Museum Of History, Anthropology and Art – MAHA
“Puerto Rico’s Oldest Museum”

Muse­um of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art Of The Uni­ver­si­ty Of Puer­to Rico
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If you’re an art buff look­ing for things to do in Puer­to Rico, you can’t do much bet­ter than the Muse­um Of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art (MAHA) locat­ed at the Río Piedras Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico. It’s the Island’s old­est muse­um and home to Puer­to Rico’s great­est work of art.

Back in 2023 my wife and I embarked in a three-year project to explore every town in Puer­to Rico. The idea was —and still is— to pro­duce an 8–10 minute video and a full-length arti­cle for every town. Then trop­i­cal storm Ernesto bare­ly scraped the south­east­ern tip of Puer­to Rico. But that was enough to flood sev­er­al towns and knock out pow­er for half the Island. So I said to myself: “self, why don’t we do some­thing dif­fer­ent while things come back to nor­mal?”. And, of course, “self” agreed, even with­out being sure of what “nor­mal” real­ly was.

That’s how “we” decid­ed (“self”, my wife and I) to cov­er some of Puer­to Rico’s great museums.

Notice that I said “great” and not “great-est”. That’s because all of them are great. They’re just dif­fer­ent and cater to spe­cif­ic interests.

You can learn a lot about a coun­try (or a ter­ri­to­ry… or a colony… or what­ev­er you want to call Puer­to Rico) by vis­it­ing its muse­ums. You can learn about its peo­ple, their music, their art, their tra­di­tions, their food, their way of liv­ing… it’s all out there, if you only know where to look.

Muse­ums are also great for bad weath­er and Sep­tem­ber is the peak of hur­ri­cane sea­son in Puer­to Rico. But don’t wor­ry. Most tourists will nev­er expe­ri­ence a hur­ri­cane here or any­where else. Not that it can’t hap­pen, but the odds are against it. What you could expe­ri­ence is rainy weath­er. And for that muse­ums are a great alternative.

Final­ly, by their very nature most muse­ums are indoors. Many of them are even tem­per­a­ture con­trolled. That means that you’ll be spared the rain, humid­i­ty and blis­ter­ing heat of Puer­to Rico’s late sum­mer months.

A Storm of A Different Kind

Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico stu­dents have always marched to the beat of their own drum.
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There’s a dif­fer­ent kind of storm that has been affect­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico for decades. It’s a polit­i­cal storm brought on by the very nature of the Río Piedras cam­pus. I won’t sug­ar coat what I’m about to say, so here it is: “while most ‘high­er learn­ing’ insti­tu­tions in Puer­to Rico pro­duce doers, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico (par­tic­u­lar­ly its Río Piedras cam­pus) pro­duces thinkers”.

From the first day you arrive there as a stu­dent, they some­how burn into your DNA that you mustn’t take any­thing for grant­ed. Every­thing must be ques­tioned. Every­thing must be proved. Every­thing must be ver­i­fied. Hence, you learn to think!

For years this has­n’t played well with right wing polit­i­cal fac­tions on the Island, so they have done every­thing with­in their pow­er to get rid of those “hairy left wing extrem­ists” as they call them. Ad to that the bank­rupt­cy of the Puer­to Rican gov­ern­ment, caused by too many gov­ern­ment offi­cials stick­ing their greasy paws in the cook­ie jar, and you have the per­fect sce­nario for trou­ble in “par­adise”.

Dur­ing the last eight years the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico has seen a steady decline in its finan­cial resources, main­ly rec­om­mend­ed and enforced by a Finan­cial Over­sight Board cre­at­ed under the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion. And the muse­um —being a part of the Uni­ver­si­ty— has been affect­ed just as severe­ly. Even more, as we’ll see shortly.

Lisa Orte­ga Pol, our gra­cious edu­ca­tor at the Muse­um of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art Of The Uni­ver­si­ty Of Puer­to Rico, Río Piedras Campus
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My wife and I vis­it­ed the Muse­um Of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art on August 30, 2024. We got togeth­er with Mrs. Lisa Orte­ga Pol who was kind enough to give us the “VIP” tour.

But there were things that I noticed dur­ing my vis­it that weren’t shown to me by Mrs. Orte­ga-Pol. You can “breath” a sense of decay as you walk the halls of the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus (my uni­ver­si­ty). In some cas­es the green areas haven’t been groomed for months. There’s are build­ings cry­ing for a fresh coat of paint. And maybe, just maybe, it was because I went there on a rainy Fri­day after­noon, but I felt an eerie sense of “empti­ness” that struck a sharp con­trast with my stu­dent years dur­ing the seventies.

But enough with my dis­ap­point­ment with the Río Piedras cam­pus. Let’s talk about the museum.

The MAHA Museum… A work Of Art In Itself

Muse­um of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art Of The Uni­ver­si­ty Of Puer­to Rico, Río Piedras Campus
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The Muse­um Of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art of the Uni­ver­si­ty Of Puer­to Rico is the old­est muse­um on the Island. But you couldn’t tell just by look­ing at it, because the present build­ing was only inau­gu­rat­ed on June 4, 1959. How­ev­er, the muse­um itself was cre­at­ed in 1914. That makes it 110 years old! More on that later.

The muse­um build­ing that you see today was designed by ger­man-born, and adopt­ed Puer­to Rican, Hen­ry Klumb. Hen­ry Klumb was born in Cologne, Ger­many in 1905 and emi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States in 1927, at the age of 22. He served as one of Franklin Lloyd Wright’s first appren­tices from 1929–1933.

In 1944 he was invit­ed by the gov­ern­ment of Puer­to Rico to par­tic­i­pate in the design of post-war Puer­to Rico. On Feb­ru­ary 24, 1944 he set­tled in San Juan, Puer­to Rico and made it his home until the day he died on Novem­ber 20, 1984.

Hen­ry Klumb | Uni­ver­si­ty Of Puer­to Rico | Puer­to Rico By GPS

Hen­ry Klumb designed many great build­ings in Puer­to Rico, includ­ing hotels and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing plants, but the one place where his influ­ence is pal­pa­ble to this day is at the Río Piedras cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico. That’s because he sin­gle-hand­ed­ly designed the Stu­dent Cen­ter, the José M. Lázaro Library, the Fac­ul­ty Hous­ing area, the Facun­do Bue­so Nat­ur­al Sci­ence build­ing, the Med­ical Ser­vices build­ing, the UPR school Of Law and, of course, the Muse­um Of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art.

He was also in charge of the Río Piedras cam­pus Mas­ter Plan that made these and many oth­er build­ings possible.

You can’t tell that the Muse­um Of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art build­ing is 65 years old just by look­ing at it. Of course, it could use a coat of paint and it has oth­er prob­lems that we’ll dis­cuss lat­er in this post, but it looks mod­ern even by today’s standards.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that it blends in per­fect­ly with its sur­round­ings, some­thing that Klumb brought to every project and could have very well been instilled in him by Franklin Lloyd Wright.

Visiting The MAHA Museum…

Cen­ter Court­yard at the Muse­um of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art Of The Uni­ver­si­ty Of Puer­to Rico
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When you enter the muse­um from the south side there are sev­er­al steps that lead to a cen­ter court­yard. Try to ignore the over­grown grass that pops out of the cracks in the con­crete and cov­ers the cen­ter court. That’s not part of the design, but rather a result of the afore­men­tioned bud­get cuts. There are sculp­tures along the court­yard halls and two exhi­bi­tion areas: one on the west side and the oth­er on the east end. For now we’ll direct our atten­tion to the east end.

Muse­um of His­to­ry, Lisa Orte­ga Pol, Edu­ca­tor at the Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art Of The Uni­ver­si­ty Of Puer­to Rico, shows us the muse­um’s poster collection
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As we walked along the east hall we turned right and arrived at a glass door. There we met with Mrs. Lisa Orte­ga Pol, who sim­ply calls her­self a “Muse­um Edu­ca­tor” (not an elab­o­rate title, but one that reflects exact­ly what she does and likes to do). Accord­ing to Orte­ga-Pol the per­fect art expe­ri­ence is one that brings togeth­er the art piece, the edu­ca­tor and the vis­i­tor and fos­ters a “three-way” con­ver­sa­tion. “The artists speaks to us through his/her cre­ation and it is up to us to inter­pret that piece under the light of our own expe­ri­ence”, said Ortega-Pol.

She also added that the “didac­tic” approach, in which one part teach­es, the oth­er lis­tens and the artist is basi­cal­ly absent, is both bor­ing and ineffective.

The truth is that we spent a great after­noon with Orte­ga-Pol and sparked con­ver­sa­tions both about the paint­ings and about oth­er unre­lat­ed matters.

The most strik­ing piece in the east wing of the muse­um is, with­out a doubt, “El Velo­rio” (The Wake) by Fran­cis­co Oller (1883–1917). It’s a huge paint­ing depict­ing a typ­i­cal wake in 19th cen­tu­ry Puer­to Rico. But, instead of bring­ing togeth­er the typ­i­cal high soci­ety char­ac­ters that appeared on paint­ings of that era, Oller brings in the com­mon folks.

I’m not an art expert, by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, but “El Velo­rio” is one of those paint­ings that you can gaze at for hours. And we did. My wife, Mrs. Orte­ga-Pol and I spent well over an hour explor­ing the many nuances of this excep­tion­al piece. To many, myself includ­ed, this is Puer­to Rico’s most excep­tion­al piece of art.

“El Velo­rio” by Fran­cis­co Oller
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The muse­um has oth­er great pieces, by artists both local and from abroad, and I in no way want to dimin­ish their impor­tance, but for my mon­ey “El Velo­rio” is THE piece at this museum.

In the accom­pa­ny­ing video that I pro­duced about our vis­it I men­tion that every coun­try has icon­ic works of art. In Spain you have Fran­cis­co de Goya’s “Majas” (one dressed and the oth­er not) and in France it’s the “Mona Lisa”, that was actu­al­ly paint­ed by a flo­ren­tine painter (remem­ber, Italy didn’t exist as a coun­try back then). In Puer­to Rico you have Fran­cis­co Oller and José Campeche, one clas­si­cal­ly trained and the oth­er self-taught.

Each painter also has his own muse­um. Most of Goya’s work is at El Pra­do, DaVinci’s is at the Lou­vre and at the Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence and Oller’s is at his muse­um in the near­by town of Bayamón. How­ev­er, his most impor­tant, majes­tic and impos­ing piece is at the The Muse­um of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico.

Egypt­ian Mum­mies at the Muse­um of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art Of The Uni­ver­si­ty Of Puer­to Rico
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There are oth­er inter­est­ing pieces at the muse­um includ­ing sev­er­al Egypt­ian mum­mies and a pre-Taíno inter­ment. But noth­ing com­pares to the sheer majesty of “El Velo­rio”. Go see it and you’ll see what I mean.

So why the difference in years?

If the Muse­um Of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art was built in 1959, that would make it 65 years old. So why do I say that it’s 110 years old? Well, that’s because the orig­i­nal incep­tion of the muse­um was in a cam­pus classroom.

Fran­cis­co Oller
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It goes back to 1914, when the Rio Piedras cam­pus received its first art col­lec­tion from Fed­eri­co Dege­tau, the Island’s first Res­i­dent Com­mis­sion­er. At that time the cam­pus was just 11 years old and it didn’t have a muse­um, so the paint­ings were exhib­it­ed at the Aca­d­e­m­ic Sen­ate build­ing, on class­room walls and uni­ver­si­ty offices.

Fran­cis­co Oller y Ces­tero, a renowned Puer­to Rican painter and uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor at the time, under­stood the val­ue of these pieces and pro­posed the cre­ation of a cam­pus muse­um. He also vol­un­teered to direct it free of charge.

A year lat­er he donat­ed his mas­ter­piece “El Velo­rio” (The Wake) that became —and still is— the crown jew­el of the Rio Piedras museum.

Through­out the years the muse­um went through dif­fer­ent loca­tions includ­ing class­room 9 of the Felipe Jan­er build­ing (its orig­i­nal loca­tion), a base­ment at the Anto­nio S. Pedreira build­ing, the Euge­nio María de Hos­tos build­ing and even the old Uni­ver­si­ty library. Final­ly it was moved to its present loca­tion back in 1959.

By the way, the old library build­ing was demol­ished to give way to today’s Plaza Uni­ver­si­taria build­ing. And just so you know, I couldn’t find any infor­ma­tion about that build­ing. But I do know it was there ‘cause I saw it with my own two eyes.

What about the West Wing?

Aer­i­al view of the Muse­um of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art of the Uni­ver­si­ty Of Puer­to Rico | Puer­to Rico By GPS

When I was a stu­dent at the Nat­ur­al Sci­ence fac­ul­ty of the Río Piedras cam­pus, I used to walk across the great lawn that’s in front of the uni­ver­si­ty bell tow­er and spend an hour or two at the muse­um. I would enjoy the great paint­ings as well as the free air con­di­tion­ing ’till it was time to go back to class.

Train to nowhere arti­cle by the BBC
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Back then the muse­um was in pris­tine con­di­tion, with both its halls and cen­ter court. Then dur­ing the last decade of the 20th cen­tu­ry the gov­ern­ment of Puer­to Rico built the “train to nowhere”.

Those aren’t my words, by the way. It’s what the BBC actu­al­ly called it in its Octo­ber 2023 arti­cle. Accord­ing to the gov­ern­men­t’s orig­i­nal esti­mates the train was sup­posed to move around 125,000 pas­sen­gers a day, but in 2022 it moved clos­er to 6,000.

A brief synopsis about why the train hasn’t worked

The rea­sons for this mis­match are many. Some would argue that the Island doesn’t have a “train cul­ture”. But then, Puer­to Rico had a train that went around most of the Island well before the Unit­ed States ever got here in 1898.

So what hap­pened? Well, the “pow­ers at-be” decid­ed to elim­i­nate the train and replace it with roads and auto­mo­biles. Hence, the so-called Island’s “auto­mo­tive indus­try” was born. Except that the Island doesn’t pro­duce as much as a spark plug. So one could argue that what the island real­ly has is an “auto­mo­tive mar­ket”. And who ben­e­fits from that? Well, that’s a mat­ter for a dif­fer­ent post.

Then there’s the mat­ter of pas­sen­gers. Trains are great in places where you have tall build­ings. In the morn­ing peo­ple come down from the build­ings, onto the train and straight to their work­places. In the after­noons it hap­pens in the oppo­site direction.

But in Puer­to Rico we have most­ly sin­gle fam­i­ly dwellings. Hence, the only peo­ple that are able to catch the train are the ones liv­ing close to the sta­tions. A sec­ondary feed­er sys­tem (ie. micro-bus­es) was need­ed to dri­ve pas­sen­gers to the train. But that was nev­er put in place.

Hence, you have a two-bil­lion dol­lar train, going back and forth between two points, with hard­ly any passengers.

But none of that has to do with the museum, so why even mention the train at all?

Well, because the train goes prac­ti­cal­ly under the west wing of the muse­um and there are those that argue that the vibra­tion result­ing from the con­struc­tion caused severe dam­age to the muse­um struc­ture. Again, not my words. It’s what the experts say.

What I can per­son­al­ly attest to is that the entire west wing of the muse­um is emp­ty and that the law suit is still before the courts almost a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry later.

The entire area is closed, but I was able to take a snap­shot through the hole left by a miss­ing door knob.

Oh, and here’s anoth­er fact. When I was serv­ing Puer­to Rico’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and indus­tri­al sec­tors as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant, back in 90’s and ear­ly 2,000’s, I did work for an elec­tri­cal con­trac­tor firm that worked for “el tren urbano”. So I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to walk through the tun­nels before the train was fin­ished. I saw the mag­ni­tude of “the dig” first hand.

What’s more, dur­ing that same peri­od I did a pho­tog­ra­phy job for a real estate investor that owned sev­er­al build­ings along the De Diego Avenue in Río Piedras. That’s the town imme­di­ate­ly next to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico campus.

Just so you know, the build­ings that I pho­tographed for that gen­tle­man had cracks large enough to accom­mo­date a grown man’s arm. So this isn’t some­thing I was told. I saw it first hand.

De Diego Street cross­es Río Piedras north to south and becomes Juan Ponce de León Avenue when it reach­es Gán­dara Street. The train goes under De Diego Street where it meets Road #3 and comes out next to the Aux­ilio Mutuo Hos­pi­tal north of the university.

I pub­lished this video at the same time as this arti­cle. Don’t miss it

My wife and I took a ride on the train just to show you the mag­ni­tud of “the dig” need­ed to build such a project. Please notice that the actu­al dig is wider than the road above it. Hence, in many cas­es the build­ings above are actu­al­ly over the train tracks.

So here’s my ques­tion. Couldn’t this all be pre­dict­ed? Couldn’t some­one think for a moment and say “if we do this wrong we’ll dam­age the build­ings above”. After all, this isn’t like some moron cut­ting into a water main because he didn’t take the time to look up the drawings.

These are entire struc­tures (some of them unre­place­able) that were affected.

So what’s the verdict? Should you visit this museum?

You bet!!! The museum’s gen­er­al col­lec­tion is beau­ti­ful. The oth­er arti­cles are also very inter­est­ing. But the piece that will keep you there for a loooooooooong time is “El Velo­rio”. And if you’re lucky enough to run into some­one like Mrs. Lisa Orte­ga Pol you’ll be there for hours, just dig­ging deep­er and deep­er into this mas­ter­piece of Puer­to Rican art.

For more infor­ma­tion about the Muse­um Of His­to­ry, Anthro­pol­o­gy and Art of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico just call the uni­ver­si­ty switch­board at 787–764-0000, ext. 83084 or call direct at 787–763-3939. And when you decide to vis­it just fol­low the map below. They’ll take you straight to the front door!

Se ya next time,

©2024,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Podcaster,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590