The Latino Arts and Activism Archive is a joint initiative of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library.
Today, Columbia University announced the launch of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive, a joint initiative of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, with the acquisition of the papers, videos and photographs of pioneering New York Puerto Rican community activist and writer Jack Agüeros.
The Agüeros Collection, to be housed at Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript library, marks the beginning of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive initiative that seeks to acquire the papers and records of Latinos and Latino organizations in New York that may be of enduring significance as research resources. Areas of principal interest include the arts, politics, and community-based organizations.
“New York has a very rich Latino cultural and political history,” says Frances Negrón-Muntaner, director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and a professor of English and comparative literature. “Jack Agüeros was a pivotal figure of New York’s Puerto Rican cultural renaissance, a major movement in the city in the late 1960s and into the 1970s,” she said. “To have these materials enriches our understanding of our present and our past.”
Jack Agüeros, who turns 78 on September 2, attended Brooklyn College after serving in the Air Force, spent the 1960s working with a variety of community groups. He moved from the Office of Economic Opportunity, a federal agency created by President Lyndon Johnson to fight the War on Poverty, to New York City’s Community Development Agency (CDA), created by Mayor John Lindsay. As deputy commissioner of CDA, Agüeros was the highest ranking Puerto Rican in the City’s administration. Subsequently, he directed El Museo del Barrio from 1977 to 1986, the preeminent museum of Latino and Caribbean art in the United States, expanding its collection and moving the museum from a Third Avenue storefront to its present location on Fifth Avenue’s Museum Mile.
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