The Museum of the Old Colony (Paperback)

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).

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.