Museum starter kit: Open With Care

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.
-Raphael Montañez Ortiz

This quote by the founder of El Museo del Barrio illustrates his commitment to creating a space in which Puerto Rican New Yorkers could feel a connection to one island while living on another. Among his many goals was the creation of a place in which various stories related to history and culture could be experienced. Beyond writing curriculum for New York City Public School students, Montañez Ortiz, made a special trip to Puerto Rico to meet with museum specialists, scholars and artists to lay the groundwork for the founding of El Museo del Barrio in 1969.

As a result of his vision, El Museo embarks on its forty-fifth year as an institution serving the people of East Harlem, the New York City region and visitors from around the world. The museum’s history has shown its capacity for expansion and generosity, its flexibility as an art institution, its commitment to sharing creative production, people, ideas, objects, and collections with a broad audience.

This exhibition explores the significance of the creation of El Museo by focusing on works of art made by Raphael Montañez Ortiz, as the artist turns 80 this year.

To create a contemporary parallel to Montanez Ortiz’s open and generous vision, El Museo has invited a group of local artists from East Harlem to in turn invite the people of East Harlem to bring objects from their homes for display in the museum’s galleries. This reversal of expected museum exhibition practice underscores the museum’s commitment to creating connections with its audiences but also its interest in interrogating the role of the museum, the potential of the object and the human impulse to collect.

Historic figures who have been included in past exhibitions such as the conceptual and performance artist Papo Colo and photographer and filmmaker Perla de Leon will be highlighted. A handful of work by artists who have never been highlighted at El Museo before will round out the exhibition, including a group of drawings by Zilia Sanchez, found object sculptures by Romy Scheroder, and a space where visitors and tour groups will take a seat created by the Brooklyn based collective, BroLab. One gallery will feature their hand-made benches from recycled plastic, where audiences will be invited to sit and contemplate the invention of their own museum and to fantasize about which works of art and architecture they would include.

As El Museo’s director, Jorge Daniel Veneciano stated in the New York Times: “Puerto Rican art and culture will always be the heart and soul of El Museo. The imperative at its founding moment, 45 years ago, was to find a place for people who went unrecognized in society,” he said. “Today, the imperative is more about connectivity.” El Museo’s exhibition addresses this need for connections through an exploration of the museum’s founder, its exhibition history, and the possibility its galleries represent.

Artists in the exhibition: Beverly Acha, BroLab, Papo Colo, Perla de Leon, Tamara Kostianovsky, LNY, Mata Ruda, Geraldo Mercado, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Zilia Sánchez, Neighbor/Artists Curatorial Committee of East Harlem, Romy Scheroder, Luís Stephenberg. 

On-view through September 6, 2014