NEW BRITAIN, CONN.- The New Britain Museum of American Art announced a new multi-year initiative focused on the art of Puerto Rico. Located in the heart of Connecticut, the New Britain Museum of American Art serves a region that is home to one of the largest Puerto Rican communities in the mainland U.S. per capita. As a museum dedicated to the presentation of the art of this nation, the New Britain Museum of American Art is committed to an inclusive experience that extends beyond the stories told through the traditional canon of American art. In 2026, the Museum launches a multi-year, multi-project initiative to coincide with the 250th celebration of our country’s founding, entitled Puerto Rico in Focus. The initiative will address the intersections, past and present, between the art of Puerto Rico and the U.S., in part by engaging contemporary Puerto Rican artists and exploring themes of diaspora, community, and national identity.

The Museum begins the multi-year series with the exhibition The Museum of the Old Colony: An Art Installation by Pablo Delano, running March 14 through July 5, 2026. Born in Puerto Rico in 1954, conceptual artist Pablo Delano’s project explores the complex intersections between Puerto Rico and the United States. Delano’s work focuses on the reappropriation of found objects, photographs, projections, and sound, which he recontextualizes to evoke new and often provocative meanings. The selected materials serve as testimony to the pervasive colonial influence of U.S. institutions and culture on nearly every facet of Puerto Rican life.

Following projects in the initiative series will consider adjacencies between historical American and historical Puerto Rican art and an exhibition featuring contemporary artists living and working in Puerto Rico; and future projects will center contemporary artists of the Puerto Rican diaspora. While these exhibitions and installations will collectively span 2026-2028, the Museum intends to represent Puerto Rican presence throughout its artistic program into the future. The exhibitions will be accompanied by a bilingual scholarly catalogue published by Hirmer Press, each featuring essays that will contribute to the study and dissemination of Puerto Rican art in the United States.

In addition, the New Britain Museum of American Art is pursuing aligned strategic acquisitions to enrich presentations within the Museum’s permanent collection galleries. Along these lines, the Museum celebrates the addition of Rogelio Báez Vega’s The Country Club, 2024, and Antonio Martorell’s Los Estados Unidos de Puerto Rico/The United States of Puerto Rico, 2024, to the collection in 2025. These works will serve as pivotal anchors for the Puerto Rico in Focus initiative and forthcoming exhibitions in development. To launch work on the initiative, a cross departmental team traveled to Puerto Rico in March 2025 to meet with artists, colleagues, and scholars. The Museum is grateful for the support provided by CT Humanities for the planning stages of the initiative and for funding from the Henry Luce Foundation, which has provided generous support for the forthcoming Puerto Rico in Focus exhibition Historical Interventions.