Museum Gallery News

An important role for the museum gallery has been to generate changing exhibitions of art and visual material to complement the larger mission of the VCHT to “foster, protect and conserve the environmental, archaeological and cultural resources of Vieques”-- an exciting challenge, especially in 2025, the year of the 40th Anniversary of the founding of the VCHT! The "Birds of Art/Aves de Vieques" exhibition held at the Trust January 11-March 1, and now extended in modified form until May 5, met the challenge. Birds have long played a role in the history of the Trust.

In 1985 the Trust was incorporated as a non-profit 501c3. But already Betty Langhorne, one of the 2 founders of the Trust in 1984, had invited Daphne Gemmill in 1982 to do an island bird survey -- the first of her bird surveys done for the Trust every year since, with the exception of 2020. In this 40th Anniversary year she agreed to curate a "Birds of Art/Aves de Vieques" exhibition.

The exhibition is an exciting blend of art by local artists and photographers, Viequenses and gringo visitors. José Manuel Emmeric Carambot, a Viequense artist who has recently returned to Vieques to open his Galería Emeric in Isabel, presented his commanding painting of not a real bird, but of a jade amulet of an Andean Condor.

The archaelogical find of this amulet, found in the Playa Negra region of Vieques, launched a new theory of a 2000 year old Huecoid culture moving from the foothills of the Andes up the Antillean island chain to Vieques. The excitement of this discovery led to the adoption of this jade condor as the logo for the new Trust in 1985. From this commanding image one's attention turns to the left wall with Carlos Gil's large painting of a Limpkin, a Yellow-Crowned Night-Heron, and Brown Pelican in an imaginatively decorative depiction of a Vieques bay (a study for what appears at a much larger scale in his outdoor mural created at the Plaza de Artesanos in Isabel).

To either side of Carambot 's Jade Condor one sees the beautiful and realistic colors of Olga Felix's oils and watercolors, the Mangrove Cuckoo and Bananaquit (pictured on the poster), and the strikingly realistic oils of Anne Burkholder's Great White Egret. Olga, a former teacher and now avid birder on Vieques will be leading bird tours in Spanish this summer. She also shows her work at Gallería Emeric. Anne Burkholder is a well-known painter of Nebraska scenes who spends her winters in Vieques and has recently turned her precise eye to Vieques Birds.

The long right hand wall is filled with  smaller photos: in the center by Daphne Gemmill, author of Birds of Vieques Island, Puerto Rico: Status, abundance and conservation, published by Birds Caribbean, Journal of Caribbean Ornithology, Special Issue, 2015, and current VCHT board member, on the right by Eric Bermúdez, a biologist resident of Vieques and past VCHT board member, and by George Jett, retired from the USEPA and avid nature photographer, and James Doughtery, environmental law practitioner and birder, and on the far left Gustavo Mélendez, bird photographer.

See if you can spot, moving from left to right, Mélendez' American Oystercatcher (has a red bill), Gemmill's Antillean Crested Hummingbird feeding at a red hybiscus (its photo found on the cover of her Birds of Vieques Island), Bermúdez’s rare Pink Flamingo, Dougherty's Puerto Rican woodpecker, Jett's ever present Gray Kingbird with a worm in its beak.

            The opening was attended by some 70 people. There are many people to thank. Eileen Civitello who designed the exhibition poster, Claire Strautmanis who, with Ignacio Pla Lopez De Murillas and Valerie Gilette, helped hang the show, Marie Murphy of the Bird Committee team and her "docents" stationed along the walls who helped visitors identify the different birds, and of course Daphne Gemmill, guest curator of the exhibition occasionally assisted by Elizabeth Langhorne of the Museo Committee. An aside: if anyone reading this is interested in joining the Museo Committee to help determine and work on upcoming shows, please contact Elizabeth at Langhornee@ccsu.ed.

Daphne Gemill

The educational function of this exhibition was amplified by the great talk that Daphne presented on Jan. 15 in the Littleford Pavilion, reporting the recent naming of Vieques as an Important Shorebird Site.

This designation is especially important for shorebirds, presently suffering a decline of some 35-40% world-wide, that take advantage of Vieques' many lagoons, among them the Salitral behind Sun Bay. In the exhibition we see photos of these shorebirds: Great Blue Heron, Little Blue Heron, Wilson's Snipe, Black-necked Stilt, among others. The recent raising of a Motus Tower with its state-of-the-art bird-tracking technology, on the corner of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service building just inside the Vieques Wildlife Refuge, sponsored by the Trust, USFWS, the Refuge and Birds Caribbean, allows a count of birds tagged in North America to be recorded as they pass by Vieques in their yearly migrations. O

ne image that attracted the attention of Daphne's large audience was this: the flight path of the Least Sandpiper that flew straight, non-stop!, from Nova Scotia to Vieques in 2 days 11 hours, recorded by the Vieques Motus Tower.

 Accompanying Daphne's talk was a pop-up show of more bird paintings by Anne Burkholer. Sales from this and the show proper help to support the work of the Trust as it carries on its conservation work in its 40th year!