El Museo de los Santos is a project sponsored by Caribbean Consulting to promote the appreciation, understanding and preservation of Santos and the history of Santeros in Puerto Rico.

Caribbean Consulting works with hotels, hotel associations and tourist boards to increase business by making potential guests aware of great 'undiscovered' resorts and destinations.

As a newcomer to Puerto Rico in 2000, I was fascinated by the rich tradition of the Santeros and Santos, but surprised by the lack of any central location where you could find information or even see a collection of Santos.

After meeting several collectors, Santeros and scholars - it seemed that there was lots of information, but no central resource to tell the 'story of Puerto Rico's Santos'. I attended the annual Encuentro de Santeros in Orocovis several times, but this is primarily a market for contemporary Santos and only takes place once a year without much publicity outside of the circle of collectors and scholars.

I realized that Santos had the same challenge as our clients at Caribbean Consulting - great products that were 'undiscovered' by many people who would be very interested if they only knew about them.

Whenever I mentioned Santos to friends of tourists, they immediately wanted to hear more. Rather than repeating information and persuading friends to let me bring friends to see their collections - I decided to start accumulating information with an online museum and El Museo de los Santos was created.

The online collection represents Santos taken from the collections of several friends who have also provided information about the Santos or requested permission from authors to reprint their information. This is a part-time project which relies on volunteers, so please be patient as we build the site. Although not all the santos in the online collection are in the same location, we can arrange a viewing of many of the santos  with advance notice.  Please let us know if you have a particular interest so that we can contact the appropriate collectors.

If you have an interesting item you would like to display in the museum, please send a .jpeg photo, dimentions and any information about the Santero and/or significance of the Santo to rholm@caribbeaanconsulting.com - please make sure to include a note which gives us online rights for the material. If you have videos - please post them on YouTube and just send the link (we can then embed the YouTube feed). 

Several people have requested that we put them in touch with someplace that they can purchase or sell Santos - so I am also starting an experimental online art gallery at www.galeriadelossantos.com as an alternative to the uncertainty of buying Santos on Ebay, the limited selection in souvineer shops or being intimidated by upscale art galleries, I'm not sure if there will be any interest by either buyers or sellers, but anyone will be invited to participate.

The initial response to our protype website was so positive that we have now launched this version with improved photography, lots of room for information, links to other websites and online articles plus some new interactive media.  

If you have any comments, please feel free to let me know.

Richard Holm
Caribbean Consulting
San Juan, Puerto Rico
rholm@caribbeanconsulting.com