The Puerto Rican Athenaeum or Ateneo Puertorriqueño in Spanish is one of Puerto Rico’s chief cultural institutions. It was founded in 1876. The Athenaeum serves as a museum, school, library, and performance hall for the greater Puerto Rico. It hosts a number of contests, conferences, and exhibits each year, presenting the best art, literature, and music that Puerto Rico has to offer. Some say it was the first institution of higher learning in Puerto Rico in which the islands’ top minds gave free classes in their areas of expertise. The Ateneo came to life in 1876-eight years after the Grito de Lares, as a result of the deep need felt by the intellectual elite of the country to raise the educational level of their countrymen, to increase their cultural heritage, encourage and affirm liberal ideas Puerto Rican national personality. Manuel Elzaburu and Vizcarrondo was the originator and main proponent of the Ateneo during their early years. Diamond man personality, intelligence. In short: the Ateneo has been and is the center diffuser valuable cultural and patriotic concerns; bastion of our national integrity, voice alert and guidance in times of distress and danger to the country, open forum in which to express all opinions responsible, since the majority until the oppressed and persecuted.
