Research Trips to Washington, D.C. and New Orleans

During the past two weeks, Caribbean Crossroads has made trips to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and to the Latin American Library at Tulane University (also an alma mater of Caribbean Crossroads). The trip to the Library of Congress was organized specifically to look at rare books, maps, watercolors, and prints from the Kislak Collection. This phenomenal collection contains over 4000 books, maps, documents, paintings, prints, and other artifacts amassed during his lifetime by Mr. Jay Kislak. Among the objects consulted in the collection were 19th century travel guides to places like Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, and Martinique and an "Album pintoresco" of Cuba, with over 20 color lithographs of various scenes on the island. A trip across the street to the Prints and Photographs division afforded exploration of photographs published by Look magazine from the mid 20th century. This included great views of ultra modern hotels built throughout the Caribbean to bolster the tourism industry. In New Orleans, a trip to the Latin American Library at Tulane University yielded a view of a fabulous mid-nineteenth century map of the Caribbean basin, featuring the mouth of the Mississippi River extending deep into the Gulf of Mexico and a host of 19th century post cards and other wonderful ephemera. The image above is the oldest example of Creole architecture in New Orleans, the Jean Pitot home, built in the late 18th century and marked by the typical characteristics of Caribbean architecture, including floor to ceiling shuttered windows to allow for proper flow of air in the tropical climate as well as protection from harsh storms.

New slideshow

Hello all, we've just added a slide show featuring images from the Curatorial Team's visit to Curaçao and Aruba. Among the images are pictures of our visits to Landhuis Kenepa, the Mongui Maduro Library, and an architectural tour of the historic Otrobanda neighborhood in Willemstad, Curaçao.

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.