HISTORY
			In the 1960s in New York City and elsewhere, there was a movement to reclaim the history of Puerto Ricans. Consciousness was raised about our contributions as a people, and many Puerto Ricans stopped calling themselves Spanish and instead, began referring to themselves as Boricua, a term derived from the original name of Puerto Rico, Boriken. Books and institutions excluded Puerto Ricans and diminished our presence. The world of the arts was no exception so Puerto Ricans began building places that would celebrate our art and history and let our community and the world know that we refused to be made invisible. El Museo del Barrio began as a program in a classroom of School District #4. In 1969, under the leadership of the Dr. Marta Moreno Vega, it was incorporated as Los Amigos del Museo del Barrio. It is that legal entity which El Museo works from to this day. The Museo's advocacy efforts led to the development of institutions like Taller Boricua and Galeria Morivir Vivier and was responsible for the first major show that highlighted [a] Puerto Rican artist with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and set a standard that changed the perception of our contributions to the arts. El Museo del Barrio was the outgrowth of a city-wide effort on the part of Puerto Rican and African American artists, educators and community activists to gain community control over education and social services. Because El Museo would not have been funded by the City without agitation on the part of these activists, it is right that we should think of the origins of El Museo as a community-based, working class institution. However, we should also recognize that it was founded and directed by a sole individual in 1969, the vanguard artist Rafael aka Ralph Montañez Ortiz, a first generation, New York born Puerto Rican, or Nuyorican. Ortiz was by no means a humble individual but rather a very well respected and established artist who pioneered the genre of performance and video art in the United States and indeed the world. Although Ortiz's work was already in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, he did not want to part of the conservative white identified art market. Instead, he was part of the art workers coalition and other radical organizations that protested the elitism and racism of the New York museums and galleries. Ortiz promoted the idea that cultural institutions that garnered public money must substantively represent the public in their programs and policies. From the beginning, El Museo del Barrio was conceived of as a community-based institution that would serve as an alternative to institutions that were run by upper class elites. Although El Museo del Barrio has had different directors since Ortiz, sucessors including professor and author Marta Moreno Vega, writer Jack Agueros, and Petra Barreras shared the fundamental belief that El Museo should be held accountable and open to the Puerto Rican/Latino community. Diverging from the community Ironically, since the "expansion" of El Museo del Barrio's mission in 1994, under the direction of Susana Leval and current chair Tony Bechara, we have seen the constriction of community participation by Latinos in El Museo del Barrio. At present, there is no artist-in-residence program for Latino artists. The last artist in residence at El Museo del Barrio was Pepon Osorio in 1991. He credits his work at El Museo as a factor in his immense success today as an artist and MacArthur Fellow. Imagine how many artists of Pepon's caliber El Museo del Barrio could have been nurturing all of these years. El Museo del Barrio has also failed in its outreach to Latino scholars. It does not sustain collegial relationships with other Latino cultural or educational institutions. Recent attempts by certain centers to collaborate with El Museo del Barrio have fallen on deaf ears. Lastly, the Dominican community, which rivals the Puerto Rican community in size and influence in New York, has no representative on the board of directors and Dominican artists have not had much exposure in El Museo del Barrio. African Americans and Afro-Latinos are also conspicuously absent from the board, staff and exhibitions in El Museo del Barrio save the occasional show on Afro-Caribbean religions like Santeria. On the other hand, non-Spanish speaking white North Americans have become commonplace in El Museo Del Barrio's executive staff and board while Latino scholars and professionals are relegated to temporary "consulting" positions. Back To Top