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This series documents an extensive research field research project on the cultural traditions of South Americans in the Miami metropolitan area. Though Miami’s South American community grew rapidly between the 1980s and the 2000s, their expressive traditions had previously been the subject of relatively little documentary work. Fieldwork conducted by the Museum during 2001 and 2002 by the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum) examined three of the largest South American groups in Miami: Colombians, Venezuelans, and Peruvians, focusing on music, which proved to be the most public and symbolically charged form of expression in all three communities. Musical genres documented include bambucos, música llanera, vallenato, cumbia, papayera, joropos, música andina, música criolla, parranda, gaita. Researchers Martha Ellen Davis, Nathalia Franco, and Dorian Bermudez recorded extensive commentary on relationships between musical traditions and the experience of migration. The project was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Materials include: photographic images; audiocassette tape recordings of musical performances and interviews; and videocassette tape recordings of musical performances. Note: this series includes recordings for which HistoryMiami Museum does not hold copyright.

Additional digital formats of audio files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.

Proposals, drawings, plans and feasibility studies submitted to the City of Miami for the development of a mega marina with compatible mixed uses for Watson Island.

Published reports, slides, film footage, digital images and data files. Includes interviews with historians, archaeologists and community leaders.

This series contains materials related to a traveling exhibition—“The Scholar and the Collector: Fernando Ortiz, Los Instrumentos de la Música Afrocubana, and the Howard Collection of Percussion Instruments”—displayed at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum) in 2000 in collaboration with InterAmericas (Society of Arts and Letter of the Americas), the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum (CAFAM), and the Smithsonian Institution. The exhibition focused on the relationship between Fernando Ortiz’s music scholarship and the musical instrument collection of the Joseph H. Howard family, both of which are concerned with the relationships between African musical traditions and related traditions in the Americas, particularly African, Cuban, and Haitian percussion traditions. Materials include: an exhibition catalog containing photographs and essays; audiocassette tape recordings of audio components of the exhibition, including musical demonstrations and a 1965 interview with Fernando Ortiz; videocassette tape and audio compact disc (CD) recordings of lectures by Fernando Ortiz, interviews with Victoria Howard and María Fernanda Ortiz Herrera, and marketing video for the exhibition in VHS and VHS-C formats.

Additional digital formats of audio, image, and project report files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.

This series documents a proposed research project on calypso music conducted by Stephen Stuempfle, then Director of the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum). The project, based on years of research by Stuempfle, was intended to offer the first holistic view of calypso’s international history through an online exhibition, a traveling museum exhibition, and public conferences. Highlights include rare musical recordings, as well as interviews and consultation meeting with calypso icon Ray Funk. Materials include: research documents and grant proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH); audiocassette tape recordings of commercial and broadcast musical performances (several contributed by Kenneth Bilby) and documentary features; audio compact discs (CDs) of musical performances and interviews; and videocassette tape recordings of musical performances, interviews, and television broadcasts.

Additional digital formats of audio files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.

This series consists of documents related to a project in which a group of high school students of Indo-Caribbean descent living in South Florida conducted field work in their community using photography and video. Since the 1980s, thousands of East Indians from Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, and Jamaica settled in South Florida. They continued to practice Indo-Caribbean cultural traditions, while also adjusting to an American way of life. Throughout 1999, ten high school students from the Indo-Caribbean community conducted a year-long project in collaboration with the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum) and the Documentary Unit at the University of Miami to use photography and video, which co-produced the project. The students were taught how to use cameras and camcorders, they then documented cultural activities in their community with a focus on Hindu worship and celebrations. Events documented included puja worship services, weddings, interviews, and the Phagwa festival. The project was supported by a grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Community Folklife Program. Materials include: grant-related documents including proposals and reports; photographic images; an audiocassette tape recording of the student’s responses to a rough cut of a documentary video; and videocassette tapes of original footage and a final version of a documentary based on the project in VHS and Betacam SP formats.

Additional digital formats of audio, image, and project report files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.

This series documents a field research project and exhibition on Afro-Cuban Orisha Arts in Miami at the turn of the millennium. Since the 1960s, Miami has been at the crossroads of the Americas and emerged as one of the major centers of the Afro-Cuban Orisha religion—also known as Regla de Ocha, Yoruba religion, or Santería—and its array of traditional arts. A local religious community of over 100,000 practitioners is served by numerous specialists who produce beadwork, garments, cloth panels, metalwork, woodcarvings, altars, musical instruments, paintings, and other art forms. These works of art are expressions of spiritual devotion, inspired by the many orishas (deities) of the religion’s pantheon, such as Elegbá, Ogún, Shangó, Obatalá, Yemojá, and Oshún. Though Orisha artists are highly respected within the religious community, their work is not well known or understood by the wider public, and the exhibition explored their creativity in the context of the aesthetics and symbolism of their tradition.

On display at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami) February 23-June 23, 2001, the exhibition was curated by Museum Director Stephen Stuempfle and co-curated by Miguel “Willie” Ramos, Ezequiel Torres, and Nelson Mendoza. Additionally, a website was created for the exhibition (http://historymiamiarchives.org/online-exhibits/orisha/orisha_start.htm). The project received major funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and additional support was received from the Miami-Dade County Cultural Affairs Council and the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners.

Materials include: field notes, grant applications and reports, exhibit-related permissions and documents; ephemera; photographic prints, contact sheets, 35mm slides, negatives, and logs; audiocassette tape recordings of lectures, roundtable discussions, interviews, musical performances, and audio components of the exhibition; digital images on a Zip 100 disc; and VHS and Hi8 MP video tapes, including video components of the exhibition.

Additional digital formats of audio, video, and image files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.

This series consists of documents generated by the “Florida Folklife: Traditional Arts from the Panhandle to the Keys” project, which included extensive fieldwork and culminated in an exhibition on display at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum) between September 18, 1988 and January 3, 1999. The exhibition subsequently traveled to four other museums in Florida throughout 1999 and 2000: the Orange County Historical Society (Orlando); the Museum of Florida History (Tallahassee); Museum of Science and History (Jacksonville); and the Tampa Bay History Center (Tampa). The project also produced a 104-page book—Florida Folklife: Traditional Arts in Contemporary Communities, edited by Stephen Stuempfle—which is included in the series. The book includes essays by Stuempfle and Tina Bucuvalas, then presents brief profiles (including photographs) of 84 artists whose respective traditions are organized into four categories: Maritime, Marsh, and Ranching Traditions; Domestic and Decorative Traditions; Ritual and Festive Traditions; and Musical Traditions. Artist profiles—researched and written by more than a dozen fieldworkers—include: Nick Toth (Diving Helmets), Billy Davis (Spurs), Ethel Santiago (Sweetgrass Baskets), Manuel Vega (Bridcages and Kites), Honey Perlman (Ketubot), Bahamas Junkanoo Revue (Junkanoo Costumes), and Romeo Ragbir (Tassa Drums). Materials include: a copy of Florida Folklife; photographic 35mm slides; and audiocassette tape recordings of interviews, musical performances, a radio program promoting the exhibition, and audio amplified in the exhibition.

Additional digital formats of audio and image files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.

Audio recordings, photographs, concert posters, promotional materials and newspaper articles. Also includes a copy of Sacred Steel; inside an African American Steel Guitar Tradition, by Robert L. Stone.

This series documents a seminal field research project and exhibition on the percussion traditions practiced by Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, Trinidadians and Bahamians living in Miami. Traditions documented include Bahamian Junkanoo, Trinadadian Steel Pan and Tassa, Haitian Vodou Music, Indo-Caribbean Dholak ensembles, Jamaican Nyabingi, Puerto Rican Bomba and Plena, and Cuban Rumba and Batá. In the second half of the 20th century, Miami was transformed from a predominantly tourist-oriented southern city into an international metropolis in which more than one-third of the population is of Caribbean descent. One expression of this transformation was the proliferation of nightclubs and radio stations that feature Caribbean popular music styles, such as Salsa, Merengue, Reggae, Soca and Konpa. But Miami’s Caribbean musical heritage extended far beyond well-known, popular styles. In more secluded settings and at special festive occasions in Caribbean neighborhoods, the sounds of an immense variety of drums and other percussion instruments constituted complex musical languages which, though often immediately appealing to outsiders, require years to fully learn and understand. In many cases, these musical languages are interrelated with systems of religious or philosophical knowledge. Researchers Steve Stuempfle, Joanne Hyppolite, Alberto de la Reguera, and Dawn Batson spent approximately one year conducting fieldwork beginning in March 1996. Partial funding came from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources. The Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now HistoryMiami Museum) exhibition of the project was on display May 21-October 26, 1997 and accompanied by educational programming, several publications, demonstrations in the museum, seminars and performances at the Museum and North Miami Beach Performing Arts Theater, and a compact disc (CD) recording. Materials include: documents related to project planning and grants, including field work notes, applications, letters of support, reports, memoranda, inventories, budgets, scripts, exhibition labels, promotional materials, and ephemera; recording logs and permission forms; copies of the CD; press clippings; 35mm photographic slides; audiocassette tape recordings of interviews (in English, Spanish, and Kreyol) and musical performances with attendant notes; and videocassette tape recordings of instrument-making and both public and private ritual performances.

Additional digital formats of audio and image files available: Records were digitized 2015 – 2016. Users must contact staff ahead of visit for access.

Annual reports, News@11 (the official publication for judges and employees) and Evolving Justice (commemorative magazine highlighting the Circuit's 100 anniversary). Also include 2 directories of expert witnesses and consultants for the S. E. United States.

The collection includes photographs, video footage, art work, and ephemera pertaining to the life of the balseros, or Cuban rafters, during their stay in the refugee camp located at Guantanamo Bay U. S. Naval Base (Gitmo) in Cuba.

The photographs capture everyday life of the balseros, including: objects they built, art they created, the base's exterior and environs, families reuniting and religious and social gatherings. Of note are photographs of school children, as well as artworks created by them.

Topics covered include: Camp Life, Recycling Creativity, Balsero interviews, Children and School and Art Life in the Camps.

Most contact sheets and images are captioned. Written and printed documents are mostly in Spanish, with some English translation.

Photographer John Gillan's views of the Cape Florida Lighthouse, Biscayne Bay from the Barnacle, Barnacle boathouse, Biltmore Hotel, Miami City Cemetery, Charles Deering Estate, Spanish Monastery, Anderson's Corner, Prado Entrance, and the Dade County Courthouse from the Metro-Dade Cultural Center Plaza.

Zines covering a wide range of topics including Punk Rock music, coming of age stories, the everyday struggles of young Hispanic American women, poetry, Little Haiti, and architecture, as well as urban and landscape perspectives.

Aerial and ground views of property destruction caused by Hurricane Andrew in South Dade.