Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Detail from A Dios  (2012) by Edgar Serrano PL and I visited El Museo del Barrio yesterday to see its 7th biennal show. I've been to the museum before, to see a show about the artistic connections between Puerto Rico and New York, but hadn't seen a biennal there. 37 emerging Latino and Latin Americans who live and work in the New York metropolitan area contributed works. As expected, video works and installation pieces dominated, most of which were thin in conception and casual in execution. To display one's process does not necessarily make a successful artwork. The aesthetics by and large felt derivative. But how does one surmount the problem of coming late to the scene? One exceptional installation was that of Hector Arce-Espasas, who is Puerto Rican. On top of haphazardly stacked crates stood ceramic jugs made in the shape of pineapples. On the wall was a blown-up reproduction of George I presented with a pineapple by his gardener. Most of the jugs were cracked ...

The lure was at least double. I had never visited El Museo del Barrio on upper Fifth Avenue and I did not know much about art in the Americas. The museum has just reopened after a modest makeover. I did not like the plasticky colors in its lobby and shop, both of which imitated the corporate look of better funded boutique museums. The lobby, shop and cafe space could have been given over to the art. Because the art was so compelling, and still looked crowded in the slightly expanded galleries. The "Nexus New York" show was so much more than Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. They were there, she represented by "The Suicide of Dorothy Hale," and he by his drawing for the Rockefeller Center mural. But there were also Cuban Carlos Enriquez and American Alice Neel, husband and wife, and artistic rivals in their figurative art. Placed side by side, their paintings of each other,  their surviving daughter (one died),  and neighbors were a fascinating study of influence and d...