Grantee Profile

New-York Historical Society

Teatro Hispano

San Antonio Conservation Society Foundation

A collaboration between New-York Historical Society and El Museo del Barrio, Nueva York (1613 - 1945) is a multimedia exhibition that reveals the powerful role that Latinos and Spanish-speaking countries have played across four centuries to help shape New York into the most culturally vibrant city in the world. Art works, documents, printed books, artifacts, an installation by Puerto Rican artist Antonio Martorell, and a documentary by Ric Burns all serve as testaments to this dynamic history. 

The roots of Latinos in New York run deep, but we often miss them.  This will be an important message for all New Yorkers, but perhaps particularly so for young students, who will now be able to see themselves as part of the history they study in school.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s New York City Cultural Innovation Fund supported new scholarship and discoveries made by mining collections throughout the world that will transform the way New Yorkers and others think about the city's past, for example:

• Jan Rodrigues, a Spanish-speaker from Hispaniola (today's Dominican Republic), was the first non-native American resident of Manhattan, in 1613
• Don Diego de Gardoqui, a Spaniard, stood at George Washington's side as he was inaugurated the nation's first president in New York in 1789
• New York was the center of the Latin American "independista" movement, from the late 18th century on

The funds supported the development of new art that represents the Latino experience.  New-York Historical Society commissioned a new film by Ric Burns on post-World War 2 Latino migration.  New-York Historical Society have also commissioned a new work of art, which will serve as the theater for the Ric Burns film, by Puerto Rican artist Antonio Martorell, called "La Guagua Aerea." Following the exhibition, Martorell's work will be accessioned into the collection of the New-York Historical Society—New-York Historical Society’s first work of art by a contemporary Puerto Rican artist.

MORE ON THE NYC CULTURAL INNOVATION FUND
THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION AND New York City