The Senator Mel Martinez Papers, donated to the University of Miami in 2010, consist primarily of records created during Martinez’s service as a United States Senator for Florida from 2005 to 2009. Comprised of 89 boxes, the collection includes legislative and committee files, schedules and appointments, correspondence with constituents and colleagues, speeches and floor statements, media coverage, casework files, campaign files, and administrative office records. The collection also includes photographs, audiovisual materials, and electronic records that date primarily from 1998 to 2009, but also includes scans of photographs and memorabilia relating to Martinez’s childhood in Cuba and immigration to the United States. Topics of research include American legislative history, Mel Martinez’s committee assignments, Florida projects, immigration, United States relations with Cuba, services for the elderly, and Florida’s environment, including issues relating to offshore oil drilling.
The Max Rameau papers (1992-2010) document his extensive activism for the homeless and the poor within the South Florida communities of the African diaspora. The collection will be of interest to scholars and students of movements such as the Umoja Village, the Scott-Carver Tenant Council, Miami Dade Election Reform and Take Back the Land. The materials document advocacy work on behalf of people displaced from their homes as a result of low income housing policies, gentrification, and the U.S. foreclosure crisis at the beginning of the 21st century. The Max Rameau papers also point to connections between activist groups promoting the economic rights of the diverse constituency of the African diaspora which reside in Liberty City and Little Haiti. Finally, the collection serves as a record of Mr. Rameau's work with organizations such as Brothers of the Same Mind, the Haitian American Grassroots Coalition and the Center for Pan African Development.
Formed in 1959, World Wings International is an association of former Pan Am flight attendants that now dedicates itself to charitable activities. This collection includes the administrative records of the organization as well as scrapbooks, photographs, membership and annual meetings files, correspondence and financial records.
This collection contains manuscripts, poems, journals, printouts from online chapbooks and collaborations, reviews, clippings, promotional posters and fliers, audiovisual materials, and other writings by the well-renowned and award-winning poet and writer Michael Hettich (1953-).
In October, 1963, Charles Cinnamon, public relations director of the Coconut Grove Playhouse, organized a “Left Bank” art show to publicize the opening of Irma La Douce at the Playhouse. The art show was a success and shortly thereafter the Coconut Grove Association was formed to put on an annual art festival.
In the early days, the whole community got involved, and Festival activities included an antique car parade, coconut smashing contest, concerts, and a children’s art exhibit. The Chamber of Commerce and Grove House artists helped in putting on the festival.
This juried arts festival has repeatedly been selected as the top outdoor fine arts festival in the United States, displaying the work of artists from around the world and attracting families and connoisseurs alike.
The collection contains a variety of material including correspondence, newspaper clippings, publications, press releases, administrative files, photographs, ephemera and posters from the Coconut Grove Art Festival 1963 to 2012.
A collection of papers, photographs, scrapbooks, ephemera and other objects that document various cultural scenes in Miami from the 1980s to the present, with an emphasis on the art, nightclub and drag subcultures.
Dr. Josephine Johnson is Professor Emeritus of the University of Miami School of Communication, former Chair of the Department of Communications, and alumna of the University. Her scholarship extends from W. B. Yeats to post-modern British poets. She is a recognized solo performer throughout the country.
Josephine Johnson's papers contains documents pertaining to her work in organizing a number of poetry events in the Miami area, including the Richter Library Poetry Series and poetry recitals in Beaumont Hall presented by the University of Miami Chamber Theatre, as well as personal research materials.
The collection contains videocassettes, DVDs, film reels, clippings, letters, reports, certificates, sheet music, photos, programs, manuscripts.
The Louinès Louinis Haitian Dance Theatre collection contains photographs, pamphlets, programs, ephemera, audio-visual materials (VHS and DVDs), clippings, correspondence, and other archival materials documenting the history of the theater and its founder, Louinès Louinis.
The James Merrick Smith and Hal F. B. Birchfield collection contains images, letters, news articles, DVDs and a CDs highlighting the stellar lives, careers and involvement of James Merrick Smith and Hal Birchfield in their personal, professional and civic activities.
With his vision of design becoming much more than the up-market selling of merchandise, James Merrick Smith set about the machinery of change that would make interior design a legitimate and accredited profession. This progression would require the development of education, testing, administration and implementation and then onward to governmental accreditation. James Merrick Smith was the person that not only had the vision but the guts and the charisma and good fortune to find others to help fulfill this dream of professionalization of the field of interior design. Life partner Hal Birchfield would also be a part of this much involved process. And among other facets of their lives was the matter of the highly respected professional work the office of James Merrick Smith and Hal Birchfield achieved, setting high professional standards for interior design excellence.
This collection currently contains several exhibit catalogs, mainly from the Sofía Ímber Contemporary Art Museum of Caracas (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas Sofía Ímber), DVDs featuring interviews with Sofía Ímber and covering famous Venezuelan and international artists, politicians, and writers, CD-Rs, a collection of fliers from local photography exhibitions in Coral Gables, newspaper clippings of articles either about or by Sofía Ímber or Guillermo Meneses, oversized exhibit posters, and digital correspondence and photographs stored in external hard-drives.
There will be further ongoing accruals to this collection.