An Insider's View into Cuban Art: A Lecture by Lenny Campello

A discussion of the realities of Cuban history, life, and culture as viewed through the artwork of Sandra Ramos, Marta Maria Perez Bravo, Cirenaica Moreira, Aimee Garcia Marrero and Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons.

Washington ArtWorks | October 9, 2015 | 6:30 pm - 9 pm

12276 Wilkins Ave, Rockville, MD 20852
(301) 654-1998

VA Commission for the Arts $$$$$$$$$

Applications for Fellowships in SCULPTURE must be received by the Commission on or before 5:00 pm, October 1, 2015 (not a postmark deadline). 

Four artists will be considered for fellowship awards of $3,000.  Artists are not required to provide matching funds.   For more information and to download an application, visit:  http://www.arts.virginia.gov/grants_fellowship.html

Superheroes at Goucher College

I'm in a Super group show, this month at Goucher Colleges' gorgeous Silber Art Gallery.

Artists in the show are Ric Garcia, Simon Monk, Jeannette Herrera, Dulce Pinzon, Carla Goldberg, Nicholas Zimbro, Andrew Wodzianski, and Richard Schellenberg.

Reception with an artist talk Fri. Sept. 18, 6-9 p.m.

£75,000 for emerging artists born or working the UK and/or Ukraine

£75,000 British quids is a lot of dough, and there's that much Samolians for emerging artists from the UK and Ukraine.

Firtash Foundation and the Saatchi Gallery announce the launch of UK/raine the first
open competition worth GB£75,000 for emerging artists from the UK and Ukraine

UK/raine continues the collaboration between the Firtash Foundation and Saatchi Gallery as part of the Days of Ukraine in the UK and follows on from the huge success of Premonition: Ukrainian Art Now, which ran at the Saatchi Gallery from 9th October – 3rd November 2014.

 

Premonition was the largest survey to date of contemporary Ukrainian art in the UK and showcased over 80 works by 38 artists. The show attracted 137,438 visitors (5,494 per day), making it the only UK exhibition in the world’s top 20 most attended shows in 2014, and the seventh most popular contemporary art exhibition worldwide according to The Art Newspaper’s annual survey of international museum attendance. Premonition also formed part of the annual Days of Ukraine in the UK festival and the Firtash Foundation’s ongoing support and promotion of Ukrainian arts and culture.

 

UK/raine launches the first ever open competition for all emerging artists from the UK and Ukraine who are aged 18-35 years old. The aim of the competition is to find and support the most imaginative and talented young artists, including students on BA and MA courses who are living and working in the UK or Ukraine or born in either country.

 

Artists will be able to enter their work via the Saatchi Gallery’s website into one of five categories: installation, new media (including video and photography), painting, sculpture and street art.

 

A shortlist of 30 artists (six from each category) will be given the opportunity to exhibit their work over one entire floor at the Saatchi Gallery for a month-long exhibition running from 24th November 2015 – 3rd January 2016. A winner from each of the categories, as well as an overall winner will be selected by a panel of renowned international judges including: Johnson Chang - Founder of the Asia Art Archive, Nigel Hurst - Saatchi Gallery CEO, Prof. Dr. Apinan Poshyananda, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Culture, Thailand and Oleksandr Soloviov – Ukrainian author and curator. There will also be a winner of a separate public vote. All winners will be announced at the exhibition’s launch and VIP private view in London on 23rd November 2015.

Each of the category winners will receive GB£10,000 with the overall winner of the prize receiving a further GB£20,000. The winner of the public vote will receive GB£5,000 of production costs towards their work, project or exhibition in order to support their future artistic endeavours.

 

Further information on how to enter can be found by visiting: www.saatchigallery.com/uk/raine

 

Criteria for Entries

 

UK/raine is open to artists between the ages of 18 and 35 who are living and working or currently enrolled on a BA or MA course in the UK or Ukraine, or born in either country.

 

All entries can be submitted via the dedicated URL http://www.saatchigallery.com/uk/raine

 

Entrants will be able to make their submissions into one of five categories: installation, new media (including video and photography), painting, sculpture and street art.

 

Contestants will be required to upload a minimum of three and a maximum of eight images of artworks (maximum file size 5MB, 300px each) or videos via YouTube or Vimeo, along with a CV and short artist’s statement (no more than 200 words) in Microsoft Word or PDF Formats.

 

Submissions will be accepted from 10.00am BST on 10th September 2015 until 11.59pm BST on 20th October 2015

 

For a full list of Terms and Conditions please visit: http://www.saatchigallery.com/uk/raine

Tonight is a big night at WSS!‏

One of my best pieces of advice, from the billions of great pieces of advice that I dispense on a constant and routine basis, is as follows:

Someone: "Master Lenster, I'd like to start collecting original artwork but have limited funds and do not know whom or what to collect..."

Me: "Why don't you start by visiting lots of art shows and seeing what your visual eye likes? Do not forget to visit lots of student art shows as well."

Someone: "Student art shows?"

Me: "Yes, young padwan... it is often at undergraduate art student shows, MFA shows and other art schools' art exhibitions where the undiscovered jewels may reside, often at a lower degree of Samolians..."

Tonight is the opening of the Washington Studio School's Annual Juried Student Show, a terrific event to which I've never been asked to jury, but which I would love to do so. I've been to several of these in the past, acquired work at some of them, and I can tell you that it is usually one of the best student shows in the DMV.

The opening of the Annual Juried Student Show  is tonight, Friday, September 11 from 6-8 pm. The show was juried by WSS Faculty Member Carolyn Reece-Tomlin, installed by Jo Weiss and Joanne Kaufman, and mentored by WSS's vastly talented and hard-working faculty.

The students selected by Reece-Tomlin are: Adele McGovern, Belen Eliot, Bill Thompson, Brenda Fox, Brigitte Zelenko, Courtney Applequist, Carol Blum, Catherine Antoine, Caroline Champetier de Ribes, Chris Marlow, Elisa Sarmiento, Elizabeth Naab, Erika Mosher, Gail Goodman, Gail Jensen, Jacqueline Sparks, Jay Ball, Jill Bateman, Joanne Lamm, John Graham, Karen Slovin, Karim Bouabdelli, Kathryn Kailian, Lara Fredrickson, Laurance Frierson, Leo Bottrill, Leslie Blackmon, Monette Melanson, Maria Uehara, Maria Schreiber, Michele Lurie, Mitsuko Tsuchiya, Pat Kraniotis, Peggy Greene, Phyllis Mayes, Phyllis Ruffer, Scott Cowcher, Scott Wiskoski, Siobhan Fisher, Tanya Yudelman-Bloch, Teresa Jarzynski, Tricia Garey, Yassir Islam.

As an aside, Caroline Champetier de Ribes wins the award for the best artist name!

Lest we forget



"Studio View, 9/11"
Oil on Canvas c. 9/11/2001 by David FeBland

 

Black Artists Matter

Zenith Gallery and Zenith Community Arts Foundation Present:

"BLACK ARTISTS MATTER"

 

At the Marketplace at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation

DC Convention Center- Hall E, Booth #540

801 Mt Vernon Pl NW, Washington, DC 20001

Showing select artworks from the

FREEDOM PLACE COLLECTION

Alma Thomas, Romare Bearden, Benny Andrews, Robert Freeman & Richard Yarde. 

Other artists represented:
Doba Afolabi, Anne Bouie, Cassandra Gillens, Hubert Jackson, Gloria Kirk, Chris Malone, Curtis Woody and more.

Market Place Open to the Public

Show Dates:  September 17- September 19, 2015 

 

Zenith Gallery Information:

Margery Goldberg, 202-783-2963, margery@zenithgallery.com

Zenith Community Arts Foundation Information:

Ella Dorsey, 202-783-8005, zenithcommunityarts@zcaf.org 

For your Wednesday night

I will be the Chief Critiquer in David Mordini's and Sean Hennessey's new event "The Critique" at their Otis Street Art Project space tonight. 

The most expensive thing in the world is information; for artists it is information and critical feedback. Artists complain all the time about not having either one of these two.

 

This critique should be a really interesting time where you can listen not pnly as I give my professional opinion about the work Zofie Lang, Christian Tribastone, Ceci Cole McKinturff, and Nate Lewis!

I am probably the best opinion-giver on the planet because I offer it from many perspectives, not just from a pencil-neck geek art critic, but also from a professional artist with a few decades of worldwide experience under his size 36 belt plus an even more successful (and humble) art dealer with more experience on the subject than nearly all other DMV art dealers combined... so please come by and bring a note pad and clean ears.

You will learn a lot.
Also I will also be dispensing some gold nuggets on artists and arts fairs!

Everyone that is interested in hearing this conversation about these artists' original art - applicable to all -  is invited sit in on The Critique. The conversation is meant to be critical but constructive. The event aims to discuss what works, what doesn’t work, and to lead the artist toward possible resolutions or developments.

6:00 - 7:00 Meet and Greet with refreshments, and to see the Otis Street Arts Project space.

The Critique will begin at 7:00. Some works we will discuss will be jpgs, some will be actual pieces and each artist's work will be discussed for roughly 30 minutes.

RSVP on the event's Facebook Event Page
(not required for attendance) https://www.facebook.com/events/1649240928664730/

Artists' Websites: Michelle Banks

DMV artist Michelle Banks is one of the hardest working artists around the region.

Her work explores the marriage of art and science in a visual representation that maximizes the artistry of science and the science of visual art.

While many artists complaint about lack of opportunities, Banks grabs them by the horns and you can see her work several times a year around the region.

She writes:

Art and science may seem like opposites, but they can form beautiful partnerships. My work draws on biology, anatomy and neuroscience to produce paintings and collages that celebrate colors and forms that can often be seen only under a microscope.

You can find her artwork at the following local events this year:

September 1217th Street Festival
Washington, DC

September 26Barracks Row Fall Festival
Washington, DC

October 3Art on the Avenue
Alexandria, VA

October 4McLean Project for the Arts, Artfest
McLean, VA

If you can't make it to a festival, you can visit her online shop at Artologica.

This is what you need to do this Wednesday!

I will be the Chief Critiquer in David Mordini and Sean Hennessey's new event "The Critique" at their Otis Street Art Project space this Wednesday. 

 It should be a really interesting time where you can listen to my wealth of immense knowledge as I talk about the work of Zofie Lang, Christian Tribastone, Ceci Cole McKinturff, and Nate Lewis!

If you want to pick up some good and critical points about artwork - some brutal, but all constructive - from the perspective of one of the DMV's best-known art critics, who also happens to be an immensely successful artist, and an even more successful (and humble) art dealer (much to the chagrin of some)... please come by and bring a note pad and clean ears.

Also I will also be dispensing some gold nuggets on artists and arts fairs!

Everyone that is interested in hearing this conversation about these artists' original art - applicable to all -  is invited sit in on The Critique. The conversation is meant to be critical but constructive. The event aims to discuss what works, what doesn’t work, and to lead the artist toward possible resolutions or developments.

6:00 - 7:00 Meet and Greet with refreshments, and to see the Otis Street Arts Project space.

The Critique will begin at 7:00. Some works we will discuss will be jpgs, some will be actual pieces and ach artist's work will be discussed for roughly 30 minutes.

RSVP on the event's Facebook Event Page
(not required for attendance) https://www.facebook.com/events/1649240928664730/

I will also be bringing some signed artwork to dispense to attendees as I see fit... FREE ART!!!

Scotland!!!!!

Phillips and Ebay

If you want to buy works by up-and-coming artists like Math Bass, Petra Cortright, and Artie Vierkant at Phillips later this month, get out your laptop, because for the first time, the auction house will offer works live during the sale via eBay.

Details here.

Barbara Januszkiewicz at McLean

The unique and vibrant artistic style of Mid-Atlantic watercolor artist Barbara Januszkiewicz will be featured when McLean Project for The Arts opens its art exhibition from 7-9pm on Thursday, September 10, 2015. Color Riff by Barbara Januszkiewicz features paintings designed to spark a dialogue between the use of color and its conceptual link to music. 


Januszkiewicz is recognized for her unique style and use of difficult medias like watercolor, a media that she has mastered completely and takes to the next level with her ability to capture the complexity of color. For this exhibit, however, she displays her latest work of watercolor-like acrylics on unprimed canvas, a new medium for Januszkiewicz. 


"Januszkiewicz has a flowing, vibrant style akin to that of the Color School’s Morris Louis,” raves the Washington Post. 


Januszkiewicz has been influenced directly by music in her career. She strives to capture how the music sounds and feels in her paintings. “I find it intriguing that there is a vocabulary of words that apply to both music and visual art, like movement, patterns, perspectives and layering,” she says. 


“Music is my muse,” she continues. “I am inspired by the gritty undertones and rhythm patterns of the blues. I take a song’s chord progressions and play with the idea of a mirror cord in the colors I paint with. Blending the music and corresponding color notes, I work to create luminous paintings that reflect the emotionalism and improvisational freedom that we find in music genres like jazz.” 


Viewers can interact with the art through unique and rare online content. Video and audio clips of the musicians and music that have inspired Barbara’s artwork will be connected via a smartphone app to the paintings. 

Exploring the effects of every genre from jazz to thumping garage rock to vintage blues can now be witnessed in exhibit, where sound becomes visual. 


The public, press and art supporters are welcome to tour the exhibit and see the artwork and interact with the artist on Thursday, September 10, 2015 from 7– 9pm, McLean Project for the Arts, 1234 Ingleside Avenue, McLean, Virginia. Color Riffs runs through October 24.

Stagmomantis carolinas NOT praying!

Trawick Prize winners

Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards

Exhibition dates, September 2 - 26 

Gallery hours, Wed. - Sat., 12-6pm

Opening reception, Friday, Sept. 11, 6-9pm

The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards is a visual art prize produced by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District that honors artists from Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Virginia. Artwork from eight finalists will be on display at Gallery B, 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E. The finalists were selected from more than 350 artists who applied to this year's competition, and they will compete for $14,000 in prize monies.

Winners:

Best in Show ($10,000): Jonathan Monaghan

Second Place ($2,000): Lynn Cazabon

Third Place ($1,000): Jason Hughes

Young Artist ($1,000): Nara Park

Exhibiting Artists:

Selin Balci, Annapolis, MD
Lynn Cazabon, Baltimore, MD
Catherine Day, McLean, VA
Jason Hughes, Baltimore, MD
Tim Makepeace, Washington, D.C.
Sebastian Martorana, Baltimore, MD
Jonathan Monaghan, Washington, D.C.
Nara Park, Washington, D.C.

More info here.

Come say howdy!

Continuing to sell well...

The Road to the Isles

A far croonin' is pullin' me away
As take I wi' my cromak to the road.
The far Coolins are puttin' love on me,
As step I wi' the sunlight for my load.

Chorus:
Sure, by Tummel and Loch Rannoch
And Lochaber I will go,
By heather tracks wi' heaven in their wiles;
If it's thinkin' in your inner heart
Braggart's in my step,
You've never smelt the tangle o' the Isles.

Oh, the far Coolins are puttin' love on me,
As step I wi' my cromak to the Isles.

It's by 'Sheil water the track is to the west,
By Aillort and by Morar to the sea,
The cool cresses I am thinkin' o' for pluck,
And bracken for a wink on Mother's knee.

It's the blue Islands are pullin' me away,
Their laughter puts the leap upon the lame,
The blue Islands from the Skerries to the Lews,
Wi' heather honey taste upon each name.

Post Erika waves in OBX

Headin' South today

Gonna be shark bait for a few days while a friend watches the homestead...

Dead man's float

The kid has it down pat - he can now officially qualify to join the Navy when it is his time to serve!

Today he is six years old!

Call for artist entries!

Applications for the 2016 Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival are now open!  Join them as they celebrate the 25th anniversary of this top-ranked outdoor festival, visited by over 30,000 patrons each year. 

Presented in Reston Town Center, a suburb of Washington, DC, the festival attracts art lovers, affluent homeowners, corporate executives, and design professionals in addition to the broader community. The Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival has built a reputation for showcasing talented artists and high-quality work.  Don't miss your opportunity to be a part of it in 2016!

I've both done this festival many times and juried it once, and I highly recommend it!

Details and application here.

You can’t eat art

This is still one of my favorite art-related articles ever published in the WaPo in 2001.

The van is parked at the CVS drugstore on Spout Run Parkway. Artist John Grazier huddles inside, eating rice pudding from the all-night grocery and downing it with Busch beer. He’ll sleep here tonight, scrunched up on the brown shag rug on the floor, though he knows he won’t get much rest. “I keep worrying I’m going to roll over on the paintings.”
 
The paintings are why he’s here. They’re why, a week ago, he drove 220 miles from his home near State College, Pa., where the rent is due, his two children need to be fed, and he’s got less than $13 in the bank. He has no other job, no other paycheck to meet the bills. His entire income, what little of it there is, comes from his art.
 
He needs to sell a painting.

Read it here.

And ten years later, in 2011, the WaPo did this update.

Ten years ago, John Grazier was a struggling, self-taught surrealist, driving his 1966 GMC Handi-van (which also served as his sleeping quarters) 220 miles from his central Pennsylvania rental to the addresses of Washington’s elite to sell his paintings

The eccentric artist had worn out his welcome with District art dealers and struck out on his own — peddling his work door-to-door to law firms and entrepreneurs — when reporter Darragh Johnson shadowed him for a 2001 Washington Post Magazine story. He swung from bouts of homelessness to pulling in $100,000 commissions.

You can see some of John's works here. 

Marion True

The reporters staked her out. The investigators said she conspired with crooked dealers. And her museum colleagues seemed content to watch her disappear, as if one of the world’s most powerful, respected and sought-after art historians deserved to be the only American curator brought to trial.

Read about  Marion True (former curator of antiquities for the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles) here. 

Studio in Bethesda

Deadline: Sept. 15, 2015

Studio Available October 2015

 

AVAILABLE STUDIO INFORMATION

• Studio is 215 sq. feet.
• Rent is $405 per month, inclusive of all utilities.
• Artists are required to be in the space during retail hours of Wed. - Sat., 12-6pm and during the monthly Bethesda Art Walk.
• Artist has 24/7 access to Studio B and their personal studio space.
• Artist may sell artwork and there is no commission taken on artist sales.

SELECTION
 

Members of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District and arts professionals will review the applications and select the Studio B artist. If necessary, an interview may be requested. Applicants will be notified about whether their applications have been selected. Bethesda Urban Partnership will perform credit and criminal background checks and execute leases with the tenants. Once maximum occupancy is reached, applicants will be placed on a waiting list until a studio becomes available.
 

TO APPLY

Complete this application and submit the following:

• Curriculum Vitae (CV)
• Artwork Samples
• Proof of Income
• Proof of Identity
• $30 fee per applicant for credit and criminal background checks

QUESTIONS? Please email artist@bethesda.org.

Click here for the secure application.

 

Three artists at MPA

McLean Project for the Arts presents three new exhibitions featuring contemporary artworks by prominent local DMV artists. Curated by Nancy Sausser, the exhibitions display three intriguing artistic approaches that will captivate gallery visitors.

* Robin Rose Presents Scriptronics: An Art for the Future – This innovative exhibition in the Emerson Gallery features both abstract, encaustic paintings and a series of interactive “sound drawings.” The drawings are created through a method which amplifies the sound of the pen on paper and adds a performance element. Demonstrations are scheduled for Sept. 30 at 7 pm and Oct. 15 at 12 noon.  

* Equilibrium: Works by John M. Adams – The artist’s site-specific drawings in the Atrium Gallery incorporate the angles and planes of the space, while his paintings merge with the gallery walls, blending and interacting with their location.  

* Color Riffs: Paintings By Barbara Januszkiewicz – Inspired by American Blues music, the artist’s vibrantly colored, abstract paintings reflect melodies, harmonies, harmonic progressions, and chord structure. A musical soundtrack and music app accompanies this exhibition in the Ramp Gallery.

McLean Project for the Arts (MPA) is a nonprofit contemporary visual arts center located within the McLean Community Center at 1234 Ingleside Avenue, McLean, VA. For more information, visit http://www.mpaart.org or call (703) 790-1953.  

ArtBriefly.com: A Curated Art News Site has Launched.

From the folks at Arts Law Journal:

Orangenius is pleased to announce the launch of Art Briefly (artbriefly.com), a new website featuring curated news focusing on the business of art. Readers of the Art Law Journal have often remarked on the lack of timely, accurate news and information on the business and legal side of the art industry, so we set out to fill that demand, creating a site that identifies important art business and law news from around the web and aggregates the content into one site. At Art Briefly, you won’t find tutorials, software or hardware reviews, critiques or other creative-centric content. Instead, the site will feature content that can help members of the art community to better understand and grow their business. 

Using special software, Art Briefly scours the web, identifying articles and news items that may be of interest to our readers. Content that meets our criteria is forwarded to our editors who read each article, and select the best for posting. Art Briefly is not intended to be a substitute for the underlying source, and we offer only the first paragraph or two of an article along with a link back to the original source.  Ever supportive of creators of all types, our goal is to serve the market with aggregated content of interest to our readers, while also ensuring the original creators are fairly credited and compensated, as appropriate, from their efforts. 

This is only the beginning for Art Briefly. Orangenius plans to make Art Briefly the “go to” place for news about the legal and business environment of the art community.  Our goal is to make this site not only a place to quickly find stories of interest, but also a forum for discussing innovative art business ideas, a place to find answers to legal questions, a destination where writers and bloggers can be the first to find trending stories, and eventually, a site where our members can control the content. 

Until then, click to enjoy Art Briefly 1.0

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

The Emmett Till Project commemorates the 60th anniversary of the 1955 murder and trial of Emmett Louis Till that helped spark the Civil Rights Movement - check it out here.

The Batman Brooding

The Batman Brooding, shown below both in process and as a finished drawing, will be part of the Supernatural: In the Face of Danger show at Goucher College’s Silber Art Gallery in the Sandy J. Unger Athenaeum from September 8, 2015 through October 11, 2015.

The Batman Brooding
c. 2015
Charcoal and Conte on Paper
Framed to 26x21 inches

The show features works from artists Rick Garcia, Carla Goldberg, Jeannette L. Herrera, Simon Monk, Dulce Pinzón, Richard Schellenberg, Andrew Wodzianski, Nick Zimbro and myself.

This exhibit, which is free and open to the public, can be viewed Tuesday through Sunday from 11a.m. to 4 p.m. An artist’s reception will be held Friday, September 18th, 2015 from 6 to 9 p.m., with an artist talk at 7:30pm in the Silber Art Gallery. 

Please visit www.goucher.edu/silber or call 410-337-6477 for more information.

Dulce Pinzon at Goucher College

Dulce Pinzón is a Mexican artist currently living in Puebla, Mexico. Her work is influenced by feelings of nostalgia, questions of identity, and political and cultural frustrations. Her Superheroes project consists of 20 color photographs of Mexican immigrants dressed in the costumes of popular American and Mexican superheroes. Each photo pictures the worker/superhero in their work environment, and is accompanied by a short text including the worker’s name, their hometown in Mexico, and the amount of money they send to Mexico each week. 

BERNABE MENDEZ from the State of Guerrero works as a professional window cleaner in New York. He sends 500 dollars a month.

  Superheroes: The Real Story, a solo exhibition featuring Dulce Pinzón’s photographs, will be presented at Goucher College’s Rosenberg Gallery in the Kraushaar Auditorium from September 2nd through October 11th, 2015.

This exhibit, which is free and open to the public, can be viewed Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. An artist’s reception will be held on Friday, September 18th, 2015 6-9pm. 

Please visit www.goucher.edu/rosenberg for more information.

Another Dolezalian alleged fibber outed

Here we go again with this Shaun King dude! I wonder if this guy is also an "artist..." Check it out here.

The curious case of Cuba's racism

Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s excellent PBS series Black in Latin America addressed Cuba in an unique segment, and when you read the comments to this episode, it is apparent the immense cultural ignorance that most people have about the toxic racist nature of the Cuban dictatorship.

Much has been written about racism in Cuba, and it was one of the earliest subjects addressed by the WaPo's Eugene Robinson upon his arrival to the DMV. In his article Cuba Begins to Answer Its Race Question, Robinson tried hard to find excuses for the dictatorship, but nonetheless admits that

Academics say that black Cubans are failing to earn university degrees in proportion to their numbers--a situation to which Castro has alluded publicly. The upper echelons of the government remain disproportionately white, despite the emergence of several rising black stars. And while perceptions are difficult to quantify, much less prove true or false, many black Cubans are convinced that they are much less likely than whites to land good jobs--and much more likely to be hassled by police on the street, like Cano's husband, in a Cuban version of "racial profiling."

But how about some Cubans discussing the subject?

In primary [Cuban] education, skin color is not mentioned," ... If we are still living in a society where white people have the power, and we don't mention color in education, we are in practice educating [Cuban] children to be white.

Cuban history as we teach it is a disgrace, because it is predominantly white history, and explaining the role of black people and mulattoes in building this society and its culture is not given its due importance.

Esteban Morales
University of Havana
Centre for the Study of the Hemisphere and the United States

A lot of hopes have been pinned by many people (who know little about Cuba and the repressive nature of its government) on President Obama's recent monumental decision to re-establish diplomatic relations with the unfortunate Caribbean island prison of Cuba; but first another Cuban quote:

...to carry on "hiding" the issue [of racism in Cuba] would lead black people to think that "they belong to another country, and that there are two Cuba’s as there were in the 19th century, a black Cuba and a white one."

Roberto Zurbano
Director
Casa de las Américas publishing house
Havana

And thus, it is curious to me that in re-establishing diplomatic ties, our socially conscious President (and his cadre of advisors) appear to know little or nothing about the way that Afro-Cuban citizens are treated in their own country.

In reference to the President's visit, Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean literatures and cultures at the University of Connecticut and a scholar at Harvard University notes that “The images of the meetings, the agreements, they’re all shameful for many black Cubans — I’m including myself in this — because it’s difficult to feel represented.”

Will the expected flow of American tourists help? Zurbano writes in his 2013 New York Times article that:

Most remittances from abroad — mainly the Miami area, the nerve center of the mostly white exile community — go to white Cubans. They tend to live in more upscale houses, which can easily be converted into restaurants or bed-and-breakfasts — the most common kind of private business in Cuba. Black Cubans have less property and money, and also have to contend with pervasive racism. Not long ago it was common for hotel managers, for example, to hire only white staff members, so as not to offend the supposed sensibilities of their European clientele.

That "not long ago" is still the case, as anyone who has been to Cuba recently can testify to - it is very rare to see a black face in any of Havana's "tourist only" hotels and nearby beaches. Discussing those lucrative jobs, Yusimí Rodríguez López, an Afro-Cuban independent journalist, said in a 2016 New York Times article that there were job listings on Revolico — sometimes called Cuba’s underground Craigslist — “where they say they only want whites.”

In the same NYT article we read:

“They talk a lot here about discrimination against blacks in the United States. What about here?” said Manuel Valier Figueroa, 50, an actor, who was in the park on Monday. “If there’s a dance competition, they’re going to choose the woman who is fair-skinned with light, good hair. If there’s a tourism job, the same.”

He added: “Why are there no blacks managing hotels? You don’t see any blacks working as chefs in hotels, but you see them as janitors and porters. They get the inferior jobs.”

One would hope that our President's dealings with a nation with one of the world's worst human rights records, where Amnesty International has been denied access to (except to that bit of Cuba where the Guantanamo Naval Base is located); a nation where gay people were once given lobotomies to "cure" them; and where HIV+ Cubans were detained and segregated in guarded colonies away from the general public, could at least receive a little attention on the status of blacks in their nation.

Fact: Twice as many African slaves were brought to Cuba than to the United States... twice!

And what really bugs me, in my own pedantic hell, is how a bunch of historically and socially clueless American negotiators orchestrate deals with the leaders and the government of one of the world's most racist dictatorships (a government which talks a talk of equality while walking a walk of institutionalized racism against its own black population) without even mentioning the issue of racism.

Cuba has a long and agonizing history of racial issues, starting with its long bloody history of slavery, which didn't end on the island until 1886, and continuing through its freedom from Spain, birth of the Republic, and the triumph of the Castro Revolution in 1959. It continues to this day.

Cuba even had its own race war.

General Antonio Maceo, known as "the Bronze Titan." He was the true warrior leader of the Cuban Wars of Liberation. His father was white of French ancestry; his mother was black, of Dominican ancestry. After the first Cuban Liberation War ended in a truce with Spain, some say that Maceo was so disillusioned with the realities of life in Cuba as a black man, that he left Cuba and lived in Panama, until he was called back to lead the Cuban rebels in a new rebellion in 1895. He returned to Cuba and was killed in battle against the Spanish Army in 1896.

In 1912, black Cubans in Oriente province had enough of the new Cuban government's racist practices and the degrading treatment of Cuban black veterans, who had been the bulk of the Cuban rebels in the wars of independence against Spain. The Cuban government moved on a path of genocide and eventually the United States had to send in troops to end the war between the white Cuban government and the black rebels in Oriente.

As I recall from the CIA Factbook of 1959, on that year the island was about 70% white, about 20% black and mixed, and the rest Chinese, Jewish and other. The Cuban Diaspora which started a few months after the Castro takeover and continues to this day, with the exception of the Mariel boat lift of the 1980s, saw a mass exodus of mostly white Cubans, and as a result the island's racial balance shifted dramatically that although 65% of Cubans self-identified as white in the last census, many experts estimate that today the island is about 60% black or biracial.

But Cuba's black population has not seen a proportionate share of the power and a quick review of the governing Politburo/Parliament reveals few black faces in the crowd. In fact, "the Cuban cultural journal Temas published studies by the governmental Anthropology Centre in 2006 that showed that on average, the black population has worse housing, receives less money in remittances from abroad and has less access to jobs in emerging economic sectors like tourism, in which blacks represent barely five percent of managers and professionals, than the white population."

"I think silence is worse. The longer nothing is said, the more the racism fermenting underground is rotting the entire nation..."

Gerardo Alfonso
singer/songwriter
Havana

While the Cuban constitution of the 1940s (since then abolished by the Communist government) outlawed segregation and racism, and the current Cuban Constitution guarantees black Cubans the right to stay in any hotel and be served at any public establishment, as it has been documented by many foreign journalists, black Cubans will tell you in private that those rights exist only on paper.

The harsh Cuban reality today, they claim, is that "black Cubans won't be served" and that Cubans, regardless of race are in general barred from places frequented by tourists.

Unfortunately, these things [disparities in the treatment of blacks and whites] are very common in Cuba.

Ricardo Alarcón Quesada
President of the National Assembly of People's Power
Cuban Parliament

Do these Cuban voices from within Cuba itself sound like the subjects of a government whose murdering tyrants' atrocities should be dealt in silence?, especially in view of our nation's own racial history? Would we be silent in dealing today with the criminal government leaders of the apartheid South Africa of the 20th century?

We have practically apartheid in this country sometimes... racism is deeply rooted in Cuba's history and will not disappear overnight.

Rogelio Polanco Fuentes
Director
Cuban Communist Party-owned Juventud Rebelde newspaper.

Human rights and racism should be at the top of the agenda (if there's one) in our diplomatic discussions with the Havana tyrants.

What will this "change" bring to the "permanent and shameful police harassment of young Cubans of African descent in our streets..." - Leonardo Calvo Cardenas, Cuban National Vice-Coordinador of the Citizens' Committee for Racial Integration (Comité Ciudadanos por la Integración Racial (CIR))?

Why copyright infrigement is hard to prove for artists

Art is inherently subjective – what constitutes art or what makes art “good” is left entirely up to the viewer. So too is the decision of whether you feel like you’ve seen it before – plenty of artists are influenced by their predecessors and contemporaries alike. But that’s precisely why it’s so difficult to allege copyright infringement in a work of art – adopting a style or technique doesn’t constitute infringement. While there have been a great deal of photographers that have found themselves caught up in copyright infringement suits, it’s even harder to prove in paintings.

Read the article by Nicole Martinez here.