Location, location, location. In real estate, place determines value. Sometimes it can for art too. El Museo del Barrio originated in 1969 in classrooms, storefronts and a repurposed fire station in what was then the predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood of East Harlem. The museum was a product of pride and necessity. In local public schools, young artist-activists, often working free, taught children the virtues of cultural self-expression and communal self-sufficiency. And they taught from experience. At the time, no mainstream art institution in the city would show their art. They needed a museum of their own and, collectively, they created one.

In 1977, El Museo del Barrio moved to its present address in a city-owned building on Fifth Avenue at 104th Street. The relocation gave the institution more space and greater visibility. But it also took it physically out of the heart of the Barrio, and set the stage for a potential change of character. A territorial tug of war began between supporters who wanted the institution to remain community-identified, and others who were pushing it to become a broadband showcase for Latino and Latin-American art.

The tension has stayed high since, and in the past few years, turned ugly. After the museum’s first non-Puerto Rican director, Julián Zugazagoitia, left in 2010, his successor, Margarita Aguilar, was fired just 18 months after her appointment. Ms. Aguilar’s successor, Jorge Daniel Veneciano, abruptly quit as executive director after two years. Now a new director, Patrick Charpenel, formerly of the contemporary Museo Jumex in Mexico City, is in place.