Velazquez, a Puerto Rican staff member at MSU, said he felt obligated to visit the exhibit because "it’s rare when there’s something that’s specifically about Puerto Ricans in the community." 

Velazquez was able to see the exhibit on the evening of Sept. 13. Others were not so lucky, being turned away after MSU canceled the public opening of this exhibit and three others in response to concerns regarding a piece in the exhibit showcasing solidarity with Palestine. That decision received criticism from community members concerned with censorship and racism. 

The curators said that while they think MSU's actions undercut the opening of the exhibit after years of work, its message remains clearer — and more important — than ever.

Creating the 'Diasporic Collage'

It was about seven years ago that senior curator, Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, brought the idea of doing an archival project to the MSU Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. She was fascinated by Frank Espada's first documentary project on the Puerto Rican diaspora which included a collection of over 4,000 photos and over 100 interviews. 

Figueroa-Vásquez’s idea was to turn this project into more of a contemporary piece by inviting fellows and students from the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) and the Diaspora Solidarities Lab (DSL) — both of which she now directs. 

The artists from CENTRO and DSL sifted through thousands of Espada’s photos and then identified the subjects by sifting through over 100 corresponding interviews. After that, they translated and transcribed the interviews to go along with the photos. This process took over two and a half years and is still an ongoing project for DSL. 

"It was a very hard job, but also a very gratifying one," said Ariana Costales-Del Toro, from CENTRO. "It’s been really nice to listen to those stories and get to know people in the diasporic experience of Puerto Rico, but it was definitely hard work."

The exhibit didn’t showcase all of the thousands of photos, but rather created a collage of certain photos and stories. In fact, the collage serves as a metaphor of the "overlapping histories of colonialism, resistance and survival" of the Puerto Rican diaspora, according to the museum website.

"I was thinking of a visual metaphor for diaspora that relates back to photography, and collage was what I kept coming back to," said Dalina Perdomo Álvarez, assistant curator at the museum. 

There were plans of showcasing this exhibit for two years, but they kept falling through. Figueroa-Vásquez said, "It wasn’t until (Perdomo Álvarez) came in that we were really able to get it off the ground."

It was through Perdomo Álvarez’s vision of a collage that Espada’s photo series came to life.

"I think that the Frank Espada photographs offer a really beautiful moment to consider, not just documentary photography, but questions of ethical engagement with community, which is so much of what this exhibition is about," Figueroa-Vásquez said. 

Coming at a 'critical moment'

The importance of representing Puerto Rican history has intensified in the past month, curators and artists said, citing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's racist remarks toward Puerto Ricans and the Latino diaspora at a Donald Trump rally on Oct. 27.

"It is really disgusting to see those views be upheld on the national stage, especially in this critical political moment," Figueroa-Vásquez said. "It is our job to not only correct these diminishing narratives, but also to produce different ways of seeing the world, of engaging with each other, of being in relationship with one another, and to showcase the beauty that is this culture of love and resistance."

After hearing these remarks, Figueroa-Vásquez said it became clear that "without works like this" that talk about Puerto Rico and are created through collaboration between "folks from the U.S. and from the diaspora," then harmful stereotypes would persist and spread. 

She emphasized that these perceptions of Puerto Ricans stem from ignorance and misunderstanding, which she said were present in MSU's decision to cancel the public opening. 

"MSU is a perfect example of what happens when an institution has very little understanding of the context of a place and tries to intervene ahistorically on the topic," she said. 

One of Figueroa-Vásquez’s main goals of this exhibit was to strengthen MSU’s community by not only representing the history and culture of Puerto Ricans, but also showing that you can collaborate with multiple institutions to do so. However, she felt that MSU’s handling of the public opening damaged this goal. 

"It would have been a really exemplary moment and a beautiful celebration of a museum doing right by its community for the first time, and instead, it became the full opposite," Figueroa-Vásquez said.

Despite the disappointment surrounding the cancelation of the public opening, Figueroa-Vásquez said she has still seen the art make an impact on students and the community. One moment that stuck with her was watching Velazquez take in the exhibit for the first time. 

"I think that the art is extremely impactful, and even that is an understatement," Figueroa-Vásquez said. "We have a duty to uphold and protect it. It has a lot to teach students and community at MSU about relationships, about relationality and about the political life of Puerto Ricans. I just wish that this situation created by the MSU administration didn't overshadow all of the work that went into it and all of the ways that it has the power to touch lives."

For Velazquez, the incident didn’t overshadow the power the art had on him. He said some of the photographs resonated with him as if they showed his own family. 

"Seeing (this exhibit) reminded me that me and my family aren't alone, that we are a very unified people," Velazquez said. "We've gone through some bad things in our history, but we still persist. Whether that's our population in New York, in Florida, in Chicago or wherever else, those pieces of the exhibit continue to inspire me."