Haitian museum builds steam

The Haitian Heritage Museum is, for now, boxed in antioxidant cardboard in a climate-controlled storage locker.

It includes 20 vibrant paintings and pieces of hand-carved folk art that will one day hang in a 25,000-square-foot building scheduled to break ground in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood later this year.

Eveline Pierre and Serge Rodrigue, the museum’s founders and only full-time staff, hope to build a permanent collection of about 1,000 items chronicling the Haitian diaspora, especially in the United States, and the traditions they brought to their new homes.

The two are of Haitian descent, having lived most of their lives in southern Florida. Pierre is in arts and entertainment management and Rodrigue is in construction management. They worked together in 2003 on plans to commemorate Haiti’s Bicentennial in the Miami area the following year, and both felt something was missing from the celebration.

“There was no monumental symbol of Haitian history and culture, no readily accessible public record or storehouse of the contributions of Haitian people to society,” Rodrigue said.

The museum project developed from there.

The two have largely sought new acquisitions through word of mouth and at speaking engagements and fundraisers. To date, they have raised about $180,000 and haven’t specified an ultimate fundraising goal.

As they seek more artifacts, they find that some issues get lost in migration -- efforts at proper preservation and documentation proving authenticity, among them.

“A lot of the history of the country really lives with the inhabitants of this country. They take it with them,” Rodrigue said. “These things go down through the generations. Grandmothers put it in a paper bag and, because they know the value of these things, pass it down to their kids.”

The museum’s nascent collection includes a wooden bust of a woman in African dress with wire earrings; bright, voodoo-themed paintings by Andre Pierre, considered one of Haiti’s greatest painters; a painted wooden screen that was commissioned for a Miami department-store window display in the 1970s; and artwork painted on boards used in home construction that Haitian artists worked with when they couldn’t afford canvases, Pierre said.

Also promised, Pierre said, are pieces of a wooden freighter that ran aground on Key Biscayne in 2002 with more than 200 Haitians aboard. The museum also seeks books, film footage, stamps and military memorabilia.

Briefly unpacking the artwork on a recent afternoon, Pierre and Rodrigue recalled some of the items they wished they had -- letters written by Haitian soldiers overthrowing their French colonial masters and documents signed by Toussaint L’Ouverture, one of the leaders of the slave rebellion that led to Haiti’s independence in 1804. The would-be donor broke contact when asked to prove their authenticity.

By weeding out artifacts looted or traded on the black market during Haiti’s many changes of government, the Haitian Heritage Museum hopes to avoid having to return items once their true histories become known.

Some acquisitions will have to wait until the Haitian Heritage Museum opens a secure building with more space. A historian has offered his collection of Haitian coins for an exhibit the founders plan to call “The Riches of Haiti,” to contrast with Haiti’s image as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Until then, “he’s in Haiti. So’s the stuff, because it’s very valuable,” Rodrigue said.

Marcia Zerivitz, chief curator and founding executive director of the Jewish Museum of Florida in Miami Beach, said prospective artifacts should not necessarily be rejected for lack of historical documentation.

“I would take it anyway. History starts somewhere,” she said. “The Jews have had to move, after having been slaughtered and persecuted everywhere. Whoever owns the item, the history starts with them.”