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Cape Verdean Museum moving to Pawtucket – into a home long in need of new life
The Cape Verdean Museum identifies as the only museum solely dedicated to celebrating the history and culture of Cape Verde and Cape Verdean Americans.
The museum has been visited by many Cape Verdean government officials including President Pedro Verona Pires, First Lady Adelcia Pires, Prime Minister Jose Maria Neves and Cape Verde’s Ambassador to the United States Fatima Veiga.
In September of this year it began construction to move from its current location in a strip mall store front on Waterman Avenue in East Providence to the intersection of Prospect Street and Beverage Hill – across the street from the Prospect Heights Housing Project, where a community bar was located for generations, with a rather unique outer design.
Volunteers from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island manage the organization, and it is run completely by dedicated volunteers. Their goal is to preserve and celebrate the culture of Cape Verde and Cape Verde-Americans.
The grand opening of their current location was held on October 8, 2005. The museum opened permanently for regular visitors on March 25, 2006. The current President and original founder of the Cape Verdean Museum Exhibit is Denise Oliveira.
Their new home will allow them to expand collections, host student groups, display more of the collections they own, and host special events.
They have started a GoFundMe effort and have raised over $11,000 towards a $100,000 goal. The RI State Council on the Arts granted them a $9,000 grant in December of 2020. Other funding will be needed to support the launch of the project and its sustainability.
To learn more about the Cape Verdean Museum, listen to Denise, here (click on link below photo):
Museum today, left – and tomorrow, right:
The building is at 617 Prospect Street, Pawtucket and sold in April of 2021 for $175,000 – it was listed as a 5 bedroom, 4 bedroom single family home. Our architectural writer described the original construction as this: a building erected around a colonial house with a half-timbered Tudor front and sides from a modernist warehouse circa 1950. Sure the neighborhood will be eager to see the finished revision.
If you have something you would like to preserve and share with the community, please Contact us. They are particularly interested in items relating to migration from the 1920s to the 1950s, such as passports and immigration documents.
