The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center Presents CRUCES: Thinking in Public Forum

The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center Presents

CRUCES: Thinking in Public Forum

Participant-Driven Symposium to Collectively Determine Future Programming

Featuring Keynotes by Johanna Fernández, Shaun Leonardo, and Chat Travieso 

Saturday, June 14, 2025

10:00 am – 5:30 pm

107 Suffolk St, NY, NY, 10002

New York, NY – June 3, 2025 –The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center is pleased to present CRUCES: Thinking in Public Forum, a daylong public convening for collective inquiry and exchange. CRUCES will culminate Sembradas, phase one of The Clemente’s multiyear initiative, Historias, which honors the enduring contributions of Latinx communities in New York City.

CRUCES will foster open dialogue between cultural workers, artists, scholars, and community members to glean points of historical erasure and then strategize future initiatives to broadly support Latinx culture and community in the current political climate and beyond. Rooting the design of CRUCES in co-creation, The Clemente invited thirteen prominent figures in New York City’s cultural, academic, and activist communities to serve as Delegates to develop the content for breakout sessions. Delegates include Yazmany Arboleda, Suhaly Bautista-Carolina, Lizania Cruz, Dylan Gamboa, Ligia Guallpa, Gabriel Hernández Solano, Monxo López, Elena Martinez, Jorge Matos, Oscar Oliver-Didier, Cristina Pérez Jiménez, Marlene Ramirez-Cancio, and Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz. 

Over the course of the day, participants will work with self-selected working groups through conversations and participatory collaborative projects—from exquisite corpses to collective manifestos—facilitated by the Delegates. Each group is prompted by the six thematic tracks of Historias: Urban Ecology, Migration & Spiritual Belief, Embodied Heritage, Everyday Poetics, Material Culture & Memory, and Labor & Commerce. Artist Chat Travieso and CUNY professor Johanna Fernández will host a keynote conversation to frame the central topics of the day, such as knowledge justice and the democratization of scholarship. Following a community lunch, artist Shaun Leonardo will present a participatory keynote performance that uses somatic responses from the historically grounded morning sessions to transition attendees to the future-facing afternoon sessions.  

CRUCES marks the formal transition from Historias Sembradas (Sown Histories) to Historias Entrecruzadas (Interwoven Histories). The forum will conclude with an “Idea Machine”, a rapid idea-generating workshop led by the Clemente residents’ Department of Transformation (D.O.T). This process will end the day with concrete ideas for programming in the next phase of Historias. Beginning in Fall 2025, Historias Entrecruzadas will build upon the key themes introduced by “thinking in public” in Historias Sembradas’s exhibitions, conversation series, and performances, and shape them into stronger narratives. 

The CRUCES: Thinking in Public Forum is open to the public at The Clemente on Saturday, June 14, 2025, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Lunch will be provided. For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit The Clemente’s event page. 

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Schedule of Events

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About The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center
Founded in 1993, The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center is a Puerto Rican/Latinx multi-arts institution with an inclusive and international vision rooted in NYC’s Lower East Side/Loisaida. The Clemente engages diverse audiences in heritage preservation, neighborhood history, and cutting-edge multicultural experimentation, emphasizing the humanities’ role in bridging civic and cultural life.

As a downtown cultural mainstay for three decades, they focus on cultivating, presenting, and preserving Puerto Rican and Latinx culture while embracing a multi-ethnic and international perspective. Committed to operating in a polyphonic manner, The Clemente provides affordable spaces to artists, small arts organizations, and independent community producers, reflecting the rich cultural diversity of the Lower East Side and New York City. Guided by their namesake’s values of culturally grounded multigenerational leadership, local empowerment, and mutuality, The Clemente is a collaborative hub for creating and co-producing multidisciplinary contemporary work. 

The Clemente is a proud co-founder/partner of LxNY Consortium and the Coalition of Small Arts NYC (CoSA NYC).

Historias is organized by The Clemente’s Curatorial and Programs team: Libertad O. Guerra, Executive Director and Chief Curator; Sofía Reeser del Rio, Associate Director of Programs and Curator; and Sally Szwed, Strategic Growth and Special Projects Director, with support from Research and Oral History Fellow Samantha Sacks 

About LxNY

LxNY | Latinx Arts Consortium of New York is a collaborative peer network dedicated to knowledge exchange, resource-sharing, and collective action towards systemic change. Formed in 2020 by organizations serving Latinx communities and artists across New York City, LxNY aims to transform the historical underfunding of Latinx arts by advocating for the equity-driven missions of our cultural institutions, nurturing our deep relationships with community, and stewarding our hard-fought legacies into the future. Advancing cultural work as essential work, LxNY honors the expertise of our multigenerational arts leaders and culture bearers, harnessing their collective experience to better serve the city’s diverse cultural landscape.

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For images, further background, or interviews, please contact:

Katrina Stewart

Senior Account Coordinator, Visual Arts

Blue Medium

T: +1-212-675-1800

katrina@bluemedium.com

Fernando Salazar

Communications Manager

LxNY

info@lxnyarts.org