Colombia Trip Report, May 21-26, 2009

The trip was organized Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Associate Curator, Special Projects and Elvis Fuentes, Curator, of El Museo del Barrio with the collaboration of a few art historians and curators in Colombia, Mariangela Mendez, curator and professor, Universidad de los Andes, and Alvaro Medina, art historian, both in Bogota. The trip was divided into three separate cities: Barranquilla, Cartagena and Bogotá.
The trip was intended first to coincide with the celebration of Carnaval in Barranquilla. In addition, we made a stop in the important city of Cartagena, to see important collections of objects in the Museo Histórico and the Museum of Modern Art. We had meetings with curators, historians and artists. Finally, we also sought to have a closer meeting with our curatorial team member, Gerald Alexis, in order to strengthen the Haitian portion of the exhibition checklist and to discuss the most recent project proposal developed by the curatorial department at El Museo with Elvis Fuentes, Curator, as Project Director.

El Museo invited all the members of the Curatorial team of Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, to join us in Colombia. Unfortunately, only Gerald Alexis was able to travel with us for this research trip.


During the course of this research trip, we met with Gerald Alexis specifically to ask for his designation of important Haitian artists to be included in the exhibition. This resulted in a strong list of 20 objects to be borrowed from various locations for the Caribbean exhibition.