Museo de Arte y Diseño de Miramar / MADMi

MADMi is an interactive space that aspires to generate ambitious, relevant projects that foster art-making and creativity, and have a positive impact on the community.

The museum —made possible by the generosity of the Eduardo Méndez Bagur Foundation and Titín Foundation— is housed in the Pink House or “Casa Rosada” at 607 Calle Cuevillas in the Miramar community of San Juan.

The curatorial focus of MADMi in the decorative arts, design, and the visual arts stems from the furnishings and objects bequeathed by the owner of the house, Eduardo Méndez Bagur, and the role the house played as a residence and studio for distinguished Puerto Rican artists such as Lorenzo Homar, Juan Ramón Velázquez, Ada Bobonis, Aarón Salabarrías, and Guillermo Calzadilla.

MADMi’s intention is to have a meaningful impact on the visitor experience. Understanding that art and culture stimulate social wellbeing and economic growth, we aspire to generate ambitious and relevant projects that will make a beneficial and quantifiable difference in and around our community.

Drawing inspiration from the purity of geometry and the tendency toward stylization and streamlining, and reasoning that the order imposed by good design was essential for transforming society and bringing about positive social change, designers began to produce objects distinguished by the beauty of their design and manufacture.

MADMi’s permanent collection shows examples of the stylization that characterized the Modernist aesthetic, including work by Puerto Rican designers like Duncan del Toro and Lorenzo Homar.

The selection of objects represents the various aesthetic schools that have influenced a new generation of local designers and their use of methods, media, and materials, as well as a wide variety of creative processes, from craft-based to the newest technologies.

Duncan del Toro's career was guided by a commitment to helping develop an industry of Puerto Rican design, to using local materials in the manufacture of designed goods, and to forging an aesthetic attuned to the values of life in modern Puerto Rico. Del Toro’s designs —many, perhaps, ideas left unrealized— bear witness to his creativity and ambition.

After her arrival on the island in 1965, Ferrer joined the local art scene and took an active part in commercial galleries and local cultural institutions. Despite having a prolific career in Puerto Rico (as reviews in local newspapers, reference books, and catalogs of exhibits attest), Ferrer’s work was largely forgotten when she moved to California in the mid-seventies.

The exhibit proposed a critical analysis of this pioneering artist’s work, which early in her career, in the 1960s, showed a marked influence of ArtBrut, or marginal art. In the 1970s, Ferrer produced her most sophisticated work: immersive, multi-sensory installations that embodied the female experience in the public and private spheres and confronted gender roles, sexual liberation, body politics, and the history of art itself.

With the support of the Flamboyán for the Arts Fund, we invited artist and community leader Edgardo Larregui to head the project we called MIRA EL GANDUL 2020 — “LOOK AT GANDUL 2020” — through which, for a full year, we taught members of the community design and horticultural skills that encouraged talent and stimulated the creation of microbusinesses.