Connecting generations across oceans, Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Their Diasporas presents approximately fifty contemporary artworks by more than forty artists. The physically and visually immersive presentation brings together paintings, sculptures, videos, prints, photographs, and multimedia installations—including several newly commissioned, site-specific works—that explore artists’ relationships to the histories and communities of their lands and seas. Uniting the works are themes of cultural and political self-determination, indigeneity and migration, and climate crisis and resilience.
The exhibition is organized geographically, showcasing each island’s uniqueness, and thematically—Land, Sea and Sky; Religion and Spirituality; Food; and Military Occupations—offering visitors multiple ways to engage with ideas of history, culture, and identity. At its heart, Imagining an Archipelago provides a platform for solidarity and connection among artists and island communities, both at home and in diaspora, in poignant, healing, and joyful ways.
Through painting, photography, installation, sculpture, weaving, assemblage, and film, the artists convey the layered realities of life shaped by US expansion. Together, the artworks form a vivid archipelago of stories that underscore the enduring impact of these histories on contemporary American life and invite visitors to reconsider how we carry the past—and what it means to be American.
The exhibition’s historical focus begins in the late nineteenth century, a period when movements toward independence gained momentum across Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico and the 1898 Treaty of Paris shifted control from Spain to the United States.
Imagining an Archipelago is the first major exhibition to use contemporary art to examine the impact of extending Manifest Destiny beyond North America, challenging the perception of the US as a purely continental nation and centering islands that were—and, in the cases of Puerto Rico and Guam, still are—under US control. The exhibition opens a window into living history, offering a new and vital lens through which to see connections between the past and a present moment marked by global and domestic events that test the viability of democracy.
The exhibition’s premise guides the forging of creative connections across islands in different oceans, separated by thousands of miles. The metaphor of the archipelago—a chain of islands—emphasizes the artists’ different yet interconnected strategies of critique, defiance, and navigation in response to circumstances shaped by empire. Juxtapositions suggest nuanced affinities and contrasts, underscoring a diversity of perspectives within complex networks. Rather than presenting a singular response to a monolithic interpretation of imperial legacies, Imagining an Archipelago visualizes solidarity strengthened by difference.
Imagining an Archipelago: Art from Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Their Diasporas is curated by Jessamine Batario, Linde Family Foundation Curator of Academic Engagement.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published in association with DelMonico Books. Contributors include Jessamine Batario, Lian Ladia, Alexandra Méndez, Craig Santos Perez, Stephanie Syjuco, Jacqueline Terrassa, Marina Tyquiengco with Fran Nededog Lujan, Adriana Zavala, and Phoebe Zipper. Also featured is a timeline by Jan Padios and a transcript of an artist discussion translated into Spanish, Filipino, and CHamoru.
Support for this exhibition and its national tour is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Teiger Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art, and Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.