Making Home Saturday Series: Systems Shaping Our Understanding of Home (Session 1), Unruly Subjects, Sofía Gallisá Muriente and Natalia Lassalle-Morillo in conversation with archeologist Reniel Rodríguez Ramos 

The Making Home Saturday Series is a quarterly program that pairs special guests with participants from Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial. The program’s two-part sessions include conversations on exhibition-related themes, including systems, belonging, memory, care, and building, as well as the contemporary concepts of home related to race, class, migration, climate, and technology.

In our next Making Home Saturday Series, join us to learn more about the systems shaping our understanding of home through a deeper look at two Triennial installations, Unruly Subjects by artists Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo and Carlos Soto and Contrast Form Gestalt by multidisciplinary collective CFGNY. Both projects probe ideas and ethics of institutional homes, like Cooper Hewitt, and their practices of acquiring and displaying objects from abroad.

For Session 1, Gallisá Muriente and Lassalle-Morillo, known for their research-based practices, will discuss their commission for the Triennial, Unruly Subjects, which examines the Smithsonian Institution as a home for Puerto Rican cultural heritage. In 2022, as Smithsonian Artist Research Fellows, they gained access to the Teodoro Vidal Collection of Puerto Rican History at the National Museum of American History, and to Indigenous objects from Puerto Rico collected by Jesse Walter Fewkes at the National Museum of Natural History. Fewkes was a Smithsonian anthropologist sent to Puerto Rico as the Spanish–American War (1898) ended to collect Indigenous objects from the US’s new “possession.” Vidal was a Puerto Rican government official and self-taught historian whose gift of more than 3,000 works from the archipelago constituted one of the largest donations in Smithsonian history.

The artists will be joined by Puerto Rican archeologist Reniel Rodríguez to discuss systems of institutional ownership, collecting, and exchange and their work uncovering the materials and design strategies used to protect and house Smithsonian objects.

Learn more about Session 2 of the Making Home Saturday Series.

Saturday Series Discount: Purchase a ticket for the first program and receive 50% off the second program. Please add both programs to your cart from each event listing or by selecting Back to Calendar from your cart. The discount will be automatically applied. Note that the ticket types and quantities must match for the discount to be valid.

SPEAKERS 

A woman with short dark hair wearing a white blouse smiles. The background is lush green foliage.

Sofía Gallisá Muriente employs text, image, and archive as medium and subject, proposing mechanisms for remembering and reimagining. Her work has been exhibited in Documenta, Kassel; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. She was a Latinx Artist Fellow in 2023 and a recipient of the United States Artist Fellowship in 2024.

A woman with long dark hair wearing a black blouse. The background is blurred trees and foliage. The photo is in black and white.Natalia Lasalle-Morillo’s research-based practice reconstructs memory and history through a transdisciplinary and participatory approach. Her films, installations, and theater works have been presented at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan; Amant, New York; Videobrasil Biennial, São Paulo; and Redcat, Los Angeles. In 2023 she was the Mellon Foundation Bridging the Divides Fellow. She lives in Puerto Rico.

A man with a long beard wearing a blue shirt smiles. The background is a light brown and white geometric patterned tapestry.Reniel Rodríguez Ramos holds an MA from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. from the University of Florida. He conducted post-doctoral research at the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University in the Netherlands. He serves as a Professor in the Social Sciences Program of the Universidad de Puerto Rico in Utuado, where he directs the División de Investigaciónes Arqueológicas de la Montaña, and is a member of the Sociedad Arqueológica del Otoao. His main focus has been the study of technological traditions in the Antilles and the interaction dynamics registered during precolonial times in the Greater Caribbean. He is the author of Rethinking Puerto Rican Precolonial History (2010, University of Alabama Press) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology (2013, Oxford University Press).

AccessibiliTy & What to Expect

  • Format: The program will begin with a brief welcome, then the speakers will engage in a moderated conversation. It will end with an optional Q&A with the audience.  
  • About the space: This program will take place in Cooper Hewitt’s Lecture Room on the ground floor of the museum. It is fully wheelchair accessible. Theater-style seating is available. There is an accessible restroom on the same floor. Read more about  accessibility at Cooper Hewitt.
  • Accommodations: The program will take place in Spanish with simultaneous translation into English via headphones and will have live CART captioning in English. If we can provide additional services to support your participation, email us at CHEducation@si.edu or let us know when you register. Please make your request as far in advance as possible—preferably at least ten days before the program date.
  • Recording: The program will be recorded and posted on Cooper Hewitt’s YouTube channel within two weeks.

Support 

Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial is presented in collaboration with Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. This project received federal support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum; the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the National Museum of the American Latino; the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center; and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Generous support is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Support is also provided by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation; Edward and Helen Hintz; re:arc institute; the Keith Haring Foundation; the Lemberg Foundation; Maharam; and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.