Community Scholar Martha Diaz Partners with the Universal Hip Hop Museum

By
The Universal Hip Hop Museum
March 17, 2020

Martha Diaz is a Columbia Community Scholar.

The Universal Hip Hop Museum (UHHM) proudly announces that it has partnered with Martha Diaz, founder of the Hip Hop Education Center (HHEC) as Chair of the museum’s Education department. In her role, Diaz will also serve additional dual roles as Associate Curator and Archivist. Under this partnership, Diaz will donate over 2,000 artifacts including books, movies, curricula, flyers, posters, and other ephemeral material. Furthermore, many of the programming initiatives of the HHEC will be produced under the aegis of the Universal Hip Hop Museum. The education department will also include an Artist-Scholar-In-Residence Program, Archiving and Preservation Symposium, Education Think Tank, and many other year-round educational programs.

"We are so excited to have Martha Diaz on board leading the educational efforts at the Universal Hip Hop Museum. Martha brings a wealth of programming and scholarly experience and will prepare the museum to be a national leader in Hip Hop education," said Rocky Bucano, Founder and Director of the Universal Hip Hop Museum.

To commemorate this vital cultural partnership, UHHM HHEC will present “Documenting History in Your Own Backyard: A Symposium for the Advancement of Archiving and Preserving Hip Hop Culture,” on February 28th-29th . It will be among the first of several educational events and cultural initiatives that will be rolled out in 2020. In partnership with the Schomburg Center, Tisch School of the Arts Kanbar Institute of Film & Television Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, Cornell Hip Hop Collection, and Chromata Solutions , this two-day interdisciplinary forum seeks to explore the process of documenting and preserving Hip-Hop’s history. The presenters and moderators are leaders from across the U.S. and around the world who are shaping the field and developing innovative preservation, documentation, education, and community outreach projects with the goal of ensuring the survival of Hip-Hop’s collections and archives.

“I am thrilled to partner with the UHHM to establish a new home for the Center in the birthplace of Hip Hop. The 10,000 hours of research, advocacy, and field development over the last ten year has finally paid off. This is a huge milestone in my unwavering mission to elevate Hip Hop as a national treasure and driver of transformative social change.” - Martha Diaz

The permanent home of the Universal Hip Hop Museum is slated to open at the waterfront development project Bronx Point in 2023. For more information about the museum visit www.uhhm.org . To learn more about the Hip Hop Education Center visit www.uhhm.org/education.