Museum has a reputation as “one of the most vibrant and cutting edge museums in town.” It was founded in 1969 as the cultural hub of a community whose roots stretch from New York City to the Caribbean and throughout Latin America. Over the years it has mounted shows that range from pre-Columbian Taíno art, to 20th-century Latino performance art to the paintings of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and the Mexican modernists.
Mona Milarsky, writing for examiner.com, comments that the Museum’s 1999 exhibit, “Altares de los Orishas,” a series of installations by contemporary Latino artists inspired by traditional Afro-Caribbean religious altars, “embodied the museum’s holistic approach to the visual arts, which insists that artifacts are only part of a larger cultural environment. It’s an environment that includes music, poetry, theater, dance, politics and spirituality. This very Latino approach to art and life has put El Museo at the vanguard of New York museums and helped nudge curators across the United States to think outside the museum box and the box-like museum.”
El Museo has lived up to its commitment to the Spanish Harlem community through a variety of arts and educational programs, including school groups, workshops, films, music, dance and poetry performances. Its biggest and most popular community event is the annual Three Kings Day Parade on January 6, which celebrates the traditional feast of the Epiphany.
For more go to http://www.examiner.com/x-907-NY-City-Life-Examiner~y2009m6d20-Museo
