UTICA, N.Y.- The Museum of Art is honored to host Voces y Visiones: Highlights from El Museo del Barrio’s Permanent Collection, an exhibition that features an exciting array of artworks from the ancient Taíno culture of Puerto Rico to contemporary installations by artists including Pepón Osorio. El Museo del Barrio is the country’s premier museum of Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin American art and culture. It was founded in 1969 in Manhattan’s Upper East Side neighborhood (El Barrio in Spanish) as a small arts center for the residents of East Harlem. Today El Museo is a thriving museum housing a permanent collection of works in a great variety of materials and expression by artists from Puerto Rico, Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico and the United States. Voces y Visiones highlights this creative myriad, from contemporary abstractions to numerous spiritual objects—santos and voudon banners, for example—to political messages emblazoned on posters and other graphic arts.

Voces y Visiones opens Sunday, October 31, with a family Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration, a centuries’-old Mexican holiday that corresponds with All Saints Day. Activities will include decorating sugar skulls, creating papel picado (cut paper banners) and listening to traditional music.

Voces y Visiones: Highlights from El Museo del Barrio’s Permanent Collection is a nationally traveling exhibition organized by El Museo del Barrio and sponsored by MetLife Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.