Minnesota Latino Museum: Celebrating Mexican and Latino Art and Culture

The Minnesota Latino Museum is bringing art to the Mississippi River waterfront. While the organization has been in existence since 2015, this year marks them one step closer to an official location on Saint Paul’s West Side.

Saint Paul has been home to people of Mexican heritage dating back to the 19th and 20th centuries.

“1886 is when we had the first documentation of a man named Luis Garzon from Oaxaca, Mexico, arriving in Minnesota on the Mississippi River,” said Minnesota Latino Museum Executive Director Aaron Johnson-Ortiz. “His first act was to participate in a series of musical presentations in Minneapolis and on the Mississippi River before establishing himself on the West Side Flats.”

“My mom, who's a poet, always talks about the Mississippi River as a kind of umbilical cord that connects us to our homelands,” said Aaron.

This is why the organization chose Saint Paul’s Harriet Island Regional Park to house the first museum dedicated to the art, history and cultural heritage of Mexican and Latin artists in Minnesota.

“There's a lot of diversity represented in the arts and humanities field in Minnesota,” Aaron said. “But as one of the oldest and largest non-white immigrant populations in the state, we feel that our community really has not been included in a commensurate way. So, for us, the museum is pushing back against erasure.”