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,

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,

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