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.
The posters in this collection were created by students for a project answering the question "What is Queer?" The project was part of Dr. Steve Butterman's Queer Studies class at the University of Miami. The posters in the collection present a variety of visual and textual representation of the students' interpretations of what it means to be queer, ranging in focus from familial concerns and sexual health/HIV to media representation, politics, and fashion. Many of the posters discuss the history of the use of the term "queer" and question the idea of a single definition of queer.
The Agrupación Abdala collection contains materials and posters documenting the Cuban student activist group Agrupación Abdala (also known as Agrupación Estudiantil Abdala). The group was founded on January 28, 1968, as a student organization committed to fight communism and to gain the release of Cuban political prisoners.
The posters commemorate special events held by Abdala, as well as the Congresses they sponsored. The information found on the verso of each poster was provided by Edgar Garrastaza and Jaime Guiú, members of Abdala. Other materials include correspondence, conference proceedings, scripts and outlines for radio and television communications, pamphlets, and organizational statutes and by-laws.
A collection of ephemera, promotional materials, posters, signs, and correspondence pertaining to the Women's March event, which celebrates the struggle of the Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States and promotes education and initiatives in expanding voting rights to all women, regardless of age, race, income, and so on.
The papers document research into the nutritional properties of Cuban plants, which was conducted in Cuba between 1944 and 1962 by Hady López who was a member of Fundación de Investigaciones Médicas in Havana, Juan Navia and other researchers. The papers also include copies of published works on tropical anemia written by Dr. Rubén López-Toca. Materials consist of articles, booklets, reports and a poster.
Originally conceived and organized in 1925, the Coral Gables Garden Club has served the local city of Coral Gables in its planning by helping create and nurture its many gardens and beautiful landscapes. The club was founded by Eunice Peacock Merrick and Althea Merrick out of a shared love of horticulture and has grown considerably since then and maintained their commitment to civic improvement through gardening. Today, the club is composed of 150 community members who actively contribute to Coral Gables' local institutions and businesses, including providing scholarships and educational programs, as well as assisting youth-oriented gardening clubs.
Their records contain scrapbooks, meeting minutes, president papers, yearbooks, guestbooks, photographs, programs, pamphlets, news clippings, awards, ephemera, administrative documents, and other archival materials, all pertaining to the club and its various events and initiatives over the years.
The records of the Save the Alhambra Water Tower Committee document the successful mission of a local historic preservation organization to protect the Alhambra Water Tower, a Coral Gables landmark. The collection includes scrapbooks, committee records, financial documents, photographs, and minutes of meetings.
The Alhambra Water Tower, once a functional part of the Coral Gables water system, has survived time and weathering to remain an architectural symbol of the community. The Save the Alhambra Water Tower Committee raised money and awareness to contribute to the refurbishment and preservation of the historic structure.
The Borscht Film Festival is a semi-annual film festival held in Miami, Florida. The festival's mission is "to commission and showcase films by emerging artists that tell Miami stories going beyond the typical portrayal of a beautiful but vapid party town, forging the cinematic identity of the city." Their collection includes ephemera, flyers, postcards, printed materials, posters, 3D objects, and other associated items pertaining to the Borscht Film Festival.
This collection contains a wide variety of posters advertising events, political elections, travel destinations, organizations, and corporations, pertaining in particular to Florida, South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Spain, and Vietnam.
Research material from noted author and historian, Arva Moore Parks McCabe (1939-2020). Born in Miami, Florida, Arva had written countless books on Florida's eclectic history, including The Forgotten Frontier: Florida through the Lens of Ralph Middleton Munroe, Miami, the Magic City, and George Merrick, Son of the South Wind: Visionary Creator of Coral Gables. She also served as chief curator, interim director, and chair of the Coral Gables Museum.
This collection focuses heavily on George E. Merrick, Coral Gables, and other research topics used in her writings. It also features a large assortment of archival material: booklets, books, magazines, posters, photographs, negatives, pamphlets, postcards, maps, ephemera, newspapers, and guides about Miami and other notable cities and famous people related to South Florida.
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.
This collection contains a phonodisc record titled "Wallace Stevens reading his poems", copyright 1957, as well as two printed poster-sized reproductions of his poem "Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges", printed in Spring 1966.
This collection documents the nine-week worker's strike and protest by University of Miami's janitors who were a part of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) in 2006. The collection contains audio-visual materials (CDs and DVDs), correspondence, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, newsletters, posters, memos, and contracts.
