What does the Puerto Rican experience entail? How does it represent us? What can we say about it? These are questions that Puerto Rican art has been answering over time, consciously or unconsciously. They are also questions that the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico (MAPR) asked a diverse representation of the community through a focus group study. The information gathered through their responses served to develop the collaborative project that resulted in this exhibition.

Puerto Rico Plural combines works by artists from different generations, historical periods, and media, with the aim of showcasing the plurality of Puerto Rican identity through art from the eighteenth century to the present. This individual and collective experience, which transcends geographical boundaries, is the common essence that unites us, and at times also divides us. To achieve this, works were selected not only from the MAPR collection but also from public and private collections, objects, reference materials, and commissioned works. In this way, the exhibition presents a broad perspective on who we are, our cultural, historical, political, demographic diversity, and our Caribbean reality, highlighting the role of artists from all disciplines as chroniclers of their time.

The exhibition contains longing, tributes, denunciations, contrasts and convergences, as well as provocations for dialogue. Likewise, the thematic rooms that make up the exhibition do not attempt to offer a single reading. Therefore, Puerto Rico Plural is an invitation to reflection and to encounter Puerto Rican identity, our history, our people and our art.

The grant received through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in May 2018 was an essential contribution to the development of this exhibition. This funding enabled us to address the conservation needs of our collection of Puerto Rican art and heritage.