El Museo del Barrio is pleased to present Something Beautiful: Reframing La Colección, the Museum’s most ambitious presentation of its unique, complex, and culturally diverse Permanent Collection in over two decades.
Organized by Rodrigo Moura, Chief Curator; Susanna V. Temkin, Curator; and Lee Sessions, Permanent Collection Associate Curator, the exhibition will present approximately 500 artworks, including new acquisitions and artist commissions, through rotating displays over the course of one year. Something Beautiful cuts across traditional chronological, geographic, and media-specific categories, reconsidering the Collection through new interdisciplinary approaches rooted in El Museo del Barrio’s foundational history and legacy.
This forward-thinking model focuses on the contribution of Amerindian, African, and European cultures as the basis of visual production in the Americas and the Caribbean. See list of participating artists.
The first rotation of Something Beautiful is organized in eight sections plus seven artist spotlights. Sections include Ocama Aracoel: Taíno spirits and forms and their influence on the Nuyorican art movement; Cosmic Visions: Indigenous and non-indigenous artists evoking Amerindian languages, landscapes, and other cultural references; First Impressions: Focusing on early acquisitions and the graphic portfolio in Puerto Rican printmaking; El Barrio: Different facets of life in East Harlem and other Barrios in New York, especially around the stoop, the sidewalk, and the bodega; The Street Transforms: Artists’ and activists’ interventions in public space; Pathos, Hope, Glory: Transhistorical portraits and self-portraits of artists reflecting the diversity of the Latinx experience; Clothed/Unclothed: Artworks that explore, exaggerate, and deconstruct what it means to be male, female, neither, or both; and Abstraccionistas: The protagonism of women in abstract art, matrilinear traditions, opticality and the framing of reality through abstraction.
Artist spotlights will feature the works of Jorge Soto Sánchez; Alejandro Diaz; Papo Colo; Antonio Lopez; and Myrna Baez. In addition, artists Maria Gaspar and Glendalys Medina were commissioned to create new artworks reflecting and responding to the exhibition.
On the occasion of Something Beautiful, an accompanying publication drawing from the contributions of 45 invited speakers introduces new expertise about the Collection and its future. Published as a dialogic mosaic, the publication includes excerpted reflections about El Museo’s role in institutional ecosystems.
Select contributors include Beverly Adams, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Marcela Guerrero, Gala Kim, Yasmin Ramírez, Taína Traverso, Adriana Zavala, and Julian Zugazagoitia, among others.
Something Beautiful: Reframing La Colección is made possible by the Terra Foundation for the Arts and The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, with additional support provided by Tony Bechara.
Public support is provided by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional permanent collection funding is provided by The Mellon Foundation.
On View from May 19, 2023 – March 10, 2024
El Museo del Barrio, 1230 5th Avenue at 104th Street, East Harlem, New York, 212.831.7272, elmuseo.org.
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