El Museo del Barrio was founded in 1969 by artist Raphael Montañez Ortiz with the support of a group of Puerto Rican educators, artists, parents and community activists in East Harlem’s Spanish-speaking El Barrio. Since then, El Museo del Barrio has evolved into New York’s leading Latino cultural institution, having expanded its mission to represent the diversity of art and culture in all of the Caribbean and Latin America. El Museo del Barrio possesses an extremely varied, 8,000-object collection of Caribbean and Latin American art, unique in the Eastern region of the United States. The works range from pre-Columbian vessels to contemporary installations.