Curator of El Museo del Barrio (The Neighborhood’s Museum) in New York, Elvis Fuentes recently visited the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM) to give a conference entitled, El Museo del Barrio: un sueño puertorriqueño para el arte latino de la gran manzana. (The Neighborhood’s Museum: a Puerto Rican dream for Latin Art in the Big Apple)

Doctor Laura Bravo, Humanities Department professor and member of the Committee of Cultural Promotion, was in charge of organizing the event. Bravo noted that the presentation will cover one of the most renown and decorated art curators of the Caribbean and Central America.

She added that although right now Fuentes works at the Museo del Barrio in New York, in recent years in Puerto Rico he has managed to move forward with the first edition of CircaPR in 2006, and Puerto Rico’s Contemporary Art Fair (the first to be celebrated in Central America and the Caribbean), which were accomplished in a time of skepticism and reluctance towards these types of events on the Island.

During the conference, Fuentes indicated that Rafael Montañez is the Museum’s founder, who as an artist, was up to date on current trends. He also mentioned that Montañez was interested in breaking already established frameworks used by art’s institutional systems. Moreover, he was a vanguard artist who maintained politically active within the Puerto Rican community. From these events arose the Museum’s mission: to make visible many of the practices of Latin artists and especially those of Puerto Rican artists.

As part of his presentation, Fuentes incorporated a series of photographs that present examples of the distinct artistic tendencies present at the Museum, which as he affirmed, all belong to the same creative impulse.

Bravo indicated that Fuentes’s visit to UPRM is very important, above all for the students, for the inspiration that it could bring to their artistic careers.

“In addition, Elvis Fuentes was brought intentionally, in the hopes of establishing communicative and collaborative ties with MuSA, which will be the University’s Art Museum. Our Museum will be integrated onto the artistic map and the number of institutions and professionals that have demonstrated an interest in working on future projects is plentiful, an interest that, of course, is reciprocated,” mentioned Bravo.

Museo del Barrio will celebrate its fortieth anniversary next year. From its opening it has incorporated in its collection approximately seven thousand artistic objects from the Pre-Colombian period to the Contemporary period.

This event was part of the events on the Cultural Agenda for the first semester in the 2008-2009 academic year.

Curator of New York’s Museo del Barrio, Elvis Fuentes, spoke at the conference, El museo del Barrio: un sueño puertorriqueño para el arte latino de la gran manzana (The Neighborhood Museum: a Puerto Rican Dream for Latin Art in the ‘Big Apple’).

Fuentes is one of the most renowned art curators of the Caribbean and Central America.

Photographs by Carlos Díaz / UPRM Press