UPR museum posts a pair of videos on island’s art history

The first video covers indigenous cultures to the American invasion in 1898, while the second covers everything from the U.S. military regime to the commonwealth Constitution.

By The Star Staff

To promote the dissemination of and knowledge about Puerto Rican history, anthropology and art, the Museum of History, Anthropology and Art (MHAA) on the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras Campus has just published on its YouTube platform a two-part video entitled “Reflections of Puerto Rico History in Art.”

The first video covers indigenous cultures to the American invasion in 1898, with 155 images. The second covers everything from the U.S. military regime to the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, with 110 images. Both videos are based on the book of the exhibition of the same name organized by the MHAA in 2015, with an essay by Dr. Lizette Cabrera Salcedo, a professor in the Department of History.

“The images presented in the videos include engravings in various media, paintings, murals, drawings, caricatures, posters, photographs of the historical period, maps, numismatics, philately, logos, documents, prints belonging to government institutions, as well as private collectors and artists, who gave us the right of reproduction for the videos,” MHAA Director Flávia Marichal Lugo said. “At the end of each video, the credits and acknowledgments are included, as well as the images used in order of presentation.”

Marichal Lugo, who produced the project, added that one of the urgent needs the museum plans to address is the use of video as a technological tool.

“Today we spend more time using internet services to maintain social contact, work, play or study,” she said. “Through these subtitled documentary videos, in which we tell the history of Puerto Rico with works of art, we fulfill the mission of the museum, promote humanistic themes and serve as a complement to virtual classes,” he added.

This project was produced thanks to the support after an economic contribution from the Puerto Rican Foundation for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities with funds from the special donation Sustaining the Humanities Through the American Rescue Plan, through a grant of $20,000.