museo de arte - art museum

today we explored the art museum and several things surprised me. first, i was impressed by the cleanliness and architecture (compared to other art museums around the world, this was one of the finest). second, as i started to explore the paintings and other displays, i realized how interested i was in how exactly some of the work was capturing the identity of the puerto rican people. i found myself wanting to know more about the artists themselves through the centuries. another thing that surprised me was that i enjoyed the older art more than the modern art. i tended to be drawn to the art that inspired reflection on the simplicity and beauty of puerto rico as it was years ago. lastly, one painter stuck in my mind as being an important part of the cultural history of puerto rico, and that was a man named francisco oller (1833-1917). one of his famous pieces is intitled "The Wake" and i noticed a modern artist, through mixed media installation as his medium of art, made this display in the corner of one of the central rooms on the 4th floor, an intricate three-dimensional homage to this painting and he called it "Visits to 'The Wake.'" His name was Rafael Trelles. I was highly enthralled by this modern reproduction of Oller's art. I'm still pondering the significance of such an odd and graphic piece of work (both of them).

I also stumbled upon a lovely children's display at the bottom of the museum and I'd like to learn more about this program for children that apparently takes place in the museum. It seemed as though several talented children created pieces of their own and so I fell in love with the display downstairs but did not have much time to spend there as I only came across it with ten minutes remaining of our stay. At any rate, this gets me excited to come in contact with more children at the school to see what they are like. I am interested to know what sort of approaches are taken to bilingual education and how that can help me in my approach in Spring Grove, PA. I would love to provide a good, bilingual education to my students who are growing up bilingual, but there seems to be no congruency with how this type of program is really accomplished in the US. How does Puerto Rico meet the needs of so many of its bilingual students? This is what I'd like to learn more about.

I love that the art museum was a window into more Puerto Rican culture, and it was so neat to see art displayed through the ages - and, coincidentally, BY all different ages. :)

P.S. Here is a cool site I found on more Puerto Rican art (and craft) features-http://welcome.topuertorico.org/culture/artsc.shtml ...you'll notice the greeting from the coqui right away! :)