Fiesta at Metropolitan to Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month

National Heritage Hispanic Month September-October 2010

When cities become multicultural, multicultural events happen very often. Sometimes they take place in the immediate cultural setting of the community who celebrates their identity through different types of events. The majority of events offered are artistic and include music, dance, literature and visual arts; they are all history of the life of a certain community. But fewer times these events take place in well known museums, such as the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York. The event taking place in the museum is just one of the many that are going to be held beginning September 15 and ending October 15 as to highlight the National Hispanic Heritage Month.

This month the Museum will host a major event for the Hispanics living in New York. iFiesta! is an event that celebrates the Hispanic Heritage Month and will be held on September 25, from early morning into afternoon. The festivities begin at 10 in the morning with dance performances and a procession on the Museum’s front steps. The group offering these native American dance performances is Cetiliztli Nauhcampa Quetzalcoatl, who will also have a talk in the museum later that day, between  12:30 and 2 p.m. about art and dance. There are also going to be family programs that will offer treasure hunts related to Hispanic and Latin American culture, storytime sessions in Spanish and English and drop-in art-making activities.

If you enjoy drawing, you will be able to attend drawing sessions, no matter the age, from 11:30 a.m to 2:30 p.m. If music is one of your artistic pleasures, a demonstration of the Cuatro, a traditional Latin American instrument, and a mariachi band procession are your favorite events here. If tango or salsa are other of your pleasures, then the tango lessons at 3 p.m. might prove useful to you while salsa demonstrations will make you love this vibrant and energetic dance.

Films are going to be viewed as well and they are fit to various ages. There will be animated family films in Spanish with English subtitles and a documentary on five contemporary Mexican women singers among others. Tours of exhibitions will be offered in both Spanish and English and there will be discussions and presentations that will go deep into the history of visual arts, presenting deeper examinations of the works from El Greco to Goya.

But the Hispanic Heritage month could not have been deprived of music and dance in the night. Evening concerts will be hosted in the museum after 5:30 p.m. and they feature the Musica de Camara String Orchestra, with a tradition of 30 years of presenting Puerto Rican and Hispanic classical musicians in concerts. The classical music concert will be followed by an energetic performance in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, by the urban bachata duo Loisaidas.

This major event tries to highlight a history and a life, a culture in its most deep sensitivity. From paintings to salsa and tango, from sculptures to music, everything is a representation of the soul of Latin Americans. Their life in the US urges them to stay connected to everything that appeals to their roots and fortunately they are helped by institutions to make it possible for them to reach these roots.11