Exhibiting Voice/Narrating Migration: Performance-based Curatorial Practice in ¡Azúcar!The Life and Music of Celia Cruz

Abstract

This essay offers a critical reading of the exhibition ¡Azúcar! The Life and Music of Celia Cruz. Focusing on the negotiations between institutional expectations and curatorial practice, this piece analyzes performance-based curatorial strategies employed in the articulation of an alternative to the narrative of Latina/o history at the Smithsonian. The author argues for a critical engagement with performance as an affective and effective approach to the exhibition of latinidad.

Keywords:

• Celia Cruz
• Latina/o Performance
• Smithsonian Institution
• Salsa
• Affect

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Smithsonian Institution for the support of my research through a Latino Studies Post-doctoral Fellowship and especially to the team of curators and museum professionals who worked on Azúcar! I appreciate the candor and honesty with which they discussed their experiences with the project. I am also indebted to students at Northwestern University who offered insightful responses to this paper during a visit in October 2006. Lastly, I am immensely grateful to TPQ's anonymous peer reviewers and to Shane Moreman and Bernadette Calafell for their insightful editorial comments. They have pushed my thinking in this piece in directions unforeseen prior to my rich and fruitful engagements with their ideas and queries. Any shortcomings are exclusively my own. This paper was originally presented at Northwestern University on October, 2006.

Notes

1. I use the term USAmerica as a gesture against imperial geographical constructions of US nationalism. I borrow the term from Gretchen Murphy's usage.

2. See Celia Cruz's autobiography, Celia: My Life, for additional information on her life and career.

3. The sections of the exhibition are as follows (in chronological order): “Celia's Early Years,” “Celia at the Tropicana,” “Exile,” Salsa Music Scene: Latin New York in the 1960s and 1970s,” “Walking towards the Future,” “The Dressing Room: A Transforming Space,” “Salsa and Dancing,” “A Woman among Men,” “Tributes and Achievements,” and “Final Transition.”

4. In multiple conversations with curators throughout the Smithsonian it became evident that this is a site of great anxiety to researchers who feel the pressure to ventriloquize the voice of the institution in their scripts.

5. For a discussion of Celia Cruz's performances in relation to transnationalism and Cuban nationalism see Frances Aparicio's “The Blackness of Sugar.”

6. Translation by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ramón H. Rivera-Servera

Ramón H. Rivera-Servera (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Performance Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston