El Museo del Barrio welcomes educators and students to experience a unique selection of virtual and onsite learning programs based on the Museum’s Permanent Collection and exhibitions. All tours are led by our highly trained Museum Educators and open to grades K-12.
To ensure the health and safety of our visitors and staff, and to improve your experience at the Museum, please review our visitor guidelines. Please note that scheduled onsite visits are subject to change based on CDC and New York state COVID-19 guidelines.
Please be advised that there is limited program availability. Tour requests can be customized. For more information, please email groupvisits@elmuseo.org.
Scheduling Your Group
To begin the booking process, please review our Onsite and Virtual offerings below and complete the K-12 Group Visits Request Form that applies to your selection. Please be advised that there is limited program availability and completing a request form does not confirm your reservation. You will receive an automated email acknowledging receipt. An official confirmation email from El Museo will follow confirming your reservation based on availability. For more information about prices and guidelines, please see our K-12 FAQ & Guidelines.
El Museo offers a limited number of free group programs for NYC Title 1 schools. One class per grade, per semester, is eligible for this opportunity. All groups thereafter will be charged according to the rates below.
Please note that if the program is canceled less than five business days prior to the program, prior payment will be non-refundable or a cancellation fee will apply based on the program rate, including for Title 1 schools. All cancellation notices and rescheduling requests must be e-mailed to groupvisits@elmuseo.org with the subject line “Booking Cancellation”.
Onsite (in-person)
K-12 Group Visits
On View
March 14- August 11, 2024
Something Beautiful:
Reframing La Colección:
Taino Collection Highlights Tour
Ocama Aracoel: Taino Collection Highlights Tour
We are pleased to announce that a section of the exhibition Something Beautiful: Reframing La Colección, Ocama Aracoel, will remain on view until August 11, 2024. Tours and workshops will focus on indigenous Taino culture and identity by exploring ancestral Taino forms and contemporary artworks by Nuyorican artists from El Museo del Barrio’s Permanent Collection, and Guatú Nakán, a new commission by artist Jorge González Santos.
Guatú Nakán means “in the middle of the fire” in the Taíno language. For the commission, González Santos collaborated closely with Iboguaní Acosta and a network of ceramicists to conduct a series of communal pottery workshops across Borikén (Puerto Rico), using ancestral methods to create contemporary vessels in dialogue with the Taíno ceramics on view in Ocama Aracoel. For more information, visit Exhibitions.
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Beginning May 16, 2024
Amalia Mesa-Bains:
Archaeology of Memory
This spring, El Museo del Barrio presents Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory, the first retrospective exhibition by the pioneering artist, curator, and theorist. Born in 1943 to a Mexican immigrant family, Mesa-Bains has been a leading figure in Chicanx art for nearly half a century. Her practice explores intersectional feminist themes, environmentally centered spirituality, and cultural diversity to counter the racist and gendered erasures of colonial repression. The exhibition features over 40 works including the artist’s large-scale “altar-installations”, as well as prints, artist books, and codices. Archaeology of Memory is a rare opportunity to view three decades of Mesa-Bains’s genre-defying artworks, many of which are on display together for the first time.
For more information, visit Exhibitions.
EXHIBITION TOUR
The 60-minute Tour includes an inquiry-based discussion and may include a sketching, movement or writing activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $125 for up to 25 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 25 participants
EXHIBITION TOUR & WORKSHOP
The 90-minute Tour and Workshop includes an inquiry based discussion and an art making activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 25 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 25 participants
Cultural Celebrations
K-12 & Adults | Fall
Honoring our Loved Ones:
Día de Muertos
Immerse yourself in the sensory-rich celebration of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) which honors the memory and legacy of loved ones. Explore the pre-Colombian origins, and the symbolic elements of this tradition celebrated in Mexico, other parts of Latin American and the U.S, through an interactive discussion followed by an age-appropriate art making workshop.
The program will also include the exploration of an ofrenda (altar) designed by a contemporary artist on display at the Museum.
CULTURAL CELEBRATION WORKSHOP
90-minute program available | Max. 25 participants
- NYC Public School: $175 for up to 25 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 25 participants
K – 12 & Adults | Winter
Multicultural Connections: Three Kings Day
Learn about the Taino, African, and European influences embedded throughout the traditions of this festive celebration that has been celebrated by El Museo for more than 40 years. Explore the way in which El Barrio’s community has shaped the celebration of this holiday in New York City.
Participants will delve into the stories, music and visual art of the holiday and explore the origin of our fantastic 14-foot puppets and the museum’s parade.
The program includes an art making activity.
CULTURAL CELEBRATION WORKSHOP
90-minute program available | Max. 25 participants
- NYC Public School: $175 for up to 25 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 25 participants
K – 12 & Adults | Ongoing
Around the Block:
Walking Tours of El Barrio
Led by our Museum Educators, the Around the Block Walking Tour of El Barrio encourages visitors to take in the sights and sounds of the neighborhood. Learn about the legacy of our communities, the icons that once called El Barrio home, and the art that makes the streets come alive.
Stops may include community gardens, murals, local businesses, and landmarks. Participants engage in discussions about the ways in which El Museo and the neighborhood have been shaped by the cultural and social practices of the residents of El Barrio and its changing landscape.
AROUND THE BLOCK WALKING TOUR
90-minute program available | Max. 25 participants
- NYC Public School: $175 for up to 25 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 25 participants
Storytelling
PreK – 3rd Grade | Ongoing
Tito Puente Mambo King Storytelling Program
Experience the rhythm and sounds of El Barrio with Tito Puente, Mambo King/Tito Puente, Rey del Mambo, a bilingual book by Monica Brown.
Participants will learn about the East Harlem native known as the King of Mambo and the Godfather of Salsa. In addition to exploring the themes of community heroes, music and dance, students will participate in an art making activity.
STORYTELLING PROGRAM
75-minute visit available | Max. 25 participants
- NYC Public School: $175 for up to 25 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 25 participants
PreK – 3rd Grade | Ongoing
Waiting for the Biblioburro Storytelling Program
Inspired by the children’s book Waiting for the Biblioburro/Esperando el Biblioburro, a bilingual book by Monica Brown.
Participants will be introduced to Ana, a young girl from Colombia who meets a traveling librarian on a donkey. The book is based on the true story of Luis Soriano, a teacher and librarian who shares books and a love of literacy with children throughout the mountains of Colombia.
This workshop explores the themes of literacy, social justice and life in rural Latin America and concludes with an art making activity.
STORYTELLING PROGRAM
75-minute visit available | Max. 25 participants
- NYC Public School: $175 for up to 25 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 25 participants
Virtual
K-12 Group Visits
Exhibitions
Ongoing
Juan Francisco Elso: Por América
For our Virtual Tours, our Museum Educator will lead participants through the exhibition Juan Francisco Elso: Por América, which investigates the brief yet significant career of the late Cuban artist Juan Francisco Elso (1956-1988). He emerged as part of the Volumen Uno (Volume One) generation of contemporary artists who gained international recognition in the early 1980s. The contextual show places Elso’s work in dynamic dialogue with a multigenerational group of artists active both inside and outside of Cuba, the Caribbean, and throughout the Americas, including Ana Mendieta, Glenn Ligon, Belkis Ayón, and Luis Camnitzer, and Tiona Nekkia McClodden.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR
The 60-minute Virtual Tour includes an inquiry-based discussion and a sketching, movement or writing activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $125 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR & WORKSHOP
The 75-minute Tour and Workshop includes an inquiry based discussion and an art making activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants
Ongoing
DOMESTICANX
DOMESTICANX brings together a group of intergenerational artists whose practices address the private sphere through works related to healing, spirituality, decoration, and the home. DOMESTICANX expands the artist’s original Chicana and feminist theory through the lens of contemporary Latinx intersectionality. Featured artists include Amalia Mesa-Bains, María Brito, Amarise Carreras, cielo félix-hernández, Joel Gaitan, Misla, and Nitza Tufiño.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR
The 60-minute Virtual Tour includes an inquiry-based discussion and a sketching, movement or writing activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $125 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR & WORKSHOP
The 75-minute Tour and Workshop includes an inquiry based discussion and an art making activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants
Ongoing
Raphael Montañez Ortiz:
A Contextual Retrospective
For our Virtual Tours, our Museum Educator will guide participants through Raphael Montañez Ortiz: A Contextual Retrospective, the first large-scale exhibition since 1988 dedicated to the artist, activist, educator, and founder of El Museo del Barrio.
The exhibition spans several decades of Ortiz’s production, from the 1950s to the early-2020s, in different media such as film, painting, photography, video installations, documents, and assemblages. Virtual Tours will touch on the themes of identity, activism, decolonization, and representation. Recommended for Grades 6 and up.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR
The 60-minute Virtual Tour includes an inquiry-based discussion and a sketching, movement or writing activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $125 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR & WORKSHOP
The 75-minute Tour and Workshop includes an inquiry based discussion and an art making activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants
Ongoing
Popular Painters & Other Visionaries
The exhibition examines the contribution of 35 artists working on the margins of modernism and the mainstream art world in the Americas and the Caribbean. Popular visual sources provide the narrative thread of the exhibition, which is divided into thematic sections around labor, daily life, festivities, religion, vernacular architecture, and bodily representations. The artists featured in this exhibition share the common experience of diaspora — whether as African populations in the New World, Latin American and Caribbean people in the United States, or in reference to the displacement of Amerindian populations within their own territories.
Virtual tours will feature various themes including cultural traditions and celebrations, landscapes, cityscapes, and daily life, and workshops will include opportunities for art making, including drawing, collage and the use of digital art making tools.
Virtual workshops will include opportunities for art making, including drawing, collage and the use of digital art making tools, and themes include: What’s in a Neighborhood: Community, Culture and Daily Life; Fantastic Beasts: Symbols and Patterns in Nature; and Landscapes and Cityscapes: Urban, Rural and Tropical.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR
The 60-minute Virtual Tour includes an inquiry-based discussion and a sketching, movement or writing activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $125 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR & WORKSHOP
The 75-minute Tour and Workshop includes an inquiry based discussion and an art making activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants
Ongoing
En Foco: The New York Puerto Rican Experience, 1973-1974
This exhibition centers on a single portfolio of 79 photographs by founding members of the Bronx-based collective, Charles Biasiny-Rivera, Roger Cabán, and Felipe Dante, who each focus on the themes of Education, Small Business, and Labor. The images offer a rich visual testament of New York’s Puerto Rican population, with community members photographing their own lived reality. Donated to El Museo del Barrio by En Foco in 1976, this exhibition marks the first time the portfolio is exhibited in full since 1979.
In addition to the complete selection of photographs, the show is supplemented with posters, exhibition catalogues, and other ephemera related to En Foco’s historical engagement with El Museo del Barrio.
Virtual tours and art making workshops explore themes of community, NYC neighborhoods, the Puerto Rican diaspora and activism.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR
The 60-minute Virtual Tour includes an inquiry-based discussion and a sketching, movement or writing activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $125 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR & WORKSHOP
The 75-minute Tour and Workshop includes an inquiry based discussion and an art making activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants
Ongoing
Taller Boricua:
A Political Print Shop in New York
In celebration of Taller Boricua’s 50th anniversary, this is the first monograph exhibition in three decades about the East Harlem-based Nuyorican collective workshop and alternative space. Best known for its cultural empowerment and political activism, the organization commonly known as ‘The Puerto Rican Workshop,’ which began as a printmaking studio, produced and circulated hundreds of prints by artists. The prints, produced mainly in the 1970s, centered on issues of Puerto Rican independence, workers’ rights, and anti-imperialism both locally and in the Caribbean and Latin America, issues that remain relevant today.
Virtual tours and workshops will focus on themes of social justice, activism, Nuyorican culture and identity, including the collective’s interest in their Taino heritage.
Virtual workshops will include opportunities for art making, including drawing, collage and the use of digital art making tools, and themes include: Art and Activism: A Commitment to Social Justice; Connecting to Heritage: Indigenous Taino and African Roots What Makes Community?; and an exploration of the Taller Boricua/Puerto Rican Art Workshop Collective.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR
The 60-minute Virtual Tour includes an inquiry-based discussion and a sketching, movement or writing activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $125 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR & WORKSHOP
The 75-minute Tour and Workshop includes an inquiry based discussion and an art making activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants
Ongoing
ESTAMOS BIEN –LA TRIENAL 20/21
ESTAMOS BIEN – LA TRIENAL 20/21, featuring more than 40 artists from across the United States and Puerto Rico, representing a diversity of generations, genders, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. The exhibition utilizes an intersectional approach to Latinx identity. The phrase Estamos Bien (We Are Good) resonates with the present-day moment in the United States. With many of the works created by artists in the past two years, the exhibition offers students an opportunity to examine several of the current concerns of Latinx communities including class and racial dynamics, displacement and gentrification, climate change, and the impact of the global pandemic.
Virtual workshops will include opportunities for art making, including drawing, collage and the use of digital art making tools, and themes include: Culture and Identity; Environmental and Social Justice; Activism, and Memory; and Latinx and Latin American diasporic experience.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR
The 60-minute Virtual Tour includes an inquiry-based discussion and a sketching, movement or writing activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $125 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION TOUR & WORKSHOP
The 75-minute Tour and Workshop includes an inquiry based discussion and an art making activity.
- NYC Public Schools: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants
Cultural Celebrations
K-12 & Adults | Fall
Honoring our Loved Ones:
Día de Muertos
Immerse yourself in the sensory-rich celebration of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) which honors the memory and legacy of loved ones. Explore the pre-Colombian origins, and the symbolic elements of this tradition celebrated in Mexico, other parts of Latin American and the U.S, through a virtual, interactive discussion followed by an age-appropriate art making workshop.
The program will also include the exploration of an ofrenda (altar) designed by a contemporary artist on display in El Museo’s galleries.
VIRTUAL CULTURAL CELEBRATION WORKSHOP
75-minute virtual visit available | Max. 35 participants
- NYC Public School: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants
K – 12 & Adults | Winter
Multicultural Connections: Three Kings Day
Learn about the Taino African, and European influences embedded throughout the traditions of this festive celebration. Virtually explore the way in which El Barrio’s community has shaped the celebration of this holiday in New York City.
Participants will delve into the stories, music and visual art of the holiday and explore the origin of our fantastic 14-foot puppets and the museum’s parade, now in its 44th year.
Virtual workshops include an art making activity.
VIRTUAL CULTURAL CELEBRATION WORKSHOP
75-minute virtual visit available | Max. 35 participants
- NYC Public School: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants
K – 12 & Adults | Ongoing
Around the Block:
Walking Tours of El Barrio
Take in the sights, sounds and history of our neighborhood on this walking tour! Learn about the legacy of our communities, the icons that once called El Barrio home, and the art that makes the streets come alive. Virtual ‘stops’ may include community gardens, murals, local businesses and landmarks.
VIRTUAL AROUND THE BLOCK WALKING TOUR
75-minute virtual visit available | Max. 35 participants
- NYC Public School: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants
Storytelling
PreK – 3rd Grade | Ongoing
Tito Puente Mambo King Virtual Storytelling Program
Experience the rhythm and sounds of El Barrio with Tito Puente, Mambo King/Tito Puente, Rey del Mambo, a bilingual book by Monica Brown. Participants will learn about the East Harlem native known as the King of Mambo and the Godfather of Salsa. In addition to exploring the themes of community heroes, music and dance, students will participate in an art making activity.
VIRTUAL STORYTELLING PROGRAM
75-minute virtual visit available | Max. 35 participants
- NYC Public School: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants
PreK – 3rd Grade | Ongoing
Waiting for the Biblioburro Virtual Storytelling Program
Inspired by the children’s book Waiting for the the Biblioburro/Esperando el Biblioburro, a bilingual book by Monica Brown. Participants will be introduced to Ana, a young girl from Colombia who meets a traveling librarian on a donkey. The book is based on the true story of Luis Soriano, a teacher and librarian who shares books and a love of literacy with children throughout the mountains of Colombia.
This workshop explores the themes of literacy, social justice and life in rural Latin America and concludes with an art making activity.
VIRTUAL STORYTELLING PROGRAM
75-minute virtual visit available | Max. 35 participants
- NYC Public School: $175 for up to 35 participants
- Private Schools/Non-NYC Public Schools: $225 for up to 35 participants