Exhibit Opening – Diasporic Collage: Puerto Rico and The Survival of a People

You’re Invited

Diasporic Collage: Puerto Rico and the Survival of a People

Saturday, January 31, 2026
11:00 AM – 2:00 PM | Program at 12 PM

📍 National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture | Free and open to the public

Join us for the public opening of Diasporic Collage: Puerto Rico and the Survival of a People, an exhibition that explores Puerto Rico’s colonial condition, global migrations, and the enduring resilience of its people through collage and photography.

Puerto Rico’s colonial status and geographic location have long positioned the archipelago as a site of global encounters and ongoing displacement. In response, this exhibition understands the Puerto Rican diaspora as a collage—a layered assemblage of histories, cultures, resistance, and survival. Rather than a “melting pot” that erases difference, a collaged community honors roots, relationships, and lived complexity.

The exhibition also examines the deep relationship between photography and collage, two defining art forms of the 20th century. Taking as a point of departure The Puerto Rican Diaspora Documentary Project by community organizer, activist, educator, and photographer Frank Espada (1930–2014), this exhibition reflects on one of the first major documentary initiatives focused on Puerto Rican communities across the United States. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1979–1981, the project resulted in more than 4,000 photographs and 130 interviews, later published as The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Themes in the Survival of a People—the exhibition’s subtitle.

Featuring contemporary artists who approach diaspora in fluid and expansive ways, the exhibition moves beyond migration alone to honor the multiple diasporas that intersect with Puerto Rico. Together, these works offer a powerful collage of Puerto Rican and Caribbean experiences, grounded in care, memory, and collective survival.

This exhibition, presented by The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, is the result of collaborative research and community projects produced by the Diaspora Solidarities Lab (DSL) since 2022, a Black feminist–led partnership between Michigan State University, Johns Hopkins University, and Hunter College. The DSL is directed by Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, professor and directora of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at Hunter College, formerly an associate professor at MSU, and Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Artists featured in the exhibition include La Vaughn Belle, Rebel Betty, Mónica Ching, Frank Espada, Alia Farid, Glorimar Garcia, Daniel Lind Ramos, María Martínez-Cañas, Luis Rivera Jiménez, Edra Soto, Brenda Torres-Figueroa, and Nitza Tufiño.