SAN JUAN.- As a celebration of its 25th anniversary, the Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art has organized a wide and rich exhibition of its permanent collection. The show, titled Face-offs/Takeovers: 25 years of the Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art, presents around 100 outstanding artworks that belong to the permanent collection of the MAC and that are milestones in the recent history of contemporary art in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Being the groundwork of the long repertoire of exhibitions and activities held at the MAC during its 25 years of existence, the permanent collection is the material evidence of the work of our artists and of the Museum’s eventful endeavor. Thanks to this collection, the MAC has contributed and still contributes to preserving, fostering, documenting, commenting upon, and educating on the present state of art, while propitiating the new visions that will inspire the art to come.

The exhibition, curated by Lilliana Ramos Collado and designed by Marianne Ramírez Aponte, is organized in three thematic sections: in earnest/in jest, human/inhuman, and material/immaterial. These sections seek to enable a conversation among works made with diverse techniques whose proposals evince, in a deliberate manner and in more than one sense, diverse face-offs with tradition, and that in many ways have sought to push tradition over in the always problematic relay-race of art.

Given the wide temporal and numerical spread of the collection, the MAC has taken the opportunity to perform an “archaeology” of the subject matters, the techniques, the supports and the materials, as well as the aesthetic experiences present in the collection to, examine the progress of contemporary art while paying heed to the newest proposals. Since the work of today’s artists frequently clashes against institutionalized notions of art, in this exhibition, the MAC has endeavored to bridge the conceptual gap between the new and challenging aesthetic experiences brought forth by the new art, and an ever more enthusiastic spectator. Ruptured continuities and constant ruptures have been the essential pivotal points in the curatorial and design work in this show that intends to pose the question for the contemporary, its traits, its origins, its emblems, and its continued and urgent developments.

Face-offs/Takeovers: 25 years of the Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art runs through September 26, 2010.