Today, I am sitting down with Puerto Rican artist, Miguel Luciano who spoke with me about their residency at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and their project "Cemí-Libre: Block Party Celebration and Pop-up Exhibition" (2021). The project featured work created during the Civic Practice Partnership Artist-in-Residency in where Miguel explored the history between The Met's collection and its connection to the East Harlem community in New York City. In our discussion, Miguel reflects on the social responsibilities of leveraging the institutions resources to give back to underrepresented communities as well as to challenge the colonial framework by replicating one of the museum's artifacts--the Zemí Cohoba Stand (A.D. 974-1020)--and symbolically returning it back to the Taíno community in El Barrio.

Image Credit: Miguel Luciano. Cemí in bronze, East Harlem, 2021.

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