The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture opened a new outdoor space and sculpture garden on Monday, two months after federal agents parked unmarked cars onsite and set off a ripple of fear in the community.
Museum CEO Billy Ocasio told reporters that the new space is intended for community use as an educational space and that “coming up with new things” is “a way of resisting” amid threats by President Donald Trump to send the National Guard to Chicago.
Earlier Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced on X the launch of a deportation campaign called Operation Midway Blitz. “I think this administration wants people to live in fear. They want to intimidate people. And for us … We’re going to rise to the challenge,” Ocasio said.
Celso González (center), renowned Puerto Rican artist and an author of the new mosaic, “El Llamado (The Call)”, cuts a ribbon during the opening ceremony of the new garden space at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture.
Victor Hilitski/For the Sun-Times
The garden is the first of three planned expansions to the Humboldt Park museum, including a new building in 2027.
The new garden was revealed during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday evening, attended by museum staff, city officials, community members and local artists. In addition to an educational space, Ocasio said the garden could host poetry readings, outdoor workshops, book readings and more. “This is a space where we could really celebrate who we are.”
The garden is modeled after the batey, a rectangular plaza and gathering space found in indigenous Taíno villages back on the island. (Batey also refers to a ceremonial, competitive ball game played on the same type of space.)
At Monday’s event, poet Mayda Del Valle wrote and performed a piece “for Chicago and all of the Boricuas who made this their home in the Second City.”
Officials dropped the curtain on a large mosaic designed by Celso González, an artist based in Loíza, Puerto Rico. The mosaic, titled “El Llamado (The Call),” will be part of a permanent display at the museum.
It features the faces of historic Puerto Rican figures such as Lolita Lebrón, Roberto Clemente, Pedro Albizu Campos, Ismael Rivera and Julia de Burgos. “This mosaic depicts the connection of our people from the island to the states to Chicago,” Ocasio said.
A new mosaic, “El Llamado (The Call)” by renowned Puerto Rican artist Celso González, was unveiled at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture’s new garden space.
Victor Hilitski/For the Sun-Times
The mosaic also depicts a coquí, the island’s tiny endangered frog species, colorful masked vejigantes from Puerto Rican folklore, a machete, a parrot, a rooster and a bit of the museum’s iconic architecture.
Originally, the museum building opened in 1895 as the Humboldt Park Receptory Building and Stables to house horses, wagons, landscaping tools and other types of equipment. The new garden space sits on the site of the former stables.
Among the museum’s next projects is enclosing their courtyard, so that the space can be accessible year-round. In 2027, a new building will open on Division Street.
“We deserve to tell our stories, whether you’re painting on canvas or breaking glass to build this mosaic, or you are spitting palabra through poems or acting in a play,” said Ald. Jessie Fuentes, who attended Monday’s unveiling. “The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture deserves the largest archive center that there is on the globe and we are going to build it on Division Street.”
The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events helped fund the project. DCASE commissioner Clinée Hedspeth announced that DCASE would be giving the museum a $20,000 grant in addition to some previous funding.
“[Ocasio’s] work, the community’s work, is essential to the Chicago experience,” Hedspeth said. “There is no Chicago without the Puerto Rican community.”
Billy Ocasio, CEO of the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, speaks during a ribbon-cutting ceremony of a new outdoor education space and unveiling of a new mosaic, “El Llamado (The Call)” by renowned Puerto Rican artist Celso González.
Victor Hilitski/For the Sun-Times
Monday’s celebration also accompanied the opening of two new exhibitions at the museum.
“Abuela’s House” by Destyni “Desi” Swope explores family and cultural memory. And from the Smithsonian, “¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues/En los Barrios y las Grandes Ligas,” showcases the connection between Puerto Rico and baseball, and includes sports memorabilia from Clemente.
The day also marked the museum’s 25th anniversary.
“Here in this community, we stand firm in our truth, in our culture. Ignorance and hate will not prevail here,” Ocasio said.
In July, agents from the Department of Homeland Security parked 15 unmarked vehicles in the museum’s private lot.
Local elected officials and community members called the visit a scare tactic, but Trump officials said they’d been staging an operation related to a narcotics investigation, according to an email received from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
But their presence sent a ripple of anxiety and confusion across Chicago, especially in immigrant communities fearful of deportations and immigration raids since Trump took office in January.
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