Smathers Libraries' Caribbean collection exhibited at Miami museum

February 21, 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – An exhibition of highlights from the University of Florida’s George A. Smathers Libraries’ Caribbean archival and library materials will open Feb. 24 at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida in Miami.

The exhibition, “Caribbean Collage: Archival Collections and the Construction of History,” spans five centuries of Caribbean history and focuses on the British West Indies, Haiti and Cuba from the 18th to the early 20th century. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Department of Special and Area Studies Collections of the Smathers Libraries.

“Visitors to the exhibition will have an opportunity to examine first-hand accounts of some of the most dramatic events in Caribbean history and will be encouraged to construct their own interpretations of the region’s past and its impact on the present,” says Stephen Stuempfle, chief curator of the Historical Museum of Southern Florida.

Drawing on several archival collections recently acquired by the libraries, Caribbean Collage will explore the Caribbean during a time of massive social change: slavery ended, new forms of agriculture developed and independent nation-states, with distinct creole cultures, emerged. The exhibition will examine these large-scale transformations through documents specific to people’s lives: letters, diaries, ledger entries, business records, scrapbook clippings, photographs, drawings and similar items. Illustrated books and maps will provide additional perspectives.

Visitors will first view a collage of digital images from the Smathers Libraries. Throughout the exhibition, visitors can examine the collection up close, which includes such items as handwritten correspondence and records of colonial officials in the British West Indies from 1779 to 1806; letters pertaining to the potential sale of plantations in St. Domingue (Haiti) from the 1780s; papers of the Spanish army in Cuba during the colony’s first war for independence (1868-1878); records of the Taco Bay Commercial Company, an American-owned agricultural enterprise in Cuba during the early 20th century; and notebooks with Vodou drawings and other cultural documentation by Frank R. Crumbie, a government official during the U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915-1934).

Other highlights include a 1534 book with maps of Hispaniola and Jamaica, the oldest item in the exhibition; a published justification by Sir Walter Raleigh for his voyage to Guiana, written in the Tower of London before his death in 1618; a list of Africans enslaved at the Rocheblave plantation in St. Domingue; letters from Haitian Revolutionary leaders Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines; and an 1891 book of poems written by José Martí, with a personal inscription. The largest item will be a 42 x 60 inch map of the Artibonite Valley in St. Domingue, showing landholdings, mountains and waterways in the 18th century.

For more information about the Caribbean Collage exhibition, call (305) 375-1492 or visit www.historical-museum.org. The exhibition runs through June 4, 2006.