El Museo Del Barrio

In 1969, an artist, activist, and a teacher at the High School of Music and Art, Montañez Ortiz reevaluate a project a for a community museum. He dedicated the museum to the Puerto Rican Diaspora in the United States and named it El Museo del Barrio. The location of the museum is known as District 4. District 4 includes parts of Central Harlem and East Harlem, Montañez Ortiz was primarily hired to serve the population of East Harlem, known as El Barrio. Martin W. Frey, Superintendent of School District 4, under pressure from parents and community activists to implement cultural enrichment programs for Puerto Rican children, appointed artist/educator Ortiz to create educational materials for schools in District 4 on Puerto Rican history, culture,

folklore, and art.
Montañez Ortiz serves as founding director from June 1969 to spring 1971.

His original typed proposal and budgets for exhibitions, workshops, performing arts projects, apprentice program, and research and library resources, all to be administered by El Museo del Barrio, are in the archives of El Museo del Barrio, as well as a letter to Puerto Rican artists, where he introduces the institution: “The Museo del Barrio is its title: a neighborhood museum of Puerto Rican culture. . .” El Museo del Barrio receives its primary funding from the Board of Education from 1969 until 1974. Montañez Ortiz 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 our own culture, I founded El Museo del Barrio.” (Ralph Ortiz, “Culture and the People,” Art in America, May–June 1971,

27)
Montañez Ortiz and Martin W. Frey both traveled to Puerto Rico to conduct research on Puerto Rican culture and make institutional contacts with museum directors and anthropologists. El Museo del Barrio was 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 PS 125, located at 425 West 123rd Street which 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 Adrián García, who were members of the Art Workers Coalition, a political action group. Dimas and García participate in the first Advisory Board of El Museo del Barrio and later form Taller Boricua, an artist’s collective that is still in operation. In addition, Ortiz visited museums in New York City to research their collections of Puerto Rican art and artifacts.
El Museo del Barrio has a theater called El Teatro which seats 599 guests and a café called Side Park Café.

The lobby of El Museo del Barrio also has a gift shop, where patrons pay to enter the gallery. The gallery was exhibiting works from a Cuban artist named Belkis Ayón; the exhibition is titled “NKAME: A retrospective of Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón.” Her work was first featured at Fowler Museum at University of California, Los Angeles. Ayón was known for her signature technique of collography, a printing process in which materials of various textures and absorbencies are collaged onto a cardboard matrix and then run through the press with paper. Her work was based on Afro-Cuban religion, combining the myth of Sikan and the traditions of the Abakuá, a men's secret society. I was informed by an employee that the museum will be featuring more women artist in the coming

months.
I think it is important for museums like El Museo del Barrio to collect art work, and materials of cultural, religious and historical importance. The museums preserve them, do research into them and present them to the public for the purpose of education and enjoyment. Visiting El Museo del Barrio was one way for me to learn about Hispanic history and culture; I am very glad I took this class so I can get a better understanding about Hispanic art and language.
When I visited El Museo del Barrio, I went to the café because the gallery was not opened. I loved the café’s ambience especially the bar area; the bar area had a wooden finish that gives a person the feeling of the Caribbean. I was not impressed with the work that was exhibited by the artist Ayón. Her work was dark, gloomy and depressing. I think it was her way for someone to recognize she had turmoil in her life. I can see myself visiting the museum again just to sit and have a drink at the bar. The bar reminds me of Trinidad and Tobago.