May 16, 2008
More on Museum of New York City
Earlier this week I posted an email from Babalu commenter Mandingo to the Museum of the City of New York about the omission of Father Felix Varela from their exhibit about Catholics in New York from 1808 to 1946.
Today I received the following email from Barbara Livenstein, the VP of Communications (public relations) for the museum:
To the editors of the Babalublog:
We wish to set the record straight about the inclusion of Father Felix Varela (1788-1853) in the Museum of the City of New York exhibition opening tomorrow, May 16. One of the overarching themes of Catholics in New York 1808-1946 is the diversity of the city’s Catholic community. In a section of the exhibition addressing Lithuanians, French, Germans, Italians, Irish, and many other groups of people united by Catholic faith, is a Spanish-language bible, among other artifacts, with the accompanying label copy:
La Biblia Sagrada A Saber: El Antiguo & El Nuevo Testamento Traducidos De La Vulgata Latina En Español Nueva-York: Edicion Estereoptica por A. Chandler, 1824
Catholic bibles in Spanish were available to the city’s small Spanish-speaking community in the early 19th century, beginning with this first New York imprint from 1824. Diplomats from Spain helped to create the city’s first church, and Spanish-speaking leaders played a formative role in Catholic New York. Among them was Cuban-born Felix Varela (1788-1853), now a candidate for canonization, who ministered to Irish immigrants and became a diocesan vicar general. Although the community grew slowly during the 19th century, immigration from the Caribbean accelerated after the Spanish-American War in 1898 and by World War II, East Harlem became a destination for Puerto Rican migrants.
The exhibition is a social and political history of the many, many Catholic people who helped shape their parishes and—at the same time—reshape the larger community of New York City. This is noted by New York Times reporter Glenn Collins in his Metro Section article today (“Persecuted to Powerful: Exhibiting a History of New York’s Catholics”). He writes: “Among the various Catholic groups worshiping in the city were African-Americans, Slovaks, Czechs, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, and Hispanics (on view is an 1842 Spanish Bible) including an influx of Puerto Rican Catholics after the Spanish-American War in 1898.”Please note that the Cuban-born Father Varela is indeed included in this groundbreaking exhibiiton [sic], which addresses itself to discrimination and oppression experienced by all of New York’s Catholics without focusing exclusively on any group united by national origin or ethnic background.
Barbara Livenstein
Vice President of Communications
Museum of the City of New York
Fair enough but this whole episode began when Alyson Cluck, a "Communications Associate" of the museum (presumably and underling of Ms. Livenstein) sent the following in an email to Mandingo:
Unfortunately there won't be anything in the exhibition specifically about Felix Varela.
Posted by Henry Louis Gomez at May 16, 2008 12:37 AM
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Comments
Great job to all those who wrote to the museum!
Posted by: Dave Sandoval ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.babalublog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 16, 2008 08:07 AM
Is it me, but I didn't see anything about Varela in her response.
Posted by: rsnlk at May 16, 2008 02:05 PM
It looks like they searched until they could find anything that might mention Varela. It's not as if they wanted to include him as much as they wanted to avoid bad publicity.
I'm not in New York nor am I Catholic ( or Cuban ) but I think they're trying to keep you quiet until the show is over. I'd have to see how much space is devoted to other Catholic pioneers to see if the footnote to Varela is an honor or a slight.
Posted by: Ken Hahn at May 16, 2008 03:07 PM
I agree with Ken, I was reading Barbara Livenstein's reply and there's NOTHING there on Varela. What on earth do bibles in Spanish have to do with Varela? He ministered to the Irish and even learned their language in order to communicate with them! And why is she going on about the influx of Puerto Ricans to New York? Varela died in 1853, a good 70 years before the first Puerto Ricans came to the city! Is she trying to appease us by lumping Puerto Rican immigrants in with Varela? The issue is not whether the exhibit includes information on Puerto Ricans, Afro-Americans, Lithuaninans, etc...it's about Varela, period. Anything else is a distraction.
I wrote a letter to the museum and I got a response. I was told that he is "mentioned" [yes, that's the word that was used, "mentioned"] in some text somewhere. In other words, he was just glossed over even though he is a founding father of Catholic New York, a man who used to stand between mobs of torch bearing protestants and catholic churches, a man who founded two churches, three schools and a hospital to minister to the impoverish Irish immigrants, who took care of Irish widows and orphans when there were no social services for the new arrivals and they were treated worst than dogs. Today, NYC has countless Catholic hospitals, churches and schools. Varela was the seed that started all of these institutions. Yet, he was glossed over. It's nothing short of shocking.
IN fact, it's unbelievable. This is like writing about the American Revolution and noting mentioning George Washington.
Posted by: Ray at May 16, 2008 07:20 PM
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