New York, NY, May 22, 2000--- El Museo del Barrio announces the June opening of Conversion of Manners a site-specific installation by Ernesto Pujol, on view June 13 through September 24, 2000. Commissioned by El Museo, this site-specific installation is Ernesto Pujol's first solo presentation at El Museo del Barrio, and will be featured as part of the Contemporanea 2000 series.

Conversion of Manners is a Benedictine vow that Roman Catholic monks take when they leave secular life and enter monastic life. The vow signals changes in spiritual beliefs as well as in physical manners ­ behavior and demeanor. Through a series of photographs and vintage Carthusian, Franciscan and Jesuit habits, Ernesto Pujol enacts a spiritual performance. He presents fragmented moments of a sacred narrative through the measured poses, gestures, and movements of body language.

Julia P. Herzberg, Ph.D., curator of the exhibition, wrote: "Pujol's art embraces the sacred and the profane as he draws on his own past, religious history, art historical images, body and performance art, and contemporary conceptual photographic practices. In these images of monks and priests the artist crisscrosses boundaries among sculpture, painting, photography and performance and body art, while speaking to and for experimental moments that have slipped away."

Pujol, who was born in Havana, Cuba and raised in San Juan Puerto Rico, currently lives in New York City. After graduating from the Universidad de Puerto Rico in 1979 with a degree in painting he spent six years in cloistered and active religious life. He resumed art making about twelve years ago and since then has exhibited internationally in the Johannesburg Biennale (South Africa); the Second Saaremaa Biennaal (Estonia); and the Sixth Havana Biennial (Cuba). Pujol has received several prestigious fellowships and awards including, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and the Cintas Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship.

The Contemporanea Series, now in its fourth year, continues to commission groundbreaking site-specific installations by emerging or under recognized artists whose work extends the boundaries of art making.

This exhibition is generously funded by the Greenwall Foundation and Jerome Foundation.

The mission of El Museo del Barrio is to establish a forum that will preserve and project the cultural heritage of Puerto Ricans and all Latin Americans in the United States.

Museum hours: Wed. through Sun. 11 to 5 p.m. Suggested contribution: $4 adults; $2 students and seniors; children under twelve accompanied by adults and members enter free.

El Museo del Barrio may be reached by subway: #6 to 103rd Street station; or by bus: M1, M3, M4 on Madison and Fifth Avenues to 104th Street; local cross-town service between Yorkville or East Harlem and the Upper West Side in Manhattan M96 and M106 or M2.