The Museum of the Old Colony
The Museum of the Old Colony is an ongoing conceptual art installation by visual artist Pablo Delano (b. 1954) that addresses the complex history of his native Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American War (1898), when the Caribbean archipelago was seized by the United States from Spain as a "possession." Appropriating archival photographs, film footage, and popular artifacts that Delano collects and "curates" for his performative museum, the installation provocatively critiques the stereotypes and entrenched misperceptions of Puerto Rico disseminated in mainstream media over a century. The work thus speaks to the relationship between U.S. imperial power and the island-nation, and to the lasting and devastating legacies of colonial rule. With dry wit and sardonic humor, The Museum of the Old Colony equally illuminates the power of images to inculcate cultural values and the authority of museums to confer meaning on the objects that such trusted institutions have acquired and displayed.
This catalog is the companion volume to the latest iteration of Delano’s installation, at James Madison University’s Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art. With essays by editor Laura Katzman and distinguished scholars Amanda J. Guzmán (Trinity College); Laura Roulet (independent curator); and César A. Salgado (University of Texas, Austin), the publication examines Delano’s ever-evolving project from historical, anthropological, cultural, literary, and museological perspectives. This richly illustrated volume features a foreword by Marianne Ramírez Aponte (Museum of Contemporary Art, Puerto Rico) and an afterword by Beth Hinderliter (James Madison University).
- Nelson Rivera, University of Puerto Rico, Humacao, author of Con urgencia: Escritos sobre arte puertorriqueño contemporáneoThe Museum of the Old Colony is an artistic project steeped in historical research and developed over several years. It urges us to remain vigilant, to maintain a critical stance. Thus, Delano adds to the treasured tradition of Puerto Rican anticolonial art
- Arcadio Diaz Quinones, Princeton University, author of La memoria rota: ensayos sobre cultura y política; El arte de bregar: ensayos; and Once tesis sobre un crimen de 1899Pablo Delano is a powerful artist-witness, fully aware of the extraordinary potential of anticolonial art. He is committed to showing a more complex way of seeing the ‘Old Colony,’ with the many blind spots in the historical memory of racism and ‘civilizing missions,’ and the burden of colonial status still haunting Puerto Rican life.
- Nicole Cecilia Delgado, La Impresora Poetry Press, author of Periodo especial and A Mano / By HandThe Museum of the Old Colony is a powerful archive of how the U.S. Empire has represented and tokenized the people of Puerto Rico throughout its long history of extractivist colonization on the island. Pablo Delano's exhibition, provocative and uncomfortable, will linger in my mind for a long time.
- Caribbean StudiesIf one has not had the benefit of visiting The Museum of the Old Colony, the excellence of this catalogue contributes to the project in ways that continue to create reverberations of the uncomfortable “imperial gaze” so often cited in relation to Delano’s work. Katzman aptly contextualizes the layers of the exhibit, including a reading of the text that includes a vision of history, an encounter with everyday objects singled out to be looked at as pieces of the aesthetic story Delano is composing, and finally, a testament to continuity, a never-ending dialogue with the material. . . Through the interdisciplinary analysis this catalogue brings to The Museum of the Old Colony and the experimentation it describes within the museum space, Katzman and Delano have achieved a collaboration that invites a review of history, colonial practices, and neo-colonialism in its current form, as well as provoking both our laughter and our sorrow.
- Centro Journal Review[This] publication, which meticulously documents and analyzes the Museum of the Old Colony…brings together different perspectives on the [eponymous] exhibition: from the profusely illustrated catalog to the critical analysis that examines the artist's proposal in depth, along with the historical and methodological context that makes the implications of the project accessible to readers…[It] also features contributions from a large group of renowned authors who provide intellectual rigor and diverse perspectives from their respective fields of study to support and analyze the project.
Pablo Delano is an acclaimed visual artist and photographer whose work has been exhibited widely in the U.S., the Caribbean, and Latin America. The author of Faces of America, In Trinidad, and Hartford Seen, Delano is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Fine Arts at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Laura Katzman is Professor of Art History at James Madison University, coauthor of Ben Shahn’s New York: The Photography of Modern Times, and author of Re-viewing Documentary: The Photographic Life of Louise Rosskam.
