It hosts a number of contests, conferences, and exhibits each year, presenting Puerto Rican art, literature, and music.

[14] To commemorate the event, the Athenaeum also commissioned a medal to be awarded to those who represent "the highest national values expressed through [Puerto Rican] culture."

The Centennial Medal of the Puerto Rican Athenaeum was most recently awarded to the musical salsa group El Gran Combo.

[16] The architecture of the building, Spanish Morisco, was introduced to Puerto Rico by Pedro de Castro, who also built some of the structures that neighbor close by.

[18] Among the artworks held at the Atheneum one of its most recognizable is Francisco Oller's 1890 painting "La Escuela del Maestro Rafael Cordero".

As such, one of the greatest Puerto Rican playwrights of the twentieth century, René Marqués, commences a dissemination and creative project of drama that continues to this day, totaling over 500 productions and 26 Avant-Garde Theatre Festivals.

Other dramatists of note whose work has also premiered have been Manuel Méndez Ballester, Francisco Arriví, Luis Rafael Sánchez and Myrna Casa.

The sculptor José Buscaglia Guillermety designed and created[21] a sculpture titled "La Antorcha de Descolonización" (English: Decolonization Torch).

[30][31][32][33][34] 7 November 2019 from 10:00 till 2:00 p.m. the television astrologer Walter Mercado Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced went and told the family she had decreed a one day of mourning.

[35][36][37][38] During the morning of 3 January 2020 from 9:00 till midday[39] of activist author Marisa Rosado of the Hostosian National Independence Movement, famed for her biography of Carlos Albizu Campos,[40] was mourned there.