Jangueando: Recent Acquisitions, 2021-2025

Jangueando: Recent Acquisitions, 2021–2025 debuts recently accessioned works to El Museo del Barrio's Permanent Collection. Meaning "hanging out with your friends," the Spanglish title plays on multiple definitions including socializing and installing artworks in a gallery setting. At a time when many of the communities represented by El Museo del Barrio are under attack, these multiple interpretations of the word imply both solidarity and a political call to action through holding space and kinship. From the street to the club, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on places of gathering. It invokes questions about precarity and strength. It asks us to place ourselves within expansive cosmologies and opens communal ways of thinking. El jangueo allows us to imagine alternative ways of being together. Jangueando features nearly 40 works across diverse media—painting, photography, sculpture, and video—and cultural perspectives, organized into thematic clusters. Select groupings build on the museum's historical strengths, such as Puerto Rican and Nuyorican portraiture and Latinx photography. The exhibition highlights the evolution of the museum's collecting strategy, including renewed focus on queer artists and those of Indigenous descent.