El Museo del Barrio New York

In conjunction with the current exhibition Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, El Museo del Barrio, the Queens Museum of Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem present a three-day symposium bringing together scholars and practitioners from across the Caribbean and its diaspora. Through panels, performances, and screenings at El Museo del Barrio and The Studio Museum in Harlem, scholars and practitioners explore the literary, visual, and performing arts; tradition of festival practices; and the legacies of key historical figures in the region.

Thursday, October 11
El Museo del Barrio

Keynote and Performance
Derek Walcott: "A Part of the Continent, from John Donne" for more details click here.
7:00pm - 9:00pm, El Teatro

Friday, October 12
The Studio Museum in Harlem

Lecture
Historicizing Globalism in Caribbean Art: Haiti
By Dr. Erica Moiah James, for more details click here.
2:00pm - 4:00pm
Theatre, The Studio Museum in Harlem
This lecture pivots off of the portraits of Henri Christophe and his son—currently on display at The Studio Museum in Harlem—in relation to a group of fifteen 19th century portraits of Haitian leaders (including Christophe) recently discovered at Yale University’s Peabody Museum. This lecture will build upon James’s scholarship presented in the essays "Speaking in Tongues: Metapictures and the Discourse of Violence in Caribbean Art" and “Re-Worlding a World: Caribbean Art in the Global Imaginary.”

Panel
Contemporary Performance Art in the Caribbean and its Diaspora
Dr. Krista Thompson: On Masking and Performance Art in the Postcolonial Caribbean
Claire Tancons: Curating Carnival? Performance in Contemporary Caribbean Art, for more details click here.
Friday, October 12, 5:00pm - 7:00pm
Please join us for a panel on the meaning and distinct forms of performance art in the Caribbean and its Diaspora, particularly related to the region's history of festival practices. This conversation will build on Thompson's and Tancons's scholarship on contemporary performance art, specifically on Thompson's essay "On Masking and Performance Art in the Postcolonial Caribbean" included in Caribbean: Art at the Crossroads of the World and Tancons's "Curating Carnival? Performance in Contemporary Caribbean Art" published in Curating in the Caribbean (The Green Box, 2012). This program will also highlight the need for a Caribbean art history and curatorial practice that comes out of regional visual practices and popular notions of visuality.

Reception
Symposium Reception, for more details click here.
Friday, October 12, 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Galleries, The Studio Museum in Harlem
Continue the conversation over cocktails and light fare, and view Caribbean: Crossroads of the World in the The Studio Museum in Harlem’s galleries.

Saturday, October 13
El Museo del Barrio

Panel Discussion
Emerging Scholars: New Research in Art History of the Caribbean
Saturday, October 13, 11:00am - 1:00pm
El Café, El Museo del Barrio
Masters and Doctoral students present recent research on a range of topics related to the art and art history of the Caribbean, with an introduction by Matthew Breatore.

Mapping/Constructing the Border: The Contestation of Space
Nathalie Bragadir, New York University

Haitian Modernisms in Caribbean: Crossroads of the World
Marta Dansie, City College, City University of New York

NASA in Nassau: History and Repetition in Tavares Strachanʼs Orthostatic Tolerance
Stamatina Gregory, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

The Ceiba Tree as a Multivocal Signifier: Afro-Cuban Symbolism, Political Performance, and Urban Space in the Cuban Republic
Joe Hartman, Southern Methodist University

Before Dreams Were Afraid: Hervé Télémaque in New York, 1957-1961
Rachel Kim, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

All the Affairs of the New World: The global and the local sources of a seventeenth century Jamaican cabinet
Emily Sessions, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Panel Discussion
Postcolonial Cities: Writing the Caribbean Diaspora in New York
Moderated by Dr. Rich Blint, with Angie Cruz, Dr. Veronica Gregg, Frances Negrón-Muntaner and Elizabeth Nunez.
2:00pm - 3:30pm
El Teatro, El Museo del Barrio
How do writers, critics, and scholars understand the historical and contemporary significance of Caribbean literature in New York? Understanding the importance of the Bildungsroman or the coming-of-age tale in distilling the alienation and dislocation that has come to define the immigrant experience in the city, panelists will also consider the contradictions attending Caribbean literature produced in the context of mass-urbanization and at a remove from the region these many decades after the formal "end" of colonialism. At length, what new conventions are necessary to produce and make sense of the literary activity of Caribbean writers working in the 21st century city?

Panel Discussion
Reaching Beyond the Island: The Role of Print and Digital Publications in the Caribbean
Moderated by Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims, with Marc Latamie and Richard Rawlins.
4:00pm - 5:30pm
El Teatro, El Museo del Barrio
Artists in the Caribbean have long used print publications to foster connections within the Caribbean, and to reach artists, curators and collectors around the world. Today, digital technology and the internet have multiplied communication platforms and opened access to global networks. In conversation with Lower Stokes Sims, artists Marc Latamie and Richard Rawlins explore how blogs, skype, web sites and other electronic media function to stretch the reach of Caribbean art beyond the islands.

Dance Performance and Conversation
How We Are Connected, for more details click here.
8:00pm - 10:00pm
El Teatro, El Museo del Barrio