Artist Pablo Delano (Trinity College) will be at The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) on Thursday, February 20, 2020, to deliver the artist talk “Uncovering The Museum of the Old Colony.” Delano will discuss the origins and development of the itinerant exhibition/installation project “The Museum of the Old Colony: An Art Installation by Pablo Delano,” which opened on January 30 and will be on view through March 14, 2020 at UMBC. The UMBC is located at 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, Maryland. The gallery will be open before and after the talk.

Artist Bio: Pablo Delano was born in 1954, in the “unincorporated territory of the United States” known as Puerto Rico. He was raised on a hillside just outside the capital city of San Juan. As a child, he enjoyed climbing a huge Flamboyán tree and savoring a spectrum of fresh fruits including mangos, acerolas, and delicious pink guavas. After completing high school, he relocated to the U.S. East Coast to study art. He holds a B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art / Temple University and an M.F.A. from Yale University, both in painting.

In New York, he initially pursued a career as a painter, but quickly turned to photography, a skill he had learned from his father, the photographer Jack Delano. Photography seemed at that time to offer a more satisfying, interactive, and visceral connection to the world. Various substantial projects grew out of his early work done on the Lower East Side, including commissions from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. One unifying thread was a consistent interest in the life of Latinx and Caribbean communities.

In 1996, Delano accepted a teaching position at Trinity College, in Hartford, where a colleague offered the opportunity to travel to Trinidad and Tobago, in the Southern Caribbean. Fascinated by that nation’s process of post-colonial nation building, he returned countless times over the next 10 years, ultimately producing a book of black and white photographs titled In Trinidad. During his first years at Trinity College, Delano also began collecting archival images from Puerto Rico, and conceptualizing the project that would ultimately grow into his conceptual art installation titled The Museum of the Old Colony. In 2019, Delano was appointed Charles A. Dana Professor of Fine Arts.

For more information, see https://cadvc.umbc.edu/pablo-delano-the-museum-of-the-old-colony/