25848: Minsky: (announce) exhibition in Camp Perrin,Presidents of Haiti: glory and misery (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "tminsky@ix.netcom.com" <tminsky@ix.netcom.com>


Exposition Opens in Camp Perrin, Haiti
Presidents of Haiti: glory and misery / Chef D?Etat en Haiti: gloire et
miseres

By Tequila Minsky



The highly regarded seminary and secondary school Mazenod in Camp Perrin,
Haiti is hosting an exhibition: Presidents of Haiti --from 1804-1986.  The
result of 3 years of research by Michele Oriol, the exhibition is a series
of posters of photographs and other graphic images along with information
on each of the 38 presidents, their family, personal profile, family tree,
the men surrounding them and each one?s accomplishments.

336 images are included in the series of posters.  ?We Haitians know our
presidents but don?t have knowledge of the 200 years we spent as a people,?
Oriol observes.  "When Estime was president of Haiti  (1946-1950) he made a
law: foreigners don?t have the right to teach Haitian history. We had a
political ideology to expel foreigners.? This led to an intellectual
isolation.

Oriol adds, ?There is no chair of Haitian history in the University. We
want the public to see the Presidents as people, what they tried to do,
what they accomplished.?

20 years ago Michele Oriol and Patrick Vilaire founded a foundation for
visual documentation and research, its name in French: Fondation pour la
Recherche Iconographique  et Documentaire.  They collect visual images and
produce materials for teaching, exhibitions, and books.  Four books have
been published thus far.

In 2001 the Foundation produced a workbook in French for 5th and 6th  grade
children, History and Civic Education, which covers the time of the Indians
through 1804 independence.  The second workbook, incorporating research
from this poster exhibition, will be published within a year.

For this exhibition  Michele collected  anecdotal information along with
images, ?We have to find people with pictures.  They speak about the
photos, it?s their uncle or family member.?  Voicing her motivation, ?We
want the public to see the Presidents as people, what they tried to do,
what they accomplished.?

Why did they stop with 1986?  ?We?ve lived through these year?s of history
and it is hard to be objective,? Oriol explains.

Patrick Vilare,  a researcher who helped organize the Smithsonian Folklife
Festival in Washington DC last year and was named a Smithsonian Research
Fellow, describes the Foundation?s goals, ?We collect documents and help
families understand how important these documents are and we encourage the
protection of these documents. We attract a lot of people to see our
exhibitions.?

President Geffrant created the National Archives in Port-au-Prince during
his tenure from 1860-68.  Oriol did much research there last year.  This
year there were many threats against the Archives that are located in one
of the Port-au-Prince embattled neighborhoods, Bel Air.  The building has
been under fire and a Molotov cocktail was thrown at it but thankfully thus
far nothing has been damaged.  Research for the current exhibition extended
to family collections  also included foreign country archives including
those in the States.

The Foundation is traveling the show everywhere in the country and using
the occasion of the small town patron saint festivals as an opportunity to
exhibit. The ?fetes? attract a lot of people.

Camp Perrin is the third venue for this traveling exhibition (following
Port-au-Prince and
Corail) and it coincides with Fete St. Anne which is being celebrated this
week.  Camp Perrin has 65,000 people in 28 localities and is one hour north
of Les Cayes, venue for the next exhibition during their fete, Day of the
Assumption.   In October when school opens, the exhibit will travel to the
larger cities.

An accompanying CD of the exhibition is for sale and Oriol and Vilare plan
the posters to be published as a coffee table book.*  They want the
exhibition to also travel to large Haitian communities in the United States
and Canada.
----

*[Minsky notes: The exhibition is in French, any Corbetteers know a
publisher that might like to publish the coffee table book  bi-lingually?]


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