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 Joseph Middlebrooks papers includes many of his research documents, administrative files, plaques, awards, drafts, development plans, architectural drawings, urban and development reports, portfolios, clippings, correspondence, audio-visual materials, and other materials related to his life's work.
Fonkoze consists of a family of three organizations: Fonkoze Financial Services (Sèvis Finansye Fonkoze (SFF), S.A.), Fonkoze Foundation (Fondasyon Kole Zepòl), and Fonkoze USA, all of which are dedicated to providing financial assistance and other kinds of support to the Haitian community in Haiti and in the United States. The records contain an overview of their organizations' goals and initiatives over the past two decades, including documents, newsletters, periodicals, clippings, reports, photographs, and audio-visual materials.
enFAMILIA, Inc., the organization behind Art in Action, was created to provide Art education and Educational programs to help improve and preserve family life. Since its incorporation in 2000, enFAMILIA has worked in collaboration with forty-two (42) groups that include faith-based organizations, social service agencies, academic and art institutions. These partnerships have allowed enFAMILIA to provide over 240 school children with art education annually, as well as 1,500 adults with marriage and family education training.
Professional artists who have graduated or are attending universities throughout the United States such as, Juilliard, University of Miami, and New York University, among others, come to Homestead for two months in the summer and volunteer as teachers for the Art in Action summer camp. The camp is intended to recognize and foster local young talented children by opening up opportunities for their future, providing avenues of self-expression, and stimulating thoughts about issues of social impact. The Camp encompasses a diverse and intense curriculum of Music, Dance, Poetry, Visual Arts, Drama, Film and Photography.
The collection includes oral histories from Directors and Founders of local community organizations, students in the Arts in Action program, as well as immigrants to South Florida.
“In his adopted home of South Florida he imaged a cuisine that would wed the raw and rustic powers of the diverse immigrant cultures that comprise the population there to the classic techniques of gastronomy that have survived the test of time and trends. The revolution for a new style of cooking was born and Norman christened it a 'New World Cuisine.'” - Norman Van Aken, Correspondence, 1993 December 2.
A 2016 MenuMasters Hall of Fame Inductee, noted restauranteur, and the first chef to use the term "fusion cuisine" in its modern definition, Norman Van Aken (1951- ) is a celebrity chef primarily known for his "New World" fusion cuisine. Drawing from the flavors and culinary traditions of Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, Asia, and Africa, his impact on the culinary arts has been internationally recognized since the start of his career. His culinary influences on Florida's own local cuisine and restaurant culture are still observable to this day, especially to those who dine nightly at his Orlando restaurant.
This collection serves as a meaningful look into his career as a chef and culinary expert, and his personal life as a man with a deep interest in his family's past and present. The Norman Van Aken papers include documents, correspondence, photographs, manuscript drafts, menus, ephemera, recipes, and more, which showcase the personal life and professional career of one of South Florida's most celebrated chefs. Researchers with an interest in gastronomy, the history of South Florida's restaurant and food culture during the 1990s-2000s, or interpersonal relationships between celebrity chefs, may find this collection useful in their studies.
This collection contains exhibit promotional materials, correspondence, periodicals, news clippings, sketchbooks, art work, photographs, audio-visual materials (VHS, CD-Rs, floppy disks, Hi8 videocassette tapes), administrative files, and other related archival materials from the local Miami artist, Karen Rifas.
