NYC Arts: The Complete Guide to Art and Culture

Fifteen minutes from midtown Manhattan by subway, the Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture, an arm of Hostos Community College (CUNY), is one of the city’s premier venues for Latino arts and culture. With the opening in 1994 of the Hostos Center, which includes a 907-seat concert hall, a 367-seat theater and a 2,000-square-foot art gallery a home was given to visual and performing artists of the area. A typical season includes 20 to 25 performances in the concert hall, three or four exhibitions in the center’s Longwood Art Gallery and two theatrical events or film screenings in the theater.

Significant past performances include El Carnaval Dominicano, a music and dance revue celebrating four centuries of arts and culture on the island Columbus named Hispaniola; a retrospective of the career of Larry Harlow, virtuoso Latin jazz pianist; and a concert by the Bronx Symphony Orchestra. Charangueando was a performance marking the 40th anniversary of Orquesta Broadway, which pioneered the charanga tradition.

The repertory theater has offered a reading of playwright Isaac Goldemberg’s Yiddish-language drama Hotel Amerikka (the only notable exception to what is generally a full bill of Latin-oriented programming) and a screening of La Violencia del Poder, by documentary filmmaker René Fortunato. There are also about sixteen children’s performances a year.

The center is also site of Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos, the exhibition arm of the Bronx Council for the Arts. The gallery mounts about five individual or group shows per year and offers museum talks, formal lectures by distinguished artists and hands-on art workshops for kids.

• Directions: Subway: 2, 4 or 5 to Grand Concourse and 149th Street Bus: BX1 to Grand Concourse

Get involved with Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture

• Donations through NYCharities.org