Bird on Cuban Art

Michelle Bird, who is a Curatorial Assistant at the Department of European Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, pens a gorgeous article on collecting Cuban art for Caribbean Art World Magazine.

Many years ago at Rutgers University, through research for a paper on Wifredo Lam, I learned that Alfred H. Barr, Jr., visited the island in the early 1940s. In addition to purchasing works of art by Cuban artists, he also organized an exhibition called “Modern Painters of Cuba” in 1944, bringing the island and its arts to the attention of the international market. During this period, he acquired Lam's "The Jungle" for the Museum of Modern Art. It was hung near Picasso's Guernica, to which it was compared. The relationship barely had time to produce little more than name recognition for its author and his native country when the connection was severed by the 1959 Revolution and subsequent political changes. By the mid-eighties, the painting was hanging in a hallway leading to the museum's coatroom. This single action shows how easily Cuban art was marginalized and made inaccessible to the public.

Read the article here and buy Cuban art here or here.