Presidential Initiatives

Puerto Rico

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Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is home to a thriving arts and humanities sector, despite years of disinvestment by government and private philanthropy and a recent series of natural and human-made disasters. It is also a place where many of the Foundation’s strategic priorities intersect in complex and interdisciplinary ways.

Our Puerto Rico initiative aims to sustain and enrich the archipelago’s vibrant cultural, knowledge, and memory ecosystems and the individuals who work within them. In collaboration with dedicated partners in Puerto Rico and its diaspora, our grantmaking activities are designed to redress past underfunding, address urgent needs, and build sustainable artistic, educational, intellectual, cultural, and archival infrastructure for the future.

Through our work in Puerto Rico and its diaspora, we seek to:

Create sustainable cultural opportunities

Develop opportunities for artists, curators, scholars, educators, archivists, conservators, and other culture workers who want to live and work in Puerto Rico to do so, and to circulate their work beyond the archipelago.

Build capacity

Strengthen local and diasporic arts, culture, and humanities organizations through the development of infrastructure and shared administrative services, and provide operational support and professional training.

Elevate voices and fortify networks

Lift up the scholarly and cultural contributions of previously marginalized voices in Puerto Rico and its diaspora and strengthen networks between and among them.