The Clemente Center Announces Open Call for Fonoteca
The Clemente Center Announces Open Call for Fonoteca
A Public Vinyl Listening Archive Dedicated to Latinx Music History to Debut in the Exhibition Historias Reveladas at The Clemente in October 2026
107 Suffolk Street, New York, NY 10002
New York, NY – June 8, 2026 – The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center is announcing an open call for Fonoteca, a new project by artist Pablo Helguera. Opening on October 15, 2026, Fonoteca will gather personal vinyl collections from New Yorkers to create a shared public listening archive and gathering space dedicated to Latin American and Latinx music. The project will serve as one of the major newly-commissioned works for Historias Reveladas, a building-wide exhibition exploring the profound impact of Latinx communities on New York City.
Regarding this project, the artist has written:
“Fonoteca brings together several threads that have shaped both my artistic practice and my personal life. As an artist and museum educator, I have long been interested in how collections and archives can become active, social spaces rather than simply repositories of objects. Many of my projects have explored how cultural materials can be activated through participation, conversation, and shared experience. At the same time, this project is rooted in personal memories: I grew up in a family of musicians where records and record players were central to daily life. Fonoteca seeks to recreate that sense of encounter by transforming the record archive into a living public space—one that celebrates the role of music in preserving memory, sustaining cultural ties, and connecting generations across Latin America, the Latinx diaspora, and New York City.”
Through the open call, New York-based vinyl collectors and community members are invited to lend selections from their personal collections for presentation within the installation. The call is open to vinyls from any genre. To be considered a collection, participants must donate ten or more records that need not be rare or in perfect condition; and donors or lenders of 12 records or more will receive a special editioned artwork by Pablo Helguera in recognition of their contribution.
Fonoteca builds upon a long-standing interest in participatory cultural projects that bring personal collections to become part of a shared public resource. The project draws inspiration from community libraries, listening rooms, and informal archives, and aims to create a space where visitors can both listen to music as entertainment and honor it as a record of Latinx cultural identity in New York. The project follows in the theme of Helguera’s Librería Donceles, a traveling Spanish-language bookstore and socially engaged artwork first presented in New York in 2013 that invited participants to donate to a common resource. Comprising more than 8,000 books entirely in Spanish, the project was created as a response to the lack of bookstores serving growing Latinx communities and traveled to Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, and Anchorage.
Fonoteca is presented as part of Historias Reveladas, the culminating exhibition of Historias, The Clemente’s multiyear initiative documenting and amplifying the stories, cultural contributions, and lived experiences of Latinx communities throughout New York City. Through exhibitions, public programs, research, and archival projects, Historias seeks to illuminate the many ways Latinx communities have shaped the city’s social and cultural landscape.
To donate records or propose a collection for inclusion in Fonoteca, participants are invited to complete the project submission form.
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About Pablo Helguera
Pablo Helguera is a Mexican-born artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans installation, socially engaged art, performance, writing, and education. For more than two decades, Helguera has developed participatory projects that explore collective memory, civic engagement, and the role of cultural institutions in public life. His work has been presented internationally at museums, biennials, and public spaces, and he is widely recognized for projects that invite audiences to become active participants in the creation and interpretation of culture.
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, The Clemente focuses 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).
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For images, further background, or interviews, please contact:
Katrina Stewart
Account Manager, Visual Arts
Blue Medium
T: +1-212-675-1800
katrina@bluemedium.com