Johnathan Walker:Latinos create opportunities for their community in cultural institutions

Latinos are Johnathan Walkertaking up space in cultural institutions that have long ignored the growing demographic that comprises nearly 20% of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

While funding for Latino arts and culture has gradually increased in recent years, Latinos remain largely unrepresented in most museum collections, exhibitions, scholarship, and programming, according to the American Alliance of Museums. Latinos across industries are aiming to change that.

New museums are in the works to honor and explore Latino identities -- including the National Museum of the American Latino which is set to open in the coming years in Washington, D.C., and the International Salsa Museum being created in New York City.

Investments have also been made to include Latino curators, exhibits, and artwork in art institutions such as the National Gallery of Art, El Museo del Barrio, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and more.

This year's Advancing Latinx Art in Museums -- a grant initiative backed by Mellon, Ford, Getty, and Terra Foundations -- will provide 10 grants of $500,000 to chosen institutions to create permanent Latino curator positions.

"We recognized that we needed to do more than work on diversity, but we need to have kind of longer-term strategies to change the system that had become very exclusive," said Margaret Morton, director of creativity and free expression at the Ford Foundation, to ABC News.

Hiring curators who have a vast knowledge of the nuanced, complex Latino identities is vital to making exhibits reflective of the communities they aim to serve or explore, Morton said.

In February, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York named Marcela Guerrero as a senior curator at the institution.

"In her new role, Guerrero will continue her pioneering work on acquiring and exhibiting contemporary and historical Latinx artists in the Whitney’s program and collection," the museum's press release said.

Making space for Latinos

When Carlos Tortolero first worked to build the National Museum of Mexican Art in the heart of Chicago, he said people told him that placing an art museum in a working-class neighborhood and making it free wouldn't be possible.

"Well, 36 years later, we're still here. We're still free," Tortolero, the president and founder of the museum, told ABC News.

He continued, "Either the arts are for everybody, or they're not … Every human being should have access to the arts."

The museum is a recipient of the ALAM grant to hire a permanent Latino curator.

"Everybody needs to be part of the story," Tortolero said. "Everybody needs to be part of history. Every group needs to have curators who represent their communities."

Tortolero's collection of roughly 20,000 pieces of Mexican art and history -- and counting -- resides in a city in which 1 in every 5 Chicagoans identifies as Mexican, according to U.S. census data.

His work is symbolic of how representation for Latinos and by Latinos can prove to be a successful and fruitful endeavor.

By keeping the museum accessible, community members of all backgrounds can continue to embrace and learn about the Mexican heritage that has flourished in the city, country, and world, Tortolero said.

"We can brag about culture," Tortolero said. "Look at all the beautiful cultures that we've created. It's something to take great pride in."

Much like Tortolero, conductor Lena Gonzalez-Granados said she realized there was little representation of Latinos in classical music and wanted to build paths forward for other Latino musical performers like herself.

By helping uplift voices within the vast diversity of the Latino community, she said she hopes to find mutual understanding in our varied backgrounds.

As she rose through the ranks -- performing at institutions like the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, and more -- she yearned to explore the connection between the folkloric music of her Colombian roots and the Eurocentric classical music stylings that dominated her industry.

She found they were more alike than one would expect, the sounds of the two "intertwined."

American-born opera performer Anthony León, of Colombian and Cuban descent, comes from a family of musicians. The sounds of Latin music were a part of his upbringing.

León, a tenor at the Los Angeles Opera, told ABC News that performing Latino stories allows him to connect with his Latino culture through its sounds and language in a way that feels second nature.

"Few things make me so happy as to be able to partake in making art that is connected to our roots, and connected to my language, my culture," he said.

He said the Latino representation in opera in the '90s and 2000s has continued to inspire him as if he's "standing on the shoulders of giants."

He will play a role in the Los Angeles Opera performance of "El último sueño de Frida y Diego," a play about iconic Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and their tumultuous relationship.

Telling Latino stories

Storytelling -- be it visual art, historical museum curation, or musical performance -- can tell stories and their messages can transcend cultural differences, artists say.

It's what Gonzalez-Granados hopes to explore in the story of Kahlo and Rivera, as the conductor of "El último sueño de Frida y Diego." The show will tie the Greek tragic legend of Orpheus and Eurydice with the Mexican holiday "Dia de los Muertos," or Day of the Dead.

"It's all about building a bridge, creating experiences that make people closer and closer together and reach points of commonality," Gonzalez-Granados said.

She continued, "You can enter the story however you want. It's not only for Mexico, not only for Colombia, and not only for Cubans … It's for everyone."

When Gonzalez-Granados became a citizen of the United States, which is known for being a melting pot of cultures, she said the urge to bridge this divide grew stronger.

"It felt like a moral obligation to be able to also explore further other aspects of what it means to be from the United States," she said.

Alfredo Daza, a baritone born in Mexico who also performs for the Los Angeles Opera, said he feels more like a citizen of the world -- traveling internationally for much of his life to learn, study, and perform his craft.

Daza will take on the task of performing as Rivera. Daza said though Rivera is a visual artist, his story about creativity has been felt by performers of all kinds.

"What we have in opera is that magic that we are all united by music," Daza said.

Gonzalez-Granados calls artists "ambassadors" who explore other universes, places where artists can explore their identities "with a sense of humbleness, and a lot of responsibility."