News from our trip to the Dominican Republic - Part 2
09/29/2010
Welcome back! This is the second posting about our trip to DR. As you may remember, the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute' s Head Librarian, Sarah Aponte and the Director of Communications and Marketing, Altagracia Diloné Levat, recently attended meetings in Santiago (Cibao region) and Santo Domingo, the capital of the country.
Some important donations of books and audiovisuals:
We met with Dr. Paula Gómez Jorge, Director of Museo Bellapart, one of the first private art collections in the Dominican Republic open to the public (http://www.museobellapart.com). We were impressed by the permanent exhibit at the museum which included, among other artists, Dominican painter Celeste Woss y Gil, who studied at the Art Student League in the early 1920s. Worth mentioning is the Jaime Colson's collection of his most important works.
We were very fortunate to get art catalogues for our library of Jaime Colson and Eligio Pichardo.
Another great resource that we found during our trip was the newly built library at FUNGLODE (Fundación Global Democracia y Democracia). The library was named after the renowned Dominican writer and political scientist Juan Bosch: https://bibliotecajuanbosch.org/
We were welcomed by María Elizabeth Rodríguez, Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs of Instituto Global de Altos Estudios en Ciencias Sociales, who gave us a tour of the facilities and donated the latest publications from FUNGLODE. We would like to acknowledge Librarian Mirthia Solano for her laborious cataloging of all the library collection to make them available to the public.
We were pleased to share this resource with Eduardo Díaz, Director of the Latino Center at the Smithsonian Institution, who accompanied us during this quick visit.
Currently Biblioteca Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña is undergoing a major renovation. Director Dr. Diómedes Núñez Polanco welcomed us at the temporary administrative offices. We had a productive meeting with Dr. Núñez Polanco, Lic. José Acosta (Assistant Director), and Librarian Yumarys Polanco (Head of Collection Development). At the meeting we discussed collaborative projects among our institutions and received several donations of the Biblioteca Nacional's latest publications.
One of the special highlights was visiting the Fundación Culturas Americanas, where we met with Víctor E. Saladi (President), Nemanja Brankovic (Director), and Juan Rodríguez (Cultural Director). Among some of the projects undertaken by this Foundation are: "Imágenes de la Frontera: Fotografías," a traveling photo exhibit featuring images from the Haitian-Dominican border and "República Dominicana lo tiene todo. Fotografías," a collection of images displaying natural resources, historic monuments, and important historic sites. We are very grateful for their courtesy and support during our stay.