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US-Cuba thaw in full swing in arts world

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-08 09:21

HAVANA: The United States and Cuba governments have taken the first, tentative steps toward ending 50 years of hostilities, but the thawing of relations is already in full swing in the arts world.

After being largely absent in recent years, US gallery owners, museum directors, curators and collectors are returning to the island to view and buy the work of Cuban artists.

Hundreds showed up for the just-ended Havana Biennial arts festival that was a regular stop for art buyers before a Bush administration travel crackdown earlier this decade. Their presence reflected both newly relaxed US policy toward Cuba under President Barack Obama and a US hunger for Cuban art.

Obama offered to "recast" Washington's relationship with its Cold War-era enemy last month and granted Cuban Americans the right to freely travel and send remittances to Cuba. The United States was prepared to move further toward normalized relations, he said, if Cuba extended its hand.

All of this has been music to the ears of Cuban artists glad to see the well-heeled gringos back in town.

"Cuba has been sort of the forbidden fruit for some years because it has been so hard to travel here," said Cuban-born Ben Rodriguez-Cubenas, chairman of the Cuban Artist Fund, which promotes Cuban art, and also collector and program director for the New York-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

"There has been this pent-up interest. Cuba is in the news. The interest is there," he said.

Art is exempted from the 47-year old US trade embargo on Cuba, but sales dropped off when President George W. Bush toughened restrictions on US travel to the island and limited cultural exchanges in 2004.

Buyers from other countries kept prices lofty. US investors now eyeing paintings, drawings and photographs for appreciation will be welcomed with wide-open arms but will have to open their wallets wide, too, artists said.

1,000 Americans

The strong American presence at the Biennial means US demand for Cuban art is on the rebound, said Pamela Ruiz, an American art curator based in Havana.

"My guess is that there were at least 1,000 Americans walking around and 95 percent of them were here because either they wanted to buy work or because they were curators or (worked for) nonprofit (organizations)," she said.

For the past few years only a handful of collectors were able to come legally by obtaining licenses from the US government. Others violated US law by traveling through a third country - risking thousands of dollars in penalties.

Under Obama, they said the licensing process has become less arduous and there is less fear of making the Cuba trip illegally because they view prosecution as less likely.

And things would change dramatically if the US Congress passes pending bills that would lift the ban on Cuban travel for all Americans, a move the Obama administration has said it would not oppose.

Reuters