Little Havana’s first museum targets winter opening

Little Havana’s first museum, El Museo de Little Havana, is expected to open on Calle Ocho this winter, according to the Miami New Times.

Located at 1637 SW 8th Street, the space will “aim to showcase the social, cultural, and political importance that the area brings to South Florida.”

The project was announced yesterday onsite by Barlington Group and HistoryMiami Museum. The latter will provide resources for the exhibits in the form of photos and artifacts, which will show the area’s dynamic transformation over many decades.

“The museum will depict the history of the area going back to the beginning, when you had people from the south, Bahamians, who were fairly prevalent in the area," said Dr. Paul George, the resident historian of HistoryMiami Museum. "And then it morphs through the late '20s, '30s, '40s, and '50s into a large Jewish presence. And then you begin to see the Cubans coming in, with the Batista dictatorship in the early '50s, which, of course, accelerates when Fidel Castro takes power in 1959. Then, what that also leads to, within a decade or two or three, is the tremendous presence of other Spanish-speaking people and other Hispanics in the neighborhood, like Nicaraguans in particular.”

Admission will be free.

via WLRN