Galería de Arte Infantil, Casa Paoli
What is Casa Paoli ?
This elegant and stately 19th-century building, located in the scenic city of Ponce, Puerto Rico, is the restored residence of the great Puerto Rican tenor, Antonio Paoli, "the tenor of kings and the king of tenors": in his time, an artist admired around the world.
The historic building is part of the cultural heritage of Puerto Rico and is one of the most important places to visit in the southwestern area of the island. It was the birthplace of tenor Antonio Paoli (1871–1946), an artist recognized as the "first Puerto Rican to achieve international recognition in the performing arts" and "one of the most outstanding opera singers of all time." Casa Paoli was the artist's home as a child, and the place where he lived with his family until he the age of twelve.
After its restoration in 1987, the building was transformed into a house-museum to honor his memory. It also became the home of the Research Center for Puerto Rican Folklore.
In 2009, Casa Paoli was accepted into the National Register of Historic Places. The restoration and maintenance of this exceptional site has been the arduous work of a small group of citizens proud of the musical and folklore legacy of their country. They have managed to create an impressive cultural center, home to not only fascinating exhibits, workshops, and public activities, but also replete with historical archives that have formed the basis of numerous important publications on the life and work of noted island artists, as well as the island's musical genres and folklore.
Casa Paoli currently houses the Research Center for Puerto Rican Folklore, Inc. [Centro de Investigaciones Folklóricas de Puerto Rico, Inc.] and is a regional center of the Puerto Rican Foundation for the Humanities. It is sponsored by the Flamboyán Fund for the Arts.
Hear a décima sung by troubadour Cándida Colón from Villalba, Puerto Rico, which extols the value and importance of Casa Paoli to Puerto Rican culture.
"The Center has distinguished itself by creating and implementing highly effective, innovative projects. It also has been characterized for promoting research and study in neglected or underserved areas, serving as a forum for groups that lack support from other institutions." La Perla del Sur newspaper (February 6, 2013)
CURRENT ACTIVITIES
Click each link for more information.
-
We have just completed our first e-book on aspects of music and musical instruments of Puerto Rico.
-
Presentation and distribution of a new method of jazz theory for the Puerto Rican cuatro.
-
Driving the activities of a commemorative commission of the sesquicentennial of the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico.
-
Project Rescue from Oblivion: recreating lost musical instruments of the Caribbean.
-
Establishment of a virtual shop of the Center's publications.
-
Diffusion of our new video documentary on the history of the Puerto Rican tiple.
-
Dissemination of our new video-manual on the construction of a Puerto Rican tiple.
In Focus
New Center Publication
Trópicos Insanos:
Políptico Antillano de las Crónicas de Indias y Puerto Rico
[Insane Tropics: An Antillean Polyptych of the Chronicles of the Indies and Puerto Rico]
There are texts that are read and others that invite us to read between the lines and to question the language that constructs them. Trópicos Insanos: Políptico Antillano de las Crónicas de Indias y Puerto Rico (2026) [Insane Tropics: An Antillean Polyptych of the Chronicles of the Indies and Puerto Rico]—by Raúl Mayo Santana—belongs to this second category. More than a study of colonial chronicles, it is an inquiry into how the written word helped to shape the Caribbean we inhabit today. His research aims to unravel historical truths while confronting the structures of inequality that perpetuate themselves over time and frame the persistent inequities that keep his Caribbean homeland under the mark of dependency and colonialism, like a conceptual brand. His gaze does not linger on the facts narrated, but on the images that surround them, on the adjectives that pathologize the landscape, on the diagnoses that confuse illness with ideology. In his reading of Abbad, Ledru, and their predecessors, what emerges is not a truth about the tropics, but a truth about the power strategies that defined it.
From the book's prologue, “Between Paradise and Illness,” by Dr. José Carlos Arroyo Muñoz, PhD, historian.
Spanish-language only
NOW AVAILABLE IN OUR VIRTUAL SHOP
New Center Publication
Voces de Libertad:
El Sesquicentenario de la Abolición de la Esclavitud en
Puerto Rico (1873-2023)
[Voices of Liberty: The Sesquicentennial of the Abolition of Slavery in
Puerto Rico (1873-2023)]
This book, published by Casa Paoli of the Research Center for Puerto Rican Folklore thanks to the collaboration of a group of researchers and scholars of our historical memory, is part of the efforts of a group of leaders, artists, musicians, and humanists who organized a Commemorative Commission for the Sesquicentennial of the Abolition of Slavery in Puerto Rico (1873-2023).
The work consists of five historical essays that trace the development of slavery, colonialism, and racism in Puerto Rico:
1) "Past and Present of the Abolition of Slavery on its 150th Anniversary," by Francisco Moscoso, is the keynote address for the Sesquicentennial of the Abolition of Slavery.
2) "The Road to Abolition in Puerto Rico," by Juan R. González Mendoza, reminds us that the end of slavery was a long and complex process.
3) "Ponce's Abolition Park: Between the Monumental Visibility of Abolitionism and the Fading Memory of the Slave Past," by the late historian Marta M. Flores Collazo, analyzes the function of a monument or "place of memory" of abolition in the city of Ponce at the end of the 19th century.
4) "Slavery, Servitude, and Freedmen in Puerto Rico in the Second Half of the 19th Century: Dynamics and Daily Life of Pre-Abolition Slavery and Negotiations of Freedmen During the Post-Abolition Period," by Raúl Mayo Santana, highlights the need to understand the phenomenology of the structure of the slave system and the lives of enslaved and freed people.
5) "Freedman Refusal Strategies in Response to the Post-Abolition Contract Mandate (1873-1876)," by Daniel Morales-Armstrong, deals with the strategies of struggle and resistance of freedmen along the southern coast of the colony.
Spanish-language only
NOW AVAILABLE IN OUR VIRTUAL SHOP
New Center Publication
Casa Paoli begins new series of publications on music and musicians
of Puerto Rico
In its efforts to continue contributing to the dissemination and enrichment of our cultural values, Casa Paoli of the Research Center for Puerto Rican Folklore, Inc., has begun the publication of a series of books inspired by musicians and their work throughout the musical history of our country.
This volume, now available in bookstores with the evocative title, Puerto Rico Musical, has been authored, edited, and supervised by retired university professor and historian Néstor Murray-Irizarry, who continues to contribute new titles to the country's private and public libraries.
This, the first book in the series, contains articles and essays that Professor Murray-Irizarry wished to document on the synopsis of the development of musical hobby in Puerto Rico, from hymns and other memories, and praise of our traditional musical instruments. Figures discussed include Juan Morel Campos (with the collaboration of Rossana Duchesne), Federico Ramos Escalera, Simon Wood, Antonio Paoli y Marcano, Domingo Cruz (Cocolía), Juan Narciso Ríos Rodríguez, Elio Adriano Llorens Rivero, Juan Ríos Ovalle, Julio Alvarado Tricoche, Mercedes Arias, and Francisco (Paco) Cortes González.
Spanish-language only
NOW AVAILBLE IN OUR VIRTUAL SHOP
Casa Paoli launches a traveling exhibition of replicas of traditional Puerto Rican musical instruments
Replicas of an antique cuatro and a small 19th-century bordonúa recreated by artisan William Cumpiano for the Casa Paoli collection of native instruments.
Recently, the Research Center for Puerto Rican Folklore, Inc. at Casa Paoli inaugurated the first in a series of events related to the traveling exhibition of replicas of traditional musical instruments of Puerto Rico, titled "Rescue from Oblivion." The inaugural exhibition opened at the library of the Museo de Arte de Ponce and included several replicas—cuatros, tiples dolientes, tiples requintos, and mandonuas—of traditional musical instruments of our country. The originals had been acquired by and sent to Germany from Puerto Rico in 1888 and then to Washington, D.C. in 1898.
For more information Click here.
Additional Features
RESCUED FROM OBLIVION
We seek to bring into public view the traditional musical instruments of the past that have disappeared from the sight and memory of the peoples of the Caribbean. Three experts in performance, craftsmanship, and musical history have dedicated themselves to discovering and creating replicas of lost and forgotten instruments once heard in many of the country's cities and fields, as well as undertaking the effort to recreate the music and production techniques of these instruments.
WORKSHOPS
Since its founding, the Center has dedicated itself to researching, enriching, and disseminating Puerto Rican culture, as made evident by the substantial number of events and publications carried out by the Center. One of our most important objectives is to raise awareness of and provide our youth and adults with the opportunity to learn to construct the traditional instruments of our country. To that end, the Center organizes the William Cumpiano Workshop at our headquarters in Ponce. There, with the support of the Flamboyán Fund for the Arts, workshops are offered, through in-person or virtual formats, in instrument-making as well as screen printing, and engraving on wood and linoleum.
ANTONIO PAOLI AND FAMILY
Casa Paoli, headquarters of the Research Center for Puerto Rican Folklore, Inc., is a historic building located in Ponce's Historic Zone. It is where the renowned operatic tenor, Antonio Paoli (1871-1946), was born and lived until the age of twelve. Paoli was "the first Puerto Rican to achieve international recognition in the performing arts" and "one of the most outstanding opera singers of all time." View our page dedicated to Antonio Paoli by clicking on his image above.
COMMEMORATIVE COMMISSION CELEBRATING SESQUICENTENNIAL
OF ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN
PUERTO RICO (1873-2003)
The Center brought together a group of leaders, artists, musicians, humanists, and scholars for a Commemorative Commission of the Sesquicentennial of the Abolition of Slavery in Puerto Rico.
The Commission created an events program that included talks, concerts, seminars, exhibitions, publications, and symposiums on the contribution of Afro-descendant Puerto Ricans to the arts, education, economy, historical research, cinema, radio, television, politics, literature, and other fields of knowledge.
LARGE COMMEMORATIVE BANNER CREATED FOR CENTER
A large, informational banner commemorating the sesquicentennial (150 years) of the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico was created for the Center by the renowned New York visual artist Perla de Leon, which was installed on a wall visible from the main streets of the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico.
The banner displayed to passersby dates of importance in the history of slavery and its abolition in Puerto Rico, along with important archival documents related to slavery, as well as portraits of twenty prominent Puerto Ricans of African descent.
LISTEN TO OUR DIRECTOR discuss the reasons for the creation of the commission during a radio interview on WPAB Radio 550 Ponce.