How the Hispanic Society of New York is reinventing itself

THE Hispanic Society Museum and Librarya lavish institution in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, reopened a section of its campus that had been closed for renovations since 2017. The institution’s reopening, originally scheduled for early April, was delayed nearly two months after unionized workers were there went on strike.

Founded in 1904 by railroad scion Archer Milton Huntington, the Hispanic Society was established as a free, public place for the study of the art and culture of Spain, Portugal, America Latin and Filipino. It has long been described as a “hidden gem,” off the radar of tourists on pilgrimages to Midtown and Upper East Side art museums and residents of working-class Upper Manhattan neighborhoods near its campus. .

The institution has a collection of nearly 750,000 objects, a treasury unequaled in depth and breadth outside of its countries of origin. An ornate architectural wonder built on property once owned by acclaimed naturalist John James Audubon, the Hispanic Society, newly prepared, polished and repainted and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant, looks like a living memory of yesteryear of New York, a vivid manifestation of past pedagogies – as if a bespectacled tycoon could descend one of the stairs flanking the museum’s entrance at any moment.

Spectacular murals by Spanish luminist painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida sit alongside displays of stunningly ornate creations by jewelry designer Luz Camino. A partial mausoleum, with majestic tomb effigies, seems to fit perfectly into the Vatican.

This imperial staging contrasts sharply with the recent eight week strike undertaken by the Hispanic Society union, whose members cited stagnant wages, lack of transparency and unfair health policies. The union prevailed, ratifying a two-and-a-half-year contract that raised wages by more than 18%, demanded severance and instituted professional development funds.

Yet before the opening, the strike and the renovations, the Hispanic Society had long functioned as much as an archive as an exhibition space, lending objects from its incomparable collection to places like the Prado National Museum in Madrid or the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where they drew record crowds. Meanwhile, residents of Washington Heights, many of whom hail from areas violently colonized by Spain, still don’t know the place exists.

“Any time you have something called the Hispanic Society, it confuses people,” said Michael Mowatt-Wynn, then president of the Harlem & The Heights Historical Society. The New York Times in 2011. “You think it’s a social club or a sports club, whether you support football or something.”

Museums today operate on very different expectations than they did 119 years ago – visitors crave inclusion, context and a curatorial reorientation that does not take Eurocentric values ​​for granted . After the institution’s $20 million renovation, its chief executive and director Guillaume Kientz, who arrived on the scene in 2021, wants to raise the profile of the museum by embracing modernity, a move the institution has circumvented for years. out of fidelity to the founding vision of Huntington.

“The mission is really to bridge the gap between the past, the present and the future, and the very local and the very global,” says Kientz. “That is why we also have a number of initiatives with local non-profit organizations and institutions here to do projects together. We want to be an empowering agent.

The future

The Hispanic Society describes its current capital project as the most ambitious in its history, upgrading its three landmark buildings and restoring the Audubon Terrace to granite to “maximize the potential of the organization’s vast resources” and boost its profile as a that destination in New York.

“These renovations will allow the museum to meet the needs of a wider audience and support the work of living contemporary artists, which was a core part of Archer Huntington’s mission when he founded the museum,” said Kientz said. “We want to encourage more community projects and initiatives in the renovated spaces. The museum will be a resource and an opportunity for the surrounding community and New Yorkers in general.

The main teams leading the renovation are Selldorf Architects– the company behind countless art galleries, the transformation of the Neue Galerie building and the sprawling Clark Art Institute – and a landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrandwho recently lent his talents to the 250,000 square foot Richard Gilder Center for science and education at the American Museum of Natural History.

Beginning in 2024, the Hispanic Society will begin work on the next phase of its four-year, $50 million master plan, led by chairman of the board and former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello. A new visitor center, educational facilities, conservation laboratory and special exhibition galleries are among the main features of the next round of renovations.

“An example of how we are fostering connections with our community in Upper Manhattan is our partnership with the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, creating live artist installations on Broadway Terrace just inside the doors between 155th and 156th streets,” Kientz says. “Watching people come in every day and taking selfies, I realized that was an amazing step. It’s our most immediate driver to convince people to walk through the door.

The projected $50 million cost for the next phase of the Hispanic Society’s campus upgrade will be a lofty goal for the institution’s board of trustees, which, though significantly expanded from its shrinking staff of years past, remains committed to maintaining free admission to the museum. There’s also the ongoing challenge of drawing crowds as far downtown as Montebello addressed in a 2022 interview with The Robb Report. “There’s a mental block that people have about going to 156th Street and Broadway,” he said. “It looks like they’re going to Vermont or Quebec.”

Adapting Huntington’s vision to contemporary audiences, however, remains the most demanding task for the leaders and staff of the Hispanic Society.

The past

Huntington, the adopted son of an industrialist worth $2 billion in today’s currency, possessed the passion of a romantic and the stubborn ambition of a statesman, founding museums , botanical reserves, and invitation-only societies that promoted his belief in the creative supremacy of European civilization. .

His scientific focus on Spain made a lot of sense, given his background. At the time, many progressives blamed the Spanish political upheaval on the the failure of the monarchy to properly “educate” the middle and lower classes, a lesson Huntington took to heart. Its emphasis on free programming was a didactic tool, sharing its vast archives and the natural drama of historiography in the hope that America would not succumb to class warfare.

In a letter to his mother, socialite Arabella Huntington, Archer wrote, “If I can make a poem out of a museum, it will be easy to read. I have often said that I am not a “collector”, rather an assembler for an expression.” This devotion to the values ​​of the Enlightenment imposed itself on Huntington during his childhood. After a visit to the National Gallery in London at the At the age of 12, he is said to have scribbled in his diary: “I think a museum is the greatest thing in the world. I would like to live in one.”

Huntington, who was largely educated by private tutors, encountered the Spanish language for the first time in the late 1870s Mexican workers at the ranch owned by his aunt, Emma J. Yarrington Warnken, near San Marcos, Texas. In 1882, during his first trip to Europe, he received a copy of George Borrow’s book The Zincali: A Tale of the Gypsies of Spain (1841), which further fanned the flame of obsession in the young man. Zincali, an early form of ethnography, followed the life and culture of Spain’s Roma from the perspective of a “benevolent” white patriarch infiltrating their ranks. Huntington’s interest in the Iberian Peninsula and its colonial influence testifies to a form of Enlightenment liberalism that not only produced phrenology and other race-based pseudosciences, but also belies a fascination with the Other.

Huntington was not alone in harboring these attitudes, but their manifestation in Hispanic Society exhibits, programs, and texts remained largely unchanged and unchallenged for decades prior to the current campus redesign. In addition to features such as refurbished plumbing and air conditioning systems, ventilation, and exit signage, there are clear signals of a more forward-thinking methodology. The wall texts are written in Spanish and English, and a new project space directly connected to the Main Court gallery currently houses In Search of Juan de Pareja: From Arturo Schomburg to Jas Knighta complementary exhibition to the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum Juan de Pareja: Afro-Hispanic Painter.

The gallery studies the life and career of Juan de Pareja (1606-1670), Afro-Hispanic painter and former slave of the legendary Spanish artist Diego Velázquez. Curated by Madeleine Haddon of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Looking for Juan de Pareja pairs a copy of Velazquez de Pareja’s portrait (the original is in the Met show) with a contemporary version of the painting by Brooklyn-based artist Jas Knight. The capsule exhibit also includes a work from the collection of the Hispanic Society which Huntington acquired in 1904, Portrait of Don Alonso Mora y Villata (1654-80), which was later attributed to Pareja.

“Given the transhistorical and cross-cultural focus of the Hispanic Society’s collection, I am thrilled that this inaugural exhibition will engage in that dialogue through the work of the singular Juan de Perja,” Haddon said. “The inclusion of Jas Knight, a living artist, reinforces the significance of the exhibit and is a great example of what future engagement between the museum’s collection and living artists could look like.”

Much remains to be done as the Hispanic Society prepares for its next round of renovations and upgrades, but one thing is clear: the institution once seen by many as a time capsule is now very much on the move, moving , growing and adapting to the new realities of a more intersectional future.