Caribbean: Crossroads of the World

Caribbean: Crossroads of the World is a multi-year and multi-venue project conceived as a series of city-wide conversations and public programs that will culminate in a milestone exhibition and publication
in Fall 2011. The project looks at the arts of the Caribbean Basin and its Diaspora through the lens of the region’s complex history and rich culture.

Caribbean will explore the wide range and variety of aesthetic expressions that have developed with the region’s history since the Europeans arrived in the wake of Modernity. Although centering on the era opened by the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), which represented autonomy and self-determination for the region, Caribbean will also span from the early colonization period to the present, dealing with subjects such as slavery, geography, commerce, migration, hybridism and paradise.

As a project already three years in the planning, an international team
of renowned curators specializing in Caribbean art have fostered the conversations held among colleagues in our institutions since the project’s inception in June 2006. Also, an Advisory Committee formed by prominent scholars has been nurturing the discussions on these essential topics.

El Museo del Barrio will lead the project and has assigned Elvis Fuentes
as Project Director and Rebeca Noriega as Project Manager of Caribbean: Crossroads of the World. Hitomi Iwasaki and Naomi Beckwith will be Project Managers at the Queens Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem respectively. The catalogue of the exhibition will be a scholarly book and its editorial team will be led by Deborah Cullen, Director of Curatorial Programs at El Museo del Barrio.

Caribbean: Crossroads of the World seeks to break barriers and create new paths of understanding about the paradigmatic contributions of the Caribbean to modern and contemporary culture. Proudly, our museums will become the first to do so on such an extensive scale.

Caribbean: Crossroads of the World is organized by El Museo del Barrio in collaboration with The Queens Museum of Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem. These institutions were founded at approximately the same time (1968-1972) out of similar social and political needs and each are currently growing; expanding their facilities and undertaking capital renovations. The collaboration will link all three for the first time, connecting the narratives of their development while highlighting their core cross-cultural constituency.

Research and development of Caribbean: Crossroads of the World is made possible by generous mutli-year support from The Reed Foundation and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

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