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GALLERY GAZING

Puerto Ricans have museum to be proud of
By Peggy Ann Bliss
Pure Bliss Editor
  
Flaming June
The Ponce Art Museum, the island’s finest repository of painting and sculpture, has nothing to envy any other museum in a city of like size, according to museum director Agustin Arteaga
 
The museum, housed in an exquisitie Edward Durell Stone building, includes a Pre-Raphaelite collection most museums would envy.
 
“Many people don’t even realize what they have here,” he said. “I am constantly surprised that I am in charge of such an enormous treasure.”
The genial bespectacled museum director, who has worked all over the world, said he had known since 1985 about the museum, which has a $4.5 million annual budget.
“You have something so close, permanent and secure that more people must learn to be proud of it, to conserve its importance and to enjoy it,” he said in an interview.
One of this year’s greatest successes was the exhibit on Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, which attracted over 70,000 visitors.
Miguel Pou's oil of his son Jaime
We did something very different, by showing pieces “that influenced her work. We didn’t want to just extend the myth but clear it up and demonstrate why she was a great artist,” he said. From the time he first saw the Ponce museum, Arteaga, a native of Mexico, was stunned by the beauty of the architecture with its seven interconnected hexagons, glass cupolas and a breathtaking curved staircase.

The museum houses the finest collection of European works in the Caribbean with works by Velásquez, Goya, Rubens, Rodin and Delacroix, and a good selection of Puerto Rican masters, among others It also has Inca pottery and Thai pieces.
 
“Because of this great tradition and great quality I have pledged to divulge it beyond our watery frontiers,” said Arteaga, who has a PhD in art history from the Autonomous University of Mexico.
 
One of the ways he will do that is an upcoming exhibit in the Worchester (Mass.) Museum. The exhibit called “Mi Puerto Rico, Master Painters from the Island, 1780 to 1952” will give the museum “a chance to build bridges, with both the Anglo Saxon world and the descendants of Puerto Ricans who have lost their roots.
 
The exhibit comprises 42 works by José Campeche, Francisco Oller and Miguel Pou. Other big projects in the offing are with the Tate-Britain Museum in London, the Prado Museum in Madrid and the Louvre in Paris, three of the world’s largest and most prestigious art institutions. “Our British collection of works by Lord Frederick Leighton, such as the famous “Flaming June,” and works by Bernard Jones have never been seen even in London,” he said with obvious satisfaction.
 
Flaming June was painted in 1895 by Frederic Leighton. The 47" x 47" square canvas is considered to be Leighton's crowning work, showing the artist’s classicist nature. The painting was auctioned in the 1960s and failed to sell for its low reserve price of $140. The Ponce Museum of Art snapped it up and still has it in its collection.
 
The museum, located at 2325 Avenida de Las Américas in Ponce, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For information call   (787) 848-0511 or (787) 848-0505. February 2007