New York, NY. On October 17, 2009, El Museo del Barrio, one of the few museums representing Caribbean Art in the United States, celebrated its 40th Anniversary with a grand reopening and an extraordinary exhibition called Nexus New York: Latin-American Artists in the Modern Metropolis.

 

The inaugural exhibition takes place in the museum's newly renovated and expanded facilities. The Exhibition features various artist who visited or lived in New York in the early twentieth century. The exhibit is divided into five sections, with artists from the Caribbean particularly featured in the first section of Nexus New York. The Caribbean artists featured and recognized by El Museo del Barrio for their contributions are: Puerto Rican artist Miguel Pou y Becerra, Dominican artist Celeste Woss y Gil, and Cuban artist Carlos Enríquez.

 

Nexus New York: Latin-American Artists in the Modern Metropolis explores the interactions between Caribbean and Latin American artists and U.S.-born and European artists working in New York in the early twentieth century, who together fomented many of that era’s most important avant-garde art movements. Nexus New York is the first exhibition to explore the profound way these artistic exchanges between Latino and non-Latino artists deeply impacted art and art movements in this city and throughout the world for years to come. The exhibition is also representative of El Museo’s mission to produce programming and new scholarship on the significant yet sometimes overlooked contributions made by Latino, Caribbean, and Latin American artists.

 

This ambitious exhibition will present for the first time together more than 200 important works by artists from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, as well as, U.S. and European artists working in New York. Contextual material—such as period photographs, original magazines and books, reproductions of poems, writing, and other documentary materials— will also be on display to elucidate and bring to life the nature of these historical, collaborative, and experimental environments.

 

“Nexus New York will not only be a landmark in Caribbean and Latin American scholarship, but it will allow, for the first time, a close study of the astonishing exchanges between artists of the Americas, New York, and beyond, and will lead to a richer understanding of American modernism,” said Deborah Cullen, Director of Curatorial Programs and Curator of the exhibition.

 

About the Exhibition

 

Through both chronological and simultaneous groupings that focus on sites of artistic contact, visitors will explore diverse locations around New York, emphasizing the institutions, schools, and groups that galvanized the cosmopolitan activity in which Caribbean and Latin American artists played key roles.

 

Proceeding somewhat chronologically through El Museo’s newly renovated space, the first section of Nexus New York will focus on artists who chose realist or expressionist formal means during a period from approximately 1910 through the 1920s, and their key artistic exchanges as they traveled to New York and its environs to study with renowned American teachers.

 

One locus of such exchanges was The Art Students League of New York, a venerable site welcoming foreign students to work and study since 1875. Hailing from Puerto Rico, artist Miguel Pou y Becerra traveled to New York in 1919 to study at the Art Students League with Robert Henri, whose realist Ashcan School theories paralleled Pou’s own developing proposition to document quotidian life on his island in order to venerate its national ideals. Similarly, Celeste Woss y Gil left the Dominican Republic to study at the League from 1922 to 1924 and 1928 to 1931. Previously stifled by her island’s conservative artistic environment, she embraced teachers such as George Luks and his fleshy, gritty painted realities. Upon her return to Santo Domingo, her bold nude mulatto and black females established her as an influential teacher to younger Dominican generations, later going on to direct an important art academy that initiated the founding of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1942.

 

A more complex exchange was that of Alice Neel and Carlos Enríquez who met in 1924 at the Pennsylvania Academy summer school. They were married in 1925 and returned to his home in Havana, Cuba, where Enríquez participated in the early vanguard exhibitions. After returning to New York in 1927, they eventually separated, however, the impact of the Caribbean modern movement on Neel’s work continued to evidence itself in her bold formal style and social agenda. In addition to many early works, their haunting portraits of their daughter Isabetta are brought together for the first time. Working as a WPA artist in 1935, Neel met the Puerto Rican musician and entertainer José Negrón, moving with him a few years later to El Barrio, where El Museo is based today. Although they parted ways in 1939, Neel continued to live in El Barrio for the following 26 years, often painting the people and places of the neighborhood. Neel’s early embrace of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, as well as her initial exposure to the vanguardia and the social ideals of the Cuban modernist movement, facilitated her comfort in El Barrio, which she adopted as her home.

 

The second section will include pioneering travelers to New York who moved within Dada and Cubist circles in the 1900s and 1910s. This section will, in particular, focus on the 291 Gallery, the De Zayas Gallery, and the Modern Gallery.

 

The third section will feature Joaquin Torres-Garcia, artist from Uruguay, whose time in New York from 1920 to 1922 fostered his radical formal experimentation and influenced others.

 

The fourth section will look at the expansive influence of the Mexican modernists in New York, whose dominance had been felt beginning in the 1920s, but which peaked during the 1930s.

 

The fifth section will focus on various sites of Surrealism, which gained currency as international artists joined forces in New York starting with World War II’s approach in the late 1930s to the war’s end. These include the 1939 World’s Fair and the New School for Social Research, which housed Paris’ Atelier 17 during the War. The “World of Tomorrow” World Fair attracted over 44 million visitors to its spectacular events and National Pavilions, including Salvador Dalí’s notorious “Dream of Venus” exhibition.

 

About El Museo del Barrio

 

El Museo del Barrio, New York’s leading Latino cultural institution, welcomes visitors of all backgrounds to discover the artistic and cultural landscape of the Caribbean and Latin America. The richness of Latino cultures is represented in El Museo’s wide-ranging collections and exhibitions, complemented by performing arts events, cultural celebrations, and educational programs. A dynamic artistic, cultural, and community gathering place, El Museo is a center of cultural pride on New York’s Museum Mile.

 

El Museo was founded 40 years ago by artist and educator Raphael Montañez Ortiz and a coalition of parents, educators, artists, and activists who were determined to see Puerto Rican culture represented in their children’s schools and fought for changes in the public school curriculum, including the classroom museum that became the first El Museo. Since its inception, El Museo has been committed to celebrating and promoting Latino culture, thus becoming a cornerstone of El Barrio, and a valuable resource for New York City. El Museo’s varied Permanent Collection of over 6,500 objects from the Caribbean and Latin America includes pre-Columbian Taíno artifacts, traditional arts, twentieth-century drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations, as well as prints, photography, documentary films and video. For more information about El Museo, please visit www.elmuseo.org; or contact Elizabeth Reina at (212) 675-1800.