The Empathic Camera Eduardo Bermúdez This photography exhibition demonstrates the relationship between human beings and the urban environment, as well as how they receive and interact with each other. Human beings are, by nature, sociable: empathy is their emotional passport to interaction, and the camera has been, since its invention, a persistent mediator. “Eduardo Bermúdez’s photos bring us closer to everyday life in contrast to a particularly exceptional background: Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. In our fifteen-hundred-year-old city—as in every traditional city—history and the contemporary world struggle daily to enter the record. From such tension emerge fleeting and fugitive contrasts that Bermúdez’s camera documents, not out of mere curiosity, but out of empathy, identifying with his subjects and, to a large extent, becoming part of the subjects’ very space.” Eduardo Bermúdez is an architect, a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico. His interest in photography began at a very young age and he pursues it alongside his profession. As an architect, he has excelled in projects such as the restoration of the Santa Magdalena de Pazzi Cemetery, the San Juan Museum, and the new building of the School of Architecture. As a photographer, he exhibited at the VIII International Photography Biennial of Puerto Rico, has received awards in magazines, and has published several books of his photography. These include: UnCommon Ground (2011); Raúl Echivarre and Eduardo Bermúdez, Two Weeks in Chicago (2011); Two Weeks in Chicago, Winter Edition (2013); Guayama, Sol del Caribe (San Juan without words) (2013); Eduardo Bermúdez San Juan, Visual Fragments of a Testimony (2013); A Walk through Old San Juan (2009); and A Walk through the Natural Environment of Puerto Rico (2009). To learn more about his work, visit https://www.cuarentaycuatro.net. The exhibition runs until July 27, 2025, Room 4, and has been made possible thanks to the sponsorship of:

REDUX A Five-Decade Journey by Héctor Méndez Caratini Héctor Méndez Caratini presents a selection of photographs, videos, and other experimental media he has worked on throughout his long career. “The sequence of his numerous photographic essays, produced between 1970 and 2024, show the artist immersed in a ceaseless pilgrimage, camera in hand, driven by experimentation, enjoyment, and the search for himself.” “Caratini introduces us to the plurality of traditional religious practices in the Caribbean, Latin America, the East, and Asia. In doing so, he shows us that, as an artist and photographer, he carries with his cameras a whirlwind of ideas about time, faith, the tropics, islands, light, and shadows.” Libya González (Curator). “Her mastery of the photo essay has allowed her visual storytelling, the use of photography as a resource to tell stories and ideas. Her mastery of photographic languages—black and white, color, and digital—has allowed her expressive freedom and the ability to move across multiple media (paper, fabric, canvas) and formats (traditional or mural) to speak from a visual field where the image is the focus of reflection that transcends photography while simultaneously containing it.” Kirenia Rodríguez (Curator) “His photographic production has oscillated between two vast fields of knowledge, in a fluid and recurring manner: science and art. On the one hand, the medical study of ocular health has been his primary profession for more than fifty years, concentrating on the visual documentation and analysis of its pathologies in hospitals in Puerto Rico. Likewise, for much of his long life, the study of botany has formed another of his main focuses of interest, which has led him to be the founder and owner, since 2000, of the Heliconia Conservation Center in Puerto Rico, in the Pulguillas Mountains (Coamo). His work raising awareness about the dangers of deforestation and extinction has also led him to exhaustively document with his camera natural landscapes in Asia and America, as well as thousands of plant and animal species.” Laura Bravo (Curator). “Héctor Méndez Caratini's photographs are iconic. As one of our leading photographers, he had the opportunity to portray both public figures and anonymous individuals. His portraits magnify the subject, focusing on the face, body, and attributes or elements that identify the subject. This gives them an air of monumentality very similar to painting, a genre that deeply interested him and with which he establishes dialogues in several works.” Mercedes Trelles (Curator). Héctor Méndez Caratini was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1949. From 1968 to 1970, he studied Liberal Arts at Boston University. He received a BA from the University of Puerto Rico in 1972; a Photography Certificate from the Germaine School of Photography in 1973; and from 1975 to 1976, he completed his master's studies at the Center for Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. The photographer/video artist resides in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He has been awarded the following: 2004 AICA Award (Puerto Rico Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics) for best retrospective exhibition of 2003, San Juan, PR. 2001 Armando Mandín Rodríguez Award, First Prize for Photojournalism, Senate of Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR. 1997 Guanín Award, Association of Sales and Marketing Executives of San Juan. 1993 II National Fine Arts Exhibit, Honorable Mention for Velaciones (computer art), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, San Juan, PR. 1992 QuickTime Film Festival, First Prize for video María Lionza, San Francisco, CA. 1991 Kodachrome Award of Excellence, Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, NY. https://hectormendezcaratini.com/ The exhibition runs through August 31, 2025. Redux has been made possible thanks to the sponsorship of:

Graphic Logs Ada Rosa Rivera | Migdalia Umpierre | Yolanda Velázquez Graphic Logs is an exhibition where you can see works in a variety of techniques such as relief carving, silkscreen printing, metal engraving and mixed media, but above all it is a celebration of the meeting and career of these three visual artists who shared their time studying at the university in Mexico in the 1990s. Ada Rosa Rivera and Migdalia Umpierre were in Mexico studying for their Master's degrees at the San Carlos Academy, and Yolanda Velázquez was living in Mexico City, where she moved to live in 1992. Velázquez worked there for 7 years with a theater group after graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago. The three of them coincided in the printmaking workshops at the San Carlos Academy and in a collective exhibition of Puerto Rican artists that was organized at the exhibition space of the National Union of Education Workers in Mexico City. As a result of the meeting, a friendship began between the artists, and upon their return to Puerto Rico, they all began to develop as educators of the visual arts and printmaking in various educational institutions in Puerto Rico. In 2003, they founded the collective Las Jornadas del Grabado Puertorriqueño Inc., creating educational dynamics in public spaces to promote and sell works created using printmaking techniques, since at that time, most commercial galleries in Puerto Rico prioritized painting and sculpture, and spaces to sell works on paper were very scarce. “Our first activity as a collective took place in Old San Juan in the Plaza de la Barandilla, and we had as a guest one of the directors of the historic Atelier Contrepoint in Paris. He came to Puerto Rico to offer workshops and demonstrations at the San Juan School of Plastic Arts and the Carolina School of Fine Arts, among others. During that activity, they began to offer free demonstrations and workshops with the purpose of informing and educating the public about the processes involved in creating an engraving.” Yolanda Velázquez The Puerto Rican Engraving Conference celebrates two decades of cultural management and education on the arts of printmaking. This exhibition celebrates the legacy of Ada Rosa Rivera, Yolanda Velázquez, and Migdalia Umpierre, three artists committed to continuing to highlight the work of women artists with a track record in printmaking, who contribute to the education and development of new generations of engravers in Puerto Rico. The Graphic Logs exhibition will be open to the public until March 23, 2025.

The Encounter of Hidden Tales The exhibition presents approximately 50 works of art, including paintings, prints, drawings, digital photography, and sculptures by artists Domingo García Dávila, Brenda Cruz, Joan Emanuelli Sánchez, Martín García Rivera, Yasir Nieves, Gilbert Salinas, Rafael Rivera Rosa, Pablo Rubio, Ángel Rivera Morales, Juan Nieves Burgos, Francisco García Burgos, Carmelo Fontánez Cortijo, Michael Irrizary Pagán, Alejandro de Jesús, Luis Soto, Valentín Tirado Barreto, Carmen Rojas Ginés, José Feliciano, and Rigoberto Torres. Among the most important aspects of this collective effort are the rescue, documenting, and presentation of the work of Puerto Rican artists outside of Puerto Rico whose contributions and legacy have been off the radar, as well as raising awareness of the work of artists residing in Puerto Rico beyond the Caribbean archipelago. With “Hidden Tales,” the Custodians of Heritage collective has created a common platform where the stories of Puerto Rico and its diaspora embrace each other to become one. The story of a physically divided people, with a single identity. This Florida-based collective of Puerto Rican artists initiated a series of exhibitions that were presented at various museums and institutions in Florida and Chicago. These exhibitions are the result of an extended collaboration between artists spanning three generations who have committed to working together to achieve a visual representation of Puerto Rican identity in the United States since 2015. Beginning with the exhibition titled “The Diaspora,” which was presented at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture (NMPRAC) in 2017, the Custodians of Heritage collective has presented exhibitions at museums such as the Appleton Museum in Ocala, Florida (2018), the Albin Polasek Museum in Winterpark, Florida (2020), and Creative Pinellas Gallery in Largo, Florida (2023). The latter is the pinnacle of all the presentations and the first, titled “Hidden Tales.” The collection of artworks presented in “Encuentro de los cuentos ocultos” at the Museo de las Américas is an updated edition of the “Cuentos ocultos” exhibition the collective presented at Creative Pinellas, Florida, in 2023 and is twinned with the exhibition of the same name that has been on view since July at the NMPRAC in Chicago, IL. The presentation of “Encuentro de los cuentos ocultos” concludes the project’s presentation circuit with its long-awaited return to its place of origin, Puerto Rico. In essence, “Cuentos ocultos” has gone beyond the pure intention of bringing together the works of prominent artists who share a common space. As their intention and purpose for collaboration have matured, the discourse has become increasingly profound and poignant. It reflects how all their stories become one. In the words of artist and curator Yasir Nieves, the concept of “Hidden Tales” comes to life: “The importance originates with the opportunity to expand borders, alter stigmas, and tell stories, offering a diverse perspective, generating discomfort and transforming ideas and experiences. The opportunity to produce a platform for those eclipsed stories and storytellers, granting a distinctive perspective, where the question is more important than the answer.” Biographies of the participating artists