Like the lawyer she once thought she’d be, Dianne Brás-Feliciano is serious and analytical when she talks about art. When we meet for coffee to discuss the first exhibition she has seen from start to finish as Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum’s curator of modern art, she comes prepared, her black polish-tipped fingers sifting through pages of handwritten notes on a yellow legal pad. Her manner is precise, not overtly emotional, so it’s a bit surprising when she looks up and says, “This is my life’s project.”
The exhibition, Entangled in the Mangroves: Florida Everglades Through Installation, explores our inextricable connection to the Everglades ecosystem through the lens of nine contemporary South Florida-based artists. The multimedia works echo themes of environmentalism and political awareness—ideas entwined with Dianne’s life and career.
Growing up in Mayagüez, a city on the western coast of Puerto Rico, Dianne and her younger sister filled their days with beach walks and excursions with their grandparents. “[My dad’s parents] were the ones who took us traveling, to museums, to concerts, to the opera,” she says. As her interest in the arts grew, Dianne also became aware of the social, political and environmental impacts of the archipelago’s territory status. By the time she reached adulthood, the beaches of her youth were ecologically devastated by offshore developers. Though U.S. citizens, her neighbors had little voice in the laws dictating their future. Economic instability drove a mass exodus of young people seeking opportunities elsewhere.
Courtesy Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum
Ahmet Ertegün Collection artis naples
Curator Dianne Brás-Feliciano calls Entangled in the Mangroves her life’s work. Opening March 8, the show marks her first full project as the museum’s modern art curator, following earlier collaborations like Deep Cuts from the Ahmet Ertegün Collection (above).
Inspired to foster change, Dianne dove into political science studies at the University of Puerto Rico. But courses in the humanities and art theory revealed a different path to making an impact. “[I thought,] ‘I don’t want to be a lawyer,’” she says. “I can still argue, but from the perspective of the arts.” Dianne earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s in museum administration, as well as a doctorate in history from the Center for Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean in San Juan. “Usually, curators are art historians,” she says. “I’m a historian. I’m a political scientist … This is deeply integrated into what I do.”
In the years that followed, Dianne worked as an independent curator, a private collection manager and an arts writer in Puerto Rico and South Florida, where she moved in 2021. Her probative mind fueled a uniquely academic approach focused on elevating marginalized voices. To lend scholarly credence and cultural immediacy to the emotional resonance of art, she penned essays and exhibition catalogs on subjects like the expanding impact of self-identified female creators in Puerto Rico’s underground zine scene, the violence wrought on the environment by urban expansion, and the impact of 2017’s Hurricane Maria on the archipelago’s creative community.
When Dianne saw the Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum’s job listing, she was drawn to the multidisciplinary cultural center’s melding of visual and performance art, the depth of Latin American and Spanish art in the permanent collection, and the region’s strong ties to the environment. In turn, she brought to the table a commitment to broadening the institution’s audience—a major priority for museum director and chief curator Courtney A. McNeil and Artis—Naples CEO Kathleen van Bergen.
Photography by Anna Nguyen
dianne bras felicino artis naples
Dianne immerses herself in curatorial projects—from interviewing agricultural workers to exploring wilderness areas—and creates scholarly catalogs to contextualize her exhibitions. For Entangled in the Mangroves, she collaborated with the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida to ensure authentic representation of the ecosystem’s original stewards.
After joining the staff in 2023, Dianne jumped into outreach, meeting with Immokalee’s agricultural workers to gain first-person accounts of labor conditions and the irony of food insecurity among populations most responsible for putting food on American tables. The curator used her findings to supplement The Art of Food, a traveling exhibition the museum hosted in 2023, with an informational poster that added local context to the displayed works. She also developed the museum’s first Spanish-language tours. By bringing a diversity of local voices into the conversation, Dianne is helping to connect local communities and bringing new heft to the museum’s efforts to attract a wider, more engaged audience.
Her approach to Entangled in the Mangroves was no different. In addition to the curator’s frequent ventures into the Everglades with her husband and their 8-year-old son, Camilo, for inspiration, she collaborated with William J. Osceola, secretary of the Miccosukee Business Council, on all aspects of the programming. Dianne also invited him to write the introduction for the exhibit’s catalog and introduce the museum’s panel discussion on March 21. With centuries of living in the Everglades, the region’s indigenous population serves not only as an authority on the ecosystem’s history but also as a necessary component of forging a path toward its equitable, sustainable future. “There are a lot of climate change exhibitions going on recently. That’s amazing because we need to keep this conversation going. Our lives depend on it,” Dianne says. “I wanted to do this program from a completely different angle. That’s why [we’re working] with the tribes, the original stewards of the Everglades.” Rather than solely exalting nature’s beauty or highlighting its decline, Dianne curated works that speak to a sense of belonging and kinship with the environment.
The art in Entangled in the Mangroves—installations, paintings, site-specific drawings, prints, collages, photographs and videos conveying the artists’ personal experiences with nature—provides an emotional counterpoint to the historical record. For Dianne, it was critical that the voices of people who live on the land extend beyond background research. One of the works in the exhibit, a multimedia film by Reverend Houston R. Cypress, a member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida’s Otter Clan, celebrates joy in places that some see as inhospitable, lands inhabited by large reptiles and buzzing mosquitoes. His project combines oral poetry and Everglades landscapes, composed as a travelogue. He calls the five-minute film, “a love letter to the Everglades.”
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Courtesy Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum
Ahmet Ertegun collection artis naples
Environmental protection and representation are themes in Dianne’s work. For Entangled in the Mangroves, she pulled on the talents of a diverse group of artists, who share their lens on the ecosystem’s relationship to history, culture and sustainability.
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Photography by Anna Nguyen
dianne bras felicino artis naples
Naples photographer Lisette Morales, who has spent years exploring the swamp’s wilderness, also contributed lush landscape photography to the exhibition. One of her photographs, Brad Phares’ Ranch, Okeechobee, captures a burst of sun cresting the horizon, illuminating dewy strands of a delicately spun spider web. Shot during a 2021 healing prayer walk led by Miccosukee tribeswoman and activist Betty Osceola, the image exudes a sense of fragile balance and hope for a new dawn.
As with her work on The Art of Food poster, Dianne produced an extensive catalog for the show. Her writings explore the evolving environmental and cultural role of the ecosystem through the centuries, aiming to present a path forward for the threatened environment that can be beneficial to all. Lisette, whose father was an indigenous man born in Nicaragua, sees this inclusive approach as essential to environmental storytelling. “Dianne understands, like I do, that decolonizing the lens is vital,” the photographer says, referring to the act of challenging and expanding narratives beyond the view of a singular, dominant group. “My perspective is based on my lived experience, cultural understanding and historical awareness that is missing from the mainstream media. In order to have a decolonized view, you have to have diverse voices.”
The exhibit also contains a collage of coastal imagery, titled Every Being Is an Island (Island I), by Miami-based photographer Amalia Caputo. “The idea of entanglement [is] that we are all connected,” she says. “If we damage what we are connected with, we will be damaged, as well.” Dianne’s curation epitomizes the idea. Her exhibits are not only beautiful but also rich with overlooked stories, forming a mosaic of issues, influences and artistic visions that, together, present a more complete picture of our community.
Photography by Anna Nguyen
dianne bras felicino artis naples
Dianne’s work to foster connections with the community aligns with Artis—Naples’ goals to broaden the museum’s audience. With her first major project nearly done, Dianne is working on her next exhibit, a “collaborative project with and for the community,” coming 2026.