Download the free digital catalogue for The Museum of the Old Colony (single page view, best for reading essays) or double page spread option (better for installation image integrity). Limited print copies are available upon request.

The Museum of the Old Colony, a conceptual art installation by Hartford-based artist Pablo Delano, derives its name in part from a U.S. brand of soft drink named Old Colony, popular in Puerto Rico since the 1950s. Old Colony (the beverage) remains available at island groceries and restaurants in two flavors: grape and pineapple. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico endures 523 years of ongoing colonial rule – first under Spain, now the U.S, since 1898. The island, officially defined as an “unincorporated territory of the United States,” is widely regarded as the world’s oldest colony.

Delano deploys enlarged and carefully-sequenced reproductions of original historical materials, invoking the imperial logic of traditional historical and anthropological museums built to celebrate the so-called achievements of Empire and inherent superiority of some people over others. As such, the installation operates within a contemporary art tradition of post-1990s institutional critique (such as Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum), made especially resonant since Hurricane Maria, which rendered the faultlines of US-Puerto Rico relations more widely visible. In many ways, the installation is also a personal meditation on the past and present situation of the place Delano where was born and raised.

Spanning a century of images, this wry, sometimes shocking, and often deeply painful “museum” draws attention to the role of photographers, writers, historians, and other “experts” in constructing (racialized, often primitivist) narratives of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, and naturalizing the United States’s socio-economic and military exploitation of the island under the guise of the “many benefits of citizenship.”

1st image caption (original to photograph):

TROPICAL CONTRAST
PUNTA SALINAS, Puerto Rico — A contrast on the Punta Salinas road, a few miles outside San Juan, Puerto Rico, as the great guns with which the U.S. is fortifying the island pass the humble ox cart of a Puerto Rican “Jibaro” (mountain man). CREDIT LINE (ACME) 1-12-40

Installation images by Pablo Delano

September 20, 5-7pm PUBLIC RECEPTION: THE MUSEUM OF THE OLD COLONY

archival photograph of soldier with tank, photograph of Old Colony brand soda bottle

September 27, 5.30-7pm PABLO DELANO: ARTIST’S TALK AND Q&A

Shelf with a variety of Old Colony brand soda bottles

October 16, 5.30-6.30pm Hilda Lloréns: VISUALIZING ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE IN PUERTO RICO

October 17, 6.30-9pm VISCERAL VIEWING: A POETRY WORKSHOP WITH MAGDALENA GÓMEZ

October 24, 6.30-8.30 AGITARTE: DECOLONIZING CULTURAL PRODUCTION AND BUILDING RADICAL SOLIDARITY

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