Puerto Rico’s Museo de Arte de Ponce ~ The Largest Art Museum In The Caribbean

Written by Orlando Valdez Friday, 23 March 2012 22:14

Founded in 1959 in Ponce, Puerto Rico, the Museo de Arte de Ponce (MAP) includes almost 5,200 works of art from Europe, Latin America, and Puerto Rico and is the largest art museum in the Caribbean. The museum owes its existence to one man, Luis A. Ferré (1904–2003), a native of Ponce, who conceived of the museum after his first trip to Europe in 1950. Ferré was a successful industrialist, philanthropist, and gifted pianist who served as governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico from 1968 to 1972. Of his many accomplishments, he considered MAP to be the most important. With a limited budget and the advice of art historian Julius S. Held, a specialist on Rubens and professor of Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University, and René Taylor, art and architecture enthusiast and professor at the University of Granada, Yale, and Columbia, Ferré compiled a collection of works of art based on their value instead of their popularity. He wanted the collection to impart a sense of discovery for scholars, artists, and especially the general public. On January 3, 1959, Ferré opened the museum in a small house at 70 Cristina Street in Ponce, at what is today the Centro Cultural de Ponce (Ponce Cultural Center). Some of those original paintings are still on display in the current museum. As time passed and the museum gained popularity, the space quickly became inadequate. Ferré then acquired a tract of land on Las Americas Avenue in Ponce to build the museum, and recruited architect Edward Durell Stone to design it. On April 23, 1964 the first stone was placed and the construction of the museum began. It was finished in 1965 and officially opened on December 28, 1965. Edward Durell Stone’s impressive building earned the International Design Award of Honor of the American Institute of Architects in 1967. One of the main features of the museum is its hexagonal galleries, which allow natural light to pour through its corners bringing a unique illumination to them. The Durell Stone building has a total of 14 galleries, two gardens, and an amphitheater. The main entrance with its bifurcated staircases is another of the main features of the museum. However, due to the growth of the museum’s collection, by 2004 the facilities were again in dire need of renovation and expansion. This led to the Renovation and Expansion project and a Capital Campaign to raise the necessary funds. The design of the new Annex building was entrusted to Luis A. Gutierrez Arquitectos PSC and the renovation and expansion of the Durell Stone Building to PRAR Arquitectura CSP and architect Brigida Hogan. The Museo de Arte de Ponce reopened on November 14th, 2010. The museum now enjoys a new 37,745 square feet building alongside the renovated Durell Stone building (with 40,000 square feet). Exhibition space has been increased by almost 50% and the museum now has facilities for workshops, seminars, cultural activities, and private functions to generate additional income. The museum's library and the Luis A. Ferre Historical Archive have also gained more space, as has the. Conservation Center. The Anton J. Konrad conservation center is located in an area of 3,420 square meters on the second floor of the new annex building. The Centre is the first conservation center established in Puerto Rico and has the dual purpose of preserving the museum's collections and rendering professional service to museums, historical societies, cultural institutions, private collectors, and local and international artists. These maintenance services include: consulting, needs assessment collections, study condition, restoration treatments, conferences and training opportunities. The museum also has a museum shop and restaurant. Visit the Museo de Arte de Ponce website at … www.museoarteponce.org

Luis A. Ferré had a clear vision: to present a collection of Western art with fine works by artists from each of the major schools, Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch, French, English, German, Austrian and American. He also wanted to honor and support the Puerto Rican artistic tradition from the eighteenth century to the present day. With only a limited budget for acquisitions, Ferré sought quality works, regardless of whether they were considered "fashionable" in the 1950’s market. Since its beginnings, the Ponce Art Museum has received generous donations including, most significantly, 17 Renaissance and Baroque works from the collection of Samuel H. Kress in 1962. This important contribution was followed by other pre-Columbian and African art, art nouveau pieces of glass and Puerto Rican folk art collections. In addition to this donation, the museum has received donations from artists working in Puerto Rico, including from photographer Jack Delano, the Candina House collective and the painter and engraver Cuban Emilio Sanchez. Recently, acquisitions and donations have allowed the collection to grow considerably. Between 2005 and 2010, the museum received 722 objects, most dating from the 20th and 21st centuries. One recent addition to the collection now welcomes visitors at the main entrance of the museum, the 25 feet tall “Brushstrokes in Flight” by Roy Lichtenstein. The permanent collection consists of over 5,500 paintings, sculptures, decorative art items, ceramics, three-dimensional objects, photographs, prints, drawings, videos and installations of sound art. The art works cover 30 centuries (from 900 BC to the present) and from Europe, America, and Africa. Among the highlights are one of the most important pre-Raphaelite collections in the Western Hemisphere within one of the most significant collections of European art in Latin America. Some of the artists whose paintings and works are exhibited at the museum are Peter Paul Rubens, Lucas Cranach, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Eugène Delacroix, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones, among others. The main masterpiece of the museum is the “Flaming June”, painted by Frederic Leighton. Ferré bought this piece for $6,000 in London, and it was his favorite. “The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon”, the final masterpiece of Sir Edward Burne-Jones is another of the main masterpieces of the museum collection. The enormous painting was started in 1881 and left unfinished on the artist's death in 1898. Equally important is the Puerto Rican art collection, which ranges from the 18th century to the present day and includes great masters such as José Campeche, Francisco Oller, Miguel Pou, as well as the best contemporary talent such as Myrna Báez, Francisco Rodón, Antonio Martorell and Arnaldo Roche Rabell, among others.

Two exhibitions are showing at the Museo de Arte de Ponce, until the 2nd of October 2011, “Julio Micheli - Beetles of Puerto Rico” provides a fascinating glimpse into the insect life of Puerto Rico, as seen through the eyes of this gifted Puerto Rican artist. These Micheli illustrations were made with graphite pencil in different gradations, on specially textured paper. The majority of the illustrations are based on specimens from the collection of the artist and his daughter, also an entomologist and professor. Over the past 30 years, Julio Micheli developed a passion for beetles, just as he has for his art. During his successful career, Micheli has divided his time between the beetles of Puerto Rico and his paintings and sculptures. This exhibition presents a beautiful intersection of his two passions. Micheli was a college professor for 33 years, where he taught courses in Oil, Acrylic and Watercolor Painting, Drawing, Fundamentals of Color and Design, Advertising Design, Serigraphy, Intaglio, Photography, Art History and Concepts of Modern Art. Julio Micheli has a vast portfolio in diverse media, his triptych “El Hechicero (The Sorcerer)” is part of the collection of the Museo de Arte de Ponce. “Encounters: Space, Time, and Experience” until the 2nd of October celebrates the completion of the extensive renovation and expansion of Museo de Arte de Ponce in 2010 by offering the opportunity to both celebrate the homecoming of the museum's collection (which had been split between temporary homes and with some of the best known pieces on loan) and see it with fresh eyes. For the inaugural exhibition, Museo de Arte de Ponce's curatorial and education team chose to focus on the permanent collection and to emphasize its variety and strengths. Large overview galleries flanked by intimate focus galleries allow the museum to present constellations of related subjects. The works of art on view are taken from the permanent collection and span thirty centuries, originating from Europe, the Americas, and Africa. “Encounters: Space, Time, and Experience” is split, with “Between Heaven and Earth," in the east wing of the first floor of the Edward Durell Stone building, exhibiting objects representing different belief systems as portrayed through biblical subjects, sacred and secular stories of love and loss, divine beings, and devotional and ritual objects. "Conversations with Nature," in the west wing, presents works inspired by the natural world, impressions of light and atmosphere, and the intersection of landscape and culture. The second floor of the museum features European painting and sculpture from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries organized around such themes as landscape, portraiture, mythology, concepts of beauty, and the transitory nature of life. In each gallery you will find a "counterpoint", a work of art made by an artist from another culture and time period, to inspire comparisons and connections across the ages and enhance understanding of the diverse ways artists see the world.