Dominicans are the largest Latino community in New York, and that community is getting its long-awaited Dominican Center for the Arts and Culture, which will open in Washington Heights in 2026. State Governor Kathy Hochul announced $ 12.5 million for the project during this year’s National Dominican Day Parade.
Helmed by the Dominican Studies Institute (DSI) at the City College of New York, the cultural center will house a museum and exhibition space to display work by Dominican and Latino/a/x artists, as well as a theater, a children’s library focused on the preservation of the Spanish language and archives that preserve the cultural history of the neighborhood.
Supporters of the Dominican Center for the Arts and Culture hope the space will become for the Dominican community what the Morgan Library is for the city of New York.
“Dominican culture and the diaspora have had an undeniable impact on communities throughout the nation, and nowhere is that more evident than here in New York City, and especially in Northern Manhattan,” Representative Adriano Espaillat, who was born in the Dominican Republic and made history as the first formerly undocumented immigrant to serve in Congress, said in a statement.
During the parade-day press conference, Espaillat announced that the newly secured state funding brings the total public investment in the project to nearly $38 million, although he didn’t specify the source of the additional funds.
“This is an old dream of the Dominican people that goes back at least twenty years,” Ramona Hernandez, director at CUNY DSI, told Observer. “It is finally coming to fruition, and it is materializing because of the willingness and the vision of wonderful elected officials who are eager to invest in the future of a people who have made a lengthy list of contributions to this city… I know that many people will join us in this journey as we move forward to get it done for the generations to come.”
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The center will join several other cultural institutions already active or about to open in the area. This fall, the American Academy of Arts and Letters is launching a new year-long program in its renovated Beaux Arts-style galleries in Audubon Terrace in Washington Heights—a space that’s also home to the Hispanic Society Museum & Library. The closeness of these and other cultural institutions will hopefully encourage meaningful collaborations that support further investigations into the similarities and singularities of cultural expression in the former Spanish colonies.
This new center has the potential to become an important platform for further promoting and amplifying Dominican culture in New York and beyond—particularly now, when there is growing interest in art expressions in the Caribbean and Central America, and Dominican artists are attracting attention in the art market and museums. Many institutions are embarking on critical reflections on the U.S.’s role in those regions’ history.
The MCA in Chicago is currently showing “Trade Windings: De-Lineating the American Tropics,” which interrogates the history and legacy of trade routes by mapping them in relation to the economic and migratory realities of today, on the heels of “entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico,” an exhibition examining the artistic genealogies and social justice movements that connect Puerto Rico with Chicago through the work of Puerto Rican artists.
Meanwhile, the Newark Art Museum is currently presenting an exhibition of Dominican artist Bony Ramirez, whose work draws directly from the Dominican heritage of symbols and traditions he absorbed in his childhood before moving to the States while also celebrating Caribbean culture and resilience. And ICA Boston is celebrating the work of another Dominican artist, Firelei Báez, with an extensive solo show (her first major survey in the U.S.). In it, Báez explores the legacies of colonial rule across the Americas and how the African diaspora in the Caribbean shaped the local identity. Báez also has a solo show at South London Gallery and recently joined the roster of mega gallery Hauser & Wirth.
