Lin-Manuel Miranda Teams Up with Google Arts and Culture to Digitalise the Collections of Four Puerto Rico Art Institutions

By Joe Sperrin

The creator of the sellout musical Hamilton has teamed up with Google Arts and Culture to digitalise the collections of Puerto Rico’s Institution of Puerto Rican Culture, the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, the Museo de Arte Conteporáneo de Puerto Rico and the Museo de Arte de Ponce. The project has already launched 350 works on the Google Arts and Culture website with plans to publish more.

Lin-Manuel Miranda at the Art Museum of Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2018. Courtesy of www.ArtNews.com

This ambitious project by Lin-Manuel Miranda, is clearly that… ambitious. There are plans to have thousands of other works published onto Google Arts and Culture in the coming weeks. Ultimately the goal is to make Puerto Rican art more accessible to a wider audience. The project will use the highly advanced Google Art Camera to render digital, interactive forms of all mediums of artistic production from Puerto Rico, from Oil on Canvas to sculpture. The Institute of Puerto Rican Culture claim that this project will help produce a more international and holistic perspective of Puerto Rican art. Notable names that will appearing in the project include, José Campeche and Rafael Tufiño Figueroa.

Rafael Tufiño Figueroa, Goyita, (1953), Oil on Canvas, 65.1 x41.3cm. Courtesy of Google Arts and Culture.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is famed for his musical Hamilton, that has sold hundreds of thousands of tickets over the course of it’s few years in production. The musical Hamilton focuses on the foundation of America and the main figure, Alexander Hamilton’s strife in becoming one of the most notable founding fathers. The musical is written from the perspective of minorities in America and includes some notable elements of contemporary rap lyrical melody and instrumentation. Miranda has always been conscious of the multiculturalism of the US and the controversy surrounding this. As such, this project seeks to digitise the works of Puerto Rican artists so that they agin the same international representation as many US and Western Europe based artists received. In an age of developing technology it is not unsurprising that institutions such as those in Puerto Rico have seemed to embrace the new methods of accessibility of art. One can only presume that this project will be a success, as the week as proven with the initial 350 works.

José Campeche, San Juan Nepomuceno, (ca.1798), Oil on Canvas, 106.1 x 74.9cm. Courtesy of Google Arts and Culture

Bibliography

Claire Selvin, ‘Lin-Manuel Miranda Teams Up with Google for Major Art Digitization Project in Puerto Rico’ in ArtNews,. Accessed 7 November 2019. (http://www.artnews.com/tag/lin-manuel-miranda/)

Leslie Katz, ‘Lin-Manuel Miranda and Google introduce Puerto Rican art to everyone’, in CNET,. Accessed 7 November 2019. (https://www.cnet.com/news/lin-manuel-miranda-introduce-puerto-rican-art-to-everyone/)