Caribbean Crossroads of the World, Three Museums in New York

The Caribbean is strongly represented these days in the Big Apple, thanks to a multidisciplinary exhibit of nearly 400 pieces by artists hailing from several nations within the region and coming from different generations. The list includes the names of Alejandro Obregón, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Janine Antoni, John James Audubon, Wifredo Lam, José Bedia, ErnestBreleur, AgostinoBrunias, José Campeche, Tony Capellán, Esteban Chartrand, Edouard Duval Carrié, Sandra Eleta, Félix González-Torres, Héctor Hyppolite, Hugo Larsen, Mark Latamie and Norman Lewis, among others.

The exposition, that engulfs painting, sculpture, prints, books, photography, films, videos and historic artifacts harking back from the 1791 Haitian Revolution, is the result of a research and compilation process that embraced half a dozen years. What’s more, it’s also the outcome of a joint effort pulled off by three prestigious cultural institutions in New York: The Barrio Museum, the Queens Museum of Art (QMA) and The Studio Museum of Harlem.

The curatorship underscores the topic of both the cultural relations and influence of the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean, and it provides a grand tour into the social and historic past of some of the region’s most outstanding autochthonous expressions from the early 18th century to date. With this view in mind, the exhibit is divided in six cores and will be presented simultaneously through the summer of 2013.

Researcher Alvaro Medina, who participated in the complex process of organizing the expo, said that “the most important thing is to start seeing ourselves as a subregion with characteristics of its own as far as visual artistry is concerned (…) Understanding that among Armando Reverón, Wifredo Lam and Alejandro Obregón there are subtle poetic ties linked to the atmosphere we the Caribbean people breathe (…).”

Source: Press release