NEW YORK.-El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 007, on view at El Museo del Barrio through January 6, 2008, celebrates the experimental, immediate pulse of contemporary art, and supports the work of emerging Latino / Latin American artists based in the New York metropolitan area. This 5th edition has been curated by Elvis Fuentes, Associate Curator, El Museo del Barrio, and E. Carmen Ramos, Assistant Curator for Cultural Engagement, The Newark Museum, NJ. In addition, Rodolfo Kronfle Chambers, an independent curator based in Guayaquil, Ecuador, has included in the exhibition a selection of works by five artists from Ecuador, this year’s invited guest country.

The artists represented in El Museo’s Bienal are Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Blanka Amezkua, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck, Melissa A. Calderon, Saidel Brito, Pablo Cardoso, Liset Castillo, Vidal Centeno, Cecile Chong, Cesar Cornejo, Pedro Cruz-Castro, Franklin Evans, exit static, Fernando Falconí, Andrés García-Peña, Florencio Gelabert, Eduardo Gil, Tamara Kostianovsky, Jessica Lagunas, Cristóbal Lehyt, Shaun El C. Leonardo, José Lerma, Adriana López Sanfeliu, Luis Mallo, Cecile Mandrile, Norma Márquez Orozco, Justin Mata, Iván Monforte, Alex Morel, Lisette Morel, Andrea Nacach, Oscar Oiwa, Renzo Ortega, Sebastián Patané Masuelli, Javier Piñón, Maria Teresa Ponce, Dulce Pinzón, Manuela Ribadeneira, Jesús Rivera, Carlos Rodríguez Cárdenas, José Ruiz, Reinaldo Sanguino, Analia Segal, Courtney Smith, Germán Tagle, Sandra Valenzuela, Mary A. Valverde, William Villalongo, Karin Waisman, Katarina Wong and Augusto Zanela.

In conjunction with El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 007, El Museo del Barrio is presenting a range of free public programs this fall including the following events:

VOCES: CONVERSATIONS WITH LATINO ARTISTS - This series of curator-moderated artist talks aims to explore the complexities of Latino contemporary art through discussions with invited artists. In connection with El Museo's Bienal: The (S) Files 007, the fall series brings together artists featured in the exhibition in dialogue with the biennial’s curators.

VOCES: ART AGORA, THE PUBLIC DIMENSION OF CONTEMPORARY ART - Wednesday, October 10, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm. Elvis Fuentes, Curator, El Museo del Barrio, and (S) Files artists Courtney Smith, Jessica Lagunas, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck, and Melissa Calderón discuss issues related to the public dimension of contemporary art -- language, communication, and the artists’ commitment to address social and political topics.

VOCES: ECUAYORKS, NEW YORK BASED ECUADORIAN ARTISTS - Wednesday, November 14, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm. Moderated by Elvis Fuentes, Curator, El Museo del Barrio, and introduced by New York based Ecuadorian artist Hugo Xavier Bastidas, this discussion will explore common trends and themes in the work of Ecuadorian artists living and working in New York. (S) Files artists and Ecuayorks Cecile Chong and Mary Valverde will join the panel and present their work.

HEADS OR TAILS? INSERTIONS OF LATINO CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS INTO THE MARKET - Wednesday, November 28, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm. Visual artist Pablo Helguera, participating artist in the first (S) Files in 2000 and author of The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style, (Jorge Pinto Books Inc, 2007), will moderate a panel of current (S) Files artists and gallerists who will discuss issues such as the redefinition of the artist's job in the twenty-first century, the upsides and downsides of commercializing one's work, and important subjects that apply to artists with a Latin American background. Q&A session following the panel.

Admission to all programs is FREE, and galleries will remain open until 6:30 pm. For advance registration e-mail public_programs@elmuseo.org.

Lead support for El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files 007 has been provided by Altria Group, Inc., the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust, Bloomberg LP, The Greenwall Foundation, Peter Norton Family Foundation, and by Angel Collado Schwarz/Fundación Voz del Centro. Free admission to El Museo’s Bienal and related programs has been made possible by MetLife Foundation. Additional support has been provided by Mary McCaffrey, latincollector, National Endowment for the Arts and El Museo’s Contemporary Art Circle. Exhibition programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. Media sponsors for the exhibition are Univision 41 / Telefutura 68.

El Museo del Barrio is located at 1230 Fifth Avenue between 104th and 105th Streets and may be reached by subway: #6 to 103rd Street station at Lexington Avenue; #2, #3 to Central Park North/110th Street station or by bus: M1, M3, M4 on Madison and Fifth Avenues to 104th Street; local crosstown service between Yorkville or East Harlem and the Upper West Side in Manhattan M96 and M106 or M2. Museum hours: Wednesday - Sunday, 11AM to 5PM. Closed on Monday and Tuesday. Admission, through January 6, 2008, is free. To learn more about El Museo, please visit our website at www.elmuseo.org or call 212-831-7272.