The International Journal of

Social, Political, and Community Agendas in the Arts

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VOLUME 10 ISSUE 3

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Whose Barrio?Institutional Identity and Survival Tactics of El Museo del Barrio

SUSAN JANE DOUGLAS AND ADINA MUSKAT

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Whose Barrio? Institutional Identity and Survival

Tactics of El Museo del Barrio

Susan Jane Douglas, University of Guelph, Canada

Adina Muskat, University of Guelph, Canada

Abstract: The history and analysis of the development of El Museo del Barrio in New York City clarifies the part that

community museums play in the experience of political marginalization. In 2009, El Museo underwent a multi-million

dollar renovation. It now seeks to represent the culture of all of Latin Americans and to compete with mainstream museums in the area. However, since El Museo’s original mission was to give a voice to the Puerto Rican and Latin

American community in New York, the fact that its mandate is shifting towards global acceptance means that it must

reevaluate its role in the community and the community’s needs. This paper argues that El Museo performs an ongoing tactical process of responding to the community’s needs. It suggests that the greatest threat to El Museo’s professional

development, now that it has initiated a dialogue with the mainstream, is a loss of authority brought about by forcing a

reconsideration of the terms of its foundational identity.

Keywords: Museums, Community, Latin America, Identity, Marginalization

n October 2012, El Museo del Barrio (El Museo) appointed Chus Martínez chief curator,

prompting the The New York Times to ask its readers “How can [El Museo] grow in a

landscape of competitive city museums and hold onto its barrio roots?”1 The new curator’s

role in the museum’s future and her connection with the Hispanic community is particularly

noteworthy, given that over the last fifteen years, the museum has been attempting to transform

itself by up-scaling its image and redefining its goals. Founded by local Puerto Rican activists in

1969, El Museo is New York City’s leading Latino cultural institution, and many believe it is

slowly becoming gentrified. Tension exists between the desires of a small minority of high-

ranking movers and shakers on the board pointing at globalization, and community activists

afraid of waking up one morning and finding themselves estranged from the institution they

worked so hard to produce.

Can an art institution –a museum, or a arts centre– fill a gap and exist in-between or beyond

cultures? Or, is a strong brand, a strong commitment to the arts, artists, and a vision all that’s

necessary need to build a sense of identity and culture?

In May 2013, Chuz Martínez gave a talk in Toronto, Canada in connection with Hispanic

Month and at the invitation of Latin American Art Projects (LACAP). Martínez’s reflections on

the role of curators in generating a sense of community pride and institutional identity prompted

the present analysis which is shaped by the idea that museums are living institutions. The newly

appointed chief curator of the Barrio suggested that curators are agents and museums are

constantly in the process of reinventing and renegotiating themselves as their purposes change

and develop. Theorists in the field of museum studies argue that museums are “living”

institutions reflecting the communities in which they are located. According to Weil, there is a

process of “adaptive reuse” at work in the field of museum identity. Museums are evolving

within existing structures, rather than redefining their purpose wholesale, argues Weil adding this

is an idea that represents a paradigmatic shift towards more awareness of contemporary and

relevant societal issues and a more open dialogue taking place between the public and museums.

1 The New York Times also reported on the controversial nature of the new hire: “After a flurry of criticism over a new hire of a chief curator from Spain, who is perceived by many to be ‘out of touch’ with the community, Margarita Aguilar,

El Museo’s director since 2011, has left the museum and filed a legal complaint.” Felicia R. Lee, “Amid Turmoil at

Museo del Barrio, Its Director Steps Down” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/arts/design/margarita-aguilar-leaves- el-museo-del-barrio.html. Accessed November 20, 2014

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In this model the focus is on educational content. Weil proposes that, although the traditional

model likely will not be abolished altogether, the aforementioned changes signal that the

museum is on a path towards a revolution.2 In conjunction with these changes, Watson discusses

the relationship between museums and communities as being fluid and subject to regular change,

as museums respond to the ongoing changes in community needs.3

It is within the views of Weil and Watson, who urge us to look at the relationship between

museums and communities that El Museo serves as a case study of current trends in museum

identity. El Museo has arguably been a model for this change since its inception, situating it as an

innovative and forward-thinking institution. The community museum, located in New York

City’s East Harlem neighborhood, has undergone a process of considerable development since its

establishment. Originally created as a centre of education and appreciation of the art, culture, and

traditions of Puerto Rican immigrants living in New York City, it has expanded to encompass all

Latin Americans living in the United States. Moreover, it has adopted a structural model that

moves away from its initial grassroots character towards that of larger-scale and mainstream

museums.

Since many of El Museo’s changes occurred in order for it to be taken seriously in the

mainstream museum community, we must consider the cultural community that it serves.

Goldman’s assertion that “Latin American cultures are not embalmed traditions—they are the

conflictual result of relations between highly diverse groups with common or convergent

histories”4—characterizes Latin American cultures as not isolated or unitary; customs and

traditions come from a history of interactions. Accordingly, this paper considers how El Museo is

a manifestation of the emerging views of the future of museum identity, while it struggles to

maintain its objective of providing a space for all its stakeholders. The first section situates the

foundations of the museum within a broader social context of the National Civil Rights

movement in the late 1960s in the United States. Placing El Museo’s establishment in a

framework of social activism will aid in the understanding of its initial grassroots and small-scale

character. We also trace major developmental changes, both externally (e.g., its permanent home,

major renovations) and internally (e.g., the expansion of its scope and mission statement, its

collections and exhibitions). A comprehensive historical overview that encompasses the specifics

of El Museo, as well as the general development of community museums in the United States,

will ground the analytical discussion of the second section. Both internal and external motivators

for change will be addressed within a consideration of the application of tactics, a term derived

from theorist de Certeau. Building upon the previous discussion of survival as the primary

impetus for El Museo’s evolution, we’ll touch on a conceptual one, globalization, a justification

for El Museo’s development plan. Finally, we’ll address the critical challenges El Museo must

confront throughout decision-making processes involving notions of growth and expansion.

El Museo del Barrio: History and Process of Development

It is crucial to consider the institutional milieu out of which El Museo emerged to understand the

greater elements at work in the history of the community museum. This chronologically places El

Museo’s foundations in a timeline of public institutional development and provides a framework

within which to examine its development alongside broader societal issues. In his article, “The

Museum and the Crisis of Critical Postmodernism,” Roberts introduces a key idea: the concept of

a closed versus open museum model. The birth of the museum took place in the mid to late 1800s

in Europe and about a century later in the United States. The framework and goals of these first

museums exemplifies Roberts’ definition of a closed museum model—a commitment to

2 Weil, in Watson, Museums, 33. 3 Watson, Museums, 2.

4 Shifra Goldman, Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin America (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1994), 28.

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preserving “national treasures” for the common good and education of the masses. Such entities

were created to both house national collections and to glorify the national artistic heritage and

wealth of the nation.5 This nationalistic and civilizing spirit would set the precedent of museum

identity for the next century.6

The elite and hierarchical character in the foundations of the public museum imply a linear

thinking and elitist spirit that separate the museum from the community—since the establishment

of public museums, there have been strong political, national, and hierarchical undertones to

display practices, dissemination of information, and perceptions of the working class. It was not

until after World War II when a paradigmatic shift took place in the collections, practices, and

identity of the public museum. The defeat of fascist ideologies had a large impact in fostering a

more democratic perception of the museum,7 forcing institutions to reconsider their collections

and method of exhibition. According to Roberts, “instead of just committing itself to the

preservation of what is valuable from the past of bourgeois achievement, the museum opens itself

up to the living present.”8 This shift would continue to renegotiate the terms of representation,

display, and identity of the museum, though the closed model remained a dominating force in the

field. The foundations were in place for a shift in museum perception; however, it would take

time before these changes were implemented and acknowledged by both the museum community

and the general public.

The closed model eventually began losing its authority in museum identity in the 1970s, in

large part due to a US-led initiative—part and parcel of the national Civil Rights Movement—of

the museum as a place of disinterested contemplation. In other words, the viewer became an

increasingly active participant in making meaning of the works on display. Viewers were given

opportunities to create their own personal connections to the works, providing a space for agency

and empowerment of community members. Davis contends that the radical politics of the 1960s

encouraged museum professionals to become more aware of the social purpose of museums,

leading to an examination of the museum’s role in society.9 Theorists such as Davis have named

this revision of the relationship between the museum and the public a shift from an old to new

museology. Davis defines the old, in simplest terms, as a focus on professional collection,

documentation, and interpretation of objects. The new museology, on the other hand, is a more

community-focused and needs-based approach. As stated by Mensch, “the new museology

specifically questions traditional museum approaches to issues of value, meaning, control,

interpretation, authority and authenticity.”10

El Museo emerged out of a socio-historical context of popular struggle in New York City in

the late 1960s over access to, and control of, educational and cultural resources for the Puerto

Rican community. Once a locale where Jews, Eastern Europeans, and Italians settled, East

Harlem’s Latino identity began around the early 1900s and peaked in the 1950s with massive

immigrations of Puerto Ricans.11

In the 1930s–40s, Puerto Rico experienced widespread and

disparate poverty. The Puerto Rican government attempted to advance the economy through

industrialization and an increased fusion of American and Puerto Rican economies. Ultimately,

Puerto Rican leaders believed that the island’s economic ills were caused by massive

overpopulation, explaining its unemployment and underemployment problems, and attempted to

solve the overpopulation problem by persuading locals to emigrate to the United States. After

5 Roberts, “The Museum,” 70. 6 Like Robertson, Weil claims that museums were created to “uplift” the common taste. See Weil in Watson, Museums,

32. 7 Roberts, “The Museum,” 71. 8 Ibid, 72. 9 Peter Davis, “Place Exploration: Museums, Identity and Community,” 61. 10 Van Mensch, in Watson, Museums, 13. 11 Harlem is a neighbourhood in New York City that encompasses both Central and East Harlem. Central Harlem is a

predominantly African American community; East Harlem is associated with its Puerto Rican and Latin American

demographic makeup.

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World War II, thousands left as contract workers; hundreds of thousands more entered the United

States without contracts. Dual American and Puerto Rican citizenships and low airfares permitted

by the Federal Aviation Administration at the request of the Puerto Rican government facilitated

this migration. Between 1940 and 1950, the Puerto Rican population in the United States

quadrupled12

and Puerto Ricans became the bottom of the social and cultural hierarchy of New

York City immigrants, a stigma that remained into the 1960s.

This state of affairs—marginalization, social stigmatization, and a lack of cultural ties or

resources for Puerto Rican immigrants—was occurring in congruence with a broader context of

the National Civil Rights Movement taking place throughout the United States. Community

activists, parents, and educators of African American and Puerto Rican communities of Central

and East Harlem put increasing pressure on the school board for their children who composed

over half of the population of public school students by 1967—to receive an education that

acknowledged and celebrated their cultural background. By the end of the decade, community

members were granted increasing participation in decision-making process of East Harlem’s

school District 4. These responsibilities included curriculum structure and planning, as well as

fund allocation within the school system. Further support was offered in 1969 when Martin Frey,

superintendent of the school district, appointed artist and educator Raphael Montañez-Ortiz to

create material to integrate into the curriculum. Montañez-Ortiz reinterpreted his role and

established a community museum and education centre dedicating itself to “preserve and

promote the art and culture of Puerto Rican immigrants living in the United States.”13

This goal

became the mission statement of the centre, which Montañez-Ortiz named El Museo del Barrio14

to reflect the commonly referred to barrio of East Harlem.

A radical nationalist spirit dedicated to supporting an educational program of Puerto Rican

history, tradition, and culture characterized the formative years of El Museo. The earliest

exhibitions were politically oriented, with a large focus on community-based activist projects.

Postwar prints and works of artist collectives were displayed alongside traditional Taíno15

artifacts. School groups from all five boroughs of New York City were invited to the museum for

educational workshops and general Puerto Rican history and culture. Gradually, the museum

became a resource for learning about the experience of Puerto Rican immigrants living in the

United States. El Museo sought to create an innovative, educational, and community-based space

that was available and accessible to both the Puerto Rican community and the general public.

The 1973 initiative entitled Mobil Unit took an innovative approach to evaluating the needs of

the community— it involved loading the contents of El Museo’s permanent collection into a van

and transporting it throughout the neighborhood. Individuals and groups could experience the

museum without having to travel to it. Rather than isolating their resources and educational

material within the confines of a static site, El Museo allowed the public to access and experience

it easily and creatively.

The 1980s and 1990s marked decades of expansion, both physically and in terms of its scope

of representation. In 1980, the museum settled into its permanent home on Fifth Avenue in New

York City. Prior to this move, the museum had been located within various schools and

storefronts throughout District 4 and East Harlem. The museum recognized the importance of

establishing physical permanence in both the general public and the museum community.

Moreover, its own home signaled a move to be taken seriously by the museum community. The

following year, El Museo joined the American Association of Museums, further acknowledging

that in order to survive, mainstream recognition was required.

12 Marisa Alicea, in Handbook of Hispanic Cultured in the United States: Sociology. Ed. Félix Padilla. (Houston: Arte

Público Press, 1994), 43. 13 Original mission statement of El Museo del Barrio. 14 El Museo del Barrio. 15 Indigenous Puerto Ricans.

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Fifth Avenue is internationally recognized as a site of important museums and galleries. The

Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, and the Frick (among others) are all located here. By

settling onto Fifth Avenue, El Museo entered itself into this institutional discourse, demanding

recognition as an important contribution to New York City’s cultural identity. Among this call

for recognition, El Museo was a founding advocate for the official naming of the Museum Mile,

the stretch of Fifth Avenue where these museums are all located. This successful initiative

allowed an acknowledgment of El Museo as part of an institutional language and community. In

2009, El Museo underwent a multi-million dollar renovation 16

; this physical expansion created a

new, institutionally mainstream image for the museum. In addition to the physical growth of El

Museo throughout these decades, there was an expansion of the scope of representation, both

through the exhibition pieces and the broadening of its mission statement. Thus, the museum

demanded that attention be given to the growing population of Latino immigrants from many

Spanish-speaking countries who have an increasingly significant presence in the United States.

The broadening of its mission statement to include all Latin Americans living in the United

States led to diversified programming, specifically an increase of exhibitions by artists from

various Latin American countries. Works of art from all over Latin America, Puerto Rico, the

Caribbean, and New York City entered into the museum’s collection. Moreover, El Museo

exhibited various media such as performance, installation, prints, and video. These initiatives—

an evolving mandate and continual growth in the area of display— responded to the ongoing

changes in East Harlem; El Museo evolved in order to remain relevant for the community.

The 2000s at El Museo have seen a great deal in the domain of retrospective and large-scale

survey works, encompassing a wide variety of media including performance and conceptual art

that speaks to contemporary issues such as globalization, post-modernity, and hybridity. Shows

such as Arte no es vida, which highlights action and performance art throughout the past three

decades, and Voces and Visiones, a look into the permanent collection of El Museo, characterize

much of the current focus of El Museo. Generally, this focus is centred on major retrospective

pieces that draw from past exhibits or speak to social and cultural issues surrounding Puerto

Rican and Latino identity. A recent exhibition at the museum, titled Nueva York, and curated in

conjunction with the New York Historical Society, is a retrospective exhibition highlighting the

presence of Latin Americans in New York City from 1613–1945. Combining Roberts’ and

Davis’ theories, the initiative of the new, open museum of the late 1960s and early 1970s can be

perceived as a tactic, acknowledging the hole in the institutional system that failed to recognize

the marginalized working class.

Roberts also argues that museums are as subject to external forces as any other type of

institution. What makes it seem less so is that the impact of these forces depend on the particular

institution, its history, and its relationship to national interests.17

A statement by Jack Agüeros,

director of El Museo from 1977 to 1984, exemplifies the historic cultural roots of this sense of

moral responsibility:

Our focus is no longer limited to Puerto Ricans… we are too culturally rich to force

ourselves into ghettoes of narrow nationalism. El Museo now wants to embody the

culture of all of Latin America. New York is the fourth or fifth largest Spanish-speaking

country, and El Museo must reflect everything that is Latino. We must look upon Latin

America as our Indian ancestors did. They did not see artificial boundaries dividing

nations. They saw an open world where they were free to travel from one place to

another, pursuing their livelihood and mixing their culture.18

16 Ana Maria Caballero, “El Museo on Fifth Avenue,” Hispanic (2006) 19.3, 57. 17 Roberts, “The Museum,” 71. 18 Carlos V. Ortíz, “The Arts: Museo de la Gente,” Nuestro, April (1978) n.p.

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Its responsibility to meet community needs has been a consistent aspect of El Museo’s

identity. Moreover, the ability to successfully act upon these needs as opportunities arise raises

the discussion of important theories of tactics, survival, and globalization, which are grounded in

El Museo’s history, identity, and developmental process; due to considerations of length, these

will be discussed only briefly in the following section.

A Theoretical Approach to El Museo’s Identity

The growth of El Museo del Barrio compels us to examine how its actions have formed its

current identity. If it is to fully engage with the mainstream of museum culture, it must find its

way into the broader system of a mainstream institutional model while also keeping sight of its

mission and purpose. Given the museum’s history, we can conclude that theories of “tactics” and

“strategies” have played an important part in the visualizing (but also political) process.

In his book, The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau discusses tactics in a binary

relationship with strategy, and both concepts are classified as styles of action or ways of doing.19

What de Certeau argues, and what becomes quite relevant with El Museo’s transformation, is

how the validity of a tactic is gained in relation to its pertinence lent to time. Due to their

individual and isolated nature, tactics are not tied to a specific deadline and may move freely as

they respond to given situations. What gives the tactic currency is its ability to transform its

precise instance of intervention into a favourable situation.

In contrast to the tactic is a strategy. The strategy produces, tabulates, and imposes the space

upon which it is operating. In other words, the strategy creates and is subsequently tied to the

space in which it acts. Strategies become possible as soon as a subject with power and will is

isolated, asserting that a place can be determined as its own. Strategy involves the mastery of

both time and space by establishing an autonomous site. The two main contributing factors to de

Certeau’s argument are the privilege given to spatial relationships and the attempt to reduce

temporal relationships to spatial ones. The hope of the strategy is built upon the resistance of

what the establishment of a place offers to the erosion of time.20

El Museo’s development has followed a tactical path in that the processes of negotiation and

renegotiation has consistently take place every time an obstacle or opportunity has arisen. The

institutional changes that have taken place, such as relocation, renovation, and the broadening of

El Museo’s scope and mission statement, have been, as de Certeau suggests, “blow by blow”21

actions taking advantage of gaps in the system and/or through the absence of power. It is crucial

to bear in mind that the success of El Museo can largely be attributed to its ability to utilize the

broader system under which it operates, because it reflects the Puerto Rican diasporic community

living in East Harlem, which has also been defined by its virtually powerless status, and similarly

has used this politically to achieve official recognition in the United States. As theorized by de

Certeau, tactics are only activated when there is an absence of power and transcend time and

space. The power that is not available to the tactician thus belongs to the strategist. Note that,

coming back to de Certeau, although the terms tactic and strategy have been defined as binary

poles, they are not mutually exclusive. Therefore, tactics may operate within a greater strategic

system that imposes its power on the space over which it is acting. This is arguably the case with

El Museo, which has been able to maneuver itself tactically through the museum system due to

the determined spaces established by the mechanism of mainstream institutional identity.

Internally, El Museo is concerned with diversity politics. The embodiment of diversity

politics plays a formative role in the foundation of the museum and continues to be a central

aspect of it. In an interview shortly after the birth of the museum, Montañez-Ortíz explained why

he re-conceived the terms of his role from the creation of educational curriculum into the

19 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (California: University of California Press, 1988), 32. 20 Ibid, 34–37. 21 Ibid, 37.

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establishment of a community museum: “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.”22

This statement indicates an underlying need for marginalized communities to locate an

initial sense of sameness and a space to negotiate it. In order for any expression of difference in

the public sphere to occur, an internal collective identity must be negotiated and mediated from

within. This conviction facilitated a space for internal dialogue within the Puerto Rican

community. The interplay of sameness and difference fostered a successful and simultaneous

sense of recognition that mirrors the tactical process of diversity politics.

But the notion of an internal sameness not only holds relevance for the specific Puerto Rican

community in East Harlem, it also has deeper associations in terms of Latin American culture

and the concept of survival. Benítez-Rojo argues survival as an elemental factor that unites the

diverse and unique Latin American and Caribbean cultures. In The Repeating Island: The

Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective, Benítez-Rojo discusses Caribbean culture as one

that is non-apocalyptic. Though one’s own life will inevitably end, what lives on are traditions,

customs, morals, and spirit that are passed through generations. One must live in the moment,

and do what is needed in order to survive. Yet, life is not to be lived solely for the individual, but

for future generations. The negotiation of an existence that strives to simultaneously sustain itself

in the present while recognizing the need to create tradition and continuity for the future has led

El Museo to consistently assess and respond to immediate challenges and concerns. By enabling

itself to survive, El Museo is employing a characteristic that unites Latin American and

Caribbean cultures.

The growth and transformation historically and presently occurring in El Museo is motivated

by both internal and external factors to survive and meet current community needs. This has

meant the museum responding to changes in the community, renegotiating identity, and taking

advantage of systemic challenges. Its marginalized and subordinate status within the mainstream

museum world has given El Museo the agency and ability to maneuver within the system,

making necessary changes in order to continue surviving and serving the needs of the Puerto

Rican and Latin American community. It is important that the museum weaves throughout the

broader realm of the mainstream museum model in order to consistently respond to challenges

that arise as a product of representing a specific community. El Barrio, or East Harlem, is seen by

many as “inalienable,” to be maintained and protected. This inalienability, an inability to be

taken or given away is a point of resistance for those opposing El Museo’s growth. Yet, this

inalienable value of a resistance to being taken away is never free of political and social

significance. When opportunities to expand arose, El Museo took advantage of them; when there

was a growing need to represent a larger unofficial voice of Latin American immigrants, El

Museo fulfilled its moral and ethical duty to incorporate them into the mission statement through

a long process of negotiation that would recognize both Latin Americans and Puerto Ricans. The

museum’s most current mission statement begins with the following: “The mission of El Museo

del Barrio is to present and preserve the art and culture of Puerto Ricans and all Latin Americans

in the United States.” El Museo’s expansion and mission statement took place as responses to

external societal motivators (such as waves of immigration from a variety of Latin American

countries to New York City), grants, and donations El Museo received. At the same time, El

Museo looked inward when considering its expansion to represent more communities with

similar histories and struggles. As stated by Montañez-Ortíz in an interview in The New York

Times on October 9, 2009: “In my view it doesn’t make sense to remain forever underclass.

Culture has the right to move out of the barrio too. For Puerto Rican culture to be integrated into

Latino culture and then into the larger world culture—that was always my vision.”

22 Raphael Montañez-Ortíz, “Culture and the People,” Art in America, 59.3, May-June (1971), 27.

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Various writers and activists have criticized this process—of straddling local representation

and global recognition— including Dávila, who provides a comprehensive overview of the issues

and implications of the museum’s expansion in her book, Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans and

Latinos in the Neoliberal City. The greatest concern for Dávila was the expansion of the museum

into a marketable, tourist-friendly site, “a path that obviously leaves mainstream standards for

Latin American art—where Puerto Rican and US-based Latino artists have been historically

marginalized—unchallenged.”23

This statement suggests that the greatest threat lies in El

Museo’s aim to compete with mainstream museums. Because its initial foundations were

predicated upon providing an alternative to the lack of recognition of Puerto Rican art and culture

in US museums, the desire to “go mainstream” appears as a hypocritical gesture, moving

backwards from what the museum claimed to strive for: innovation, instilling pride, and creating

a legacy for future generations.

Interestingly, the threat of losing sight of the Puerto Rican community at El Museo led to an

initiative entitled “We are Watching You.” The Cultural Affairs Committee of East Harlem

founded this campaign after trash bins of archival catalogues and documents from El Museo’s

past were discovered. During the campaign, community members and activists sought to have a

say in many aspects of El Museo (e.g., determining the composition of the museum’s board,

policy development, and aspects of marketing). The motive behind this campaign was to ensure

that the museum adhered to its original mission to be true to its Puerto Rican roots. The challenge

El Museo now faces is how to fulfill its function as a world-class institution without

compromising its initial mission. Who is the museum responsible for? Does it represent the

Puerto Rican or Latin American experience? How is it ensuring that community needs are not

only being heard, but are also being reflected in curatorial practice and arts programming? These

questions lie at the centre of El Museo’s identity. As the demographics of East Harlem changed,

El Museo had to reconfigure its scope of representation to reflect the community. Perhaps El

Museo should now contemplate how its decisions affect its community and return to its initial

goals. This process may entail careful consideration of the theoretical decision to broaden its

identity that is intended to advance political and economic agendas. Ms Martinez’s resignation in

2014 may perhaps be considered a critical gesture, but not necessarily.

Conclusions

El Museo’s decision to engage a mainstream model is not necessarily indicative of a desire to

become a mainstream institution. Rather, the decision signals a desire for mainstream

acknowledgment. By evoking differentiated viewpoints, downplaying the specificity of its

origins, and addressing changing notions of the museum as an institutional form, El Museo has

gained recognition, funding, and a broad audience. It has tenuously maintained ties to its

community and its responsibility to address needs of Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans living

in the United States, performing a delicate mediation of the local and the global, the community

and the mainstream museum, progress, and an acknowledgment of its roots. The history and

analysis of the development of El Museo indicate the crucial role that community museums play

in the experience of political marginalization. We need to renegotiate frameworks of institutional

identity because, as Dávila has clarified, there is still a long way to go in the process negotiating

a movable framework of identity for community art centres. As we enter an era many believe is

post-globalization, it becomes ever more necessary to assess the needs of museums representing

specific and local or national communities if they are going to gain a strategic foothold. For El

Museo, this ongoing assessment of needs is nothing new; it has reinvented itself on many

occasions. As El Museo encounters challenges, obstacles, and opportunities, its deep-rooted spirit

23 Arlene Dávila, Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos and the Neoliberal City (Berkley, California: University of

California Press, 2004), 110.

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DOUGLAS AND MUSKAT: WHOSE BARRIO?

of survival and passion to create a space for future generations will continue to be at the core of

its agenda.

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND COMMUNITY AGENDAS IN THE ARTS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr. Susan Jane Douglas: Assistant Professor, Art History, University of Guelph, Guelph,

Ontario, Canada

Adina Muskat: M.A., Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Guelph, Ontario,

Canada

94

The International Journal of Social, Political, and Community Agendas in the Arts is one of four thematically focused journals in the collection of journals that support the Arts and Society knowledge community—its journals, book series, conference and online community.

The journal explores the various points of interface of arts practices and communities, including the arts expressions of community and group identities, arts policies, art and government, art as activism, museums and galleries as institutions, arts in advertising, and public arts.

As well as papers of a traditional scholarly type, this journal invites presentations of practice—including experimental forms of documentation and exegeses that can with equal validity be interrogated through a process of academic peer review. This, for instance, might take the form of a series of images representing

artistic practice, together with explanatory notes that articulate this practice with other, significantly similar or different and explicitly referenced practices.

The International Journal of Social, Political, and Community Agendas in the Arts is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

ISSN 2326-9960