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“Posters from the Division of Community Education (DIVEDCO) of Puerto Rico, 1949-1989”

September 17, 2008 — January 18, 2009

Concourse of the S. Dillon Ripley Center

1100 Jefferson Drive, SW

Washington, D.C.

As part of the 2008 program series “Puerto Rico at the Smithsonian,” the Smithsonian Latino Center presents an exhibition of iconic Puerto Rican poster art from the late 1940s to the late 1980s.  During that period, the island’s best known graphic artists—Rafael Tufiño, Lorenzo Homar, José Meléndez Contreras, and many others—were enlisted by a government agency known as DIVEDCO (División de Educación de la Comunidad).  Their goal was to create art for social change.  Brilliant, dramatic, colorful, and didactic, these posters illustrate the island’s hopes and aspirations during the first pivotal decades of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and into the 1980s.