Opening: 17 September 2010 - Closing: 9 January 2011

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In an unprecedented collaboration, the New-York Historical Society & El Museo del Barrio offer Nueva-York [1613-1945], the first museum-exhibition to explore how New York’s long & deep involvement with Spain & Latin-America has affected virtually every aspect of the City’s development: from Commerce, Manufacturing, & Transportation to Communications, Entertainment, & the Arts.

Bringing together the resources of New York’s oldest museum & its leading Latino Cultural-Institution, this show spans more than three centuries of history: from the Founding of New Amsterdam in the 1600s—as a foothold against the Spanish Empire—to the present day, as represented by a specially-commissioned Documentary by award-winning filmmaker Ric Burns.

Nueva-York brings this story to life with hands-on Interactive-Displays, Listening-Stations, & Video-Experiences, as well as some 200 rare & historic Maps, Letters, Broadsides, Paintings, Drawings, & other objects, drawn from the collections of the two museums & many other distinguished institutions and private-collections.

Among the Artifacts & Experiences in the show are:

•Maps & Interactives showing the vast networks of the Atlantic-World in the 17^th Century, with its competing Spanish, Dutch, English, & French Shipping-Routes & Colonial-Harbors.

•Tools & Artifacts of the trade between New York and South-America, including a Clipper-Ship model, Navigation-Instruments, Silverware, Powder-Horns, & Slave-Shackles.

•Paintings & books by New York artists & writers such as Washington Irving, Frederic Church, & William Merritt Chase, who were deeply affected by their travels in Spain & and South-America.

•Spanish-language newspapers & books published in New York in the 19^th Century, and Spanish-language Guidebooks to the New York of that period.

•Military-Uniforms, Political-Documents, & Paintings—including a Portrait of President William McKinley, by Puerto-Rican artist Francisco Oller, as well as Propaganda-Posters, over years of Latin-American Political-Struggles & US Interventions.

•An Interactive-Listening-Station, allowing visitors to sample the Latino-Music of New York.

•Artworks by modern Latin-American artists, including Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, & Joaquín Torres-García, reflecting their visions of New York.

•From here to there/De aquí pa’llá, an art-installation by Antonio Martorell—based on La guaga aérea/The Air-Bus, by Luis Rafael Sánchez—showing Ric Burns’s specially-commissioned Documentary that tells the stories of Latino-New-Yorkers from 1945 to the present.

There are five galleries for Nueva York, tracing the exhibition’s story. The first, themed as Empires & Revolutions, begins in the 1620s, when New York—as first a Dutch, then an English town—exhibited extreme animosity toward Spaniards & Catholics, making a point to exclude them. With certain notable-exceptions, such as Sephardic-Jews.

Displays of these early years will include Baptismal & Court-Documents on Juan Rodriguez, a Black or Mulatto Spanish-speaking sailor from Santo-Domingo who is the first Non-Native ever recorded as residing in the area of New York Harbor. Thus, he is the First-Immigrant in New York’s history.

The gallery then shows how the situation changed with the American-Revolution, when Spain became an ally with the first small Spanish-Colony established in New York, along with the first above-ground Catholic-Church, St. Peter’s—built with aid from Spain & Mexico.

The second gallery focuses on Trade, demonstrating how the Port of New York, in the years 1825-1898, was where US flour & manufactured-goods flowed south to Latin-America, as Latin-American & Caribbean products such as sugar, coffee, hides, & silver came North.

This trade involves such famous names as Havemeyer & Grace. William R. Grace founded his Merchant-Steamship-Line in Peru, subsequently relocating to New York, where he eventually was elected Mayor for two terms.

The third gallery is devoted to Cultural-Encounters, at home & abroad.

Don’t miss the fourth gallery!

The fifth gallery—Landscape of Nueva York—maps the Neighborhoods, Factories, Dance-Halls, Clubs, Museums, Churches, & Political-Offices that made possible encounters among Latinos & with Non-Latinos in the 20^th Century, as New York City filled with people from the Spanish-speaking World.

Not only is this information & image-packed exhibition brilliantly-designed, but it’s also accompanied by a splendid Catalogue bearing the show’s title—Nueva-York [1613-1945]—edited by Edward J. Sullivan.