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House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce sent a letter to President Obama regarding his upcoming trip to Cuba.
Below is the full text of the letter:
March 11, 2016
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:
I am deeply concerned your upcoming visit to Cuba will send the wrong message to Cubans fighting for democracy and human rights.
Just a few months ago, you declared you would not visit Cuba unless you could confidently determine that “we’re seeing some progress in the liberty and freedom and possibilities of ordinary Cubans.” Respectfully, what changed?
Since your Administration announced normalized relations with Havana, the regime’s repression of basic human rights has gone from bad to worse. In the first two months of 2016 alone, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights has documented a staggering 2,588 political arrests. In spite of this, reports suggest that you will soon announce further measures to ease travel and trade restrictions on Cuba – seemingly yet more one-sided concessions that will serve to shore up the communist Castro regime.
Mr. President, if you nevertheless do travel to Cuba, I implore you to meaningfully engage with the country’s leading human rights activists. I urge you to meet with U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, along with journalist Guillermo Farinas, activist Rosa Maria Payá, and the current leadership and members of “The Ladies in White.” All of these individuals are internationally recognized dissidents or recipients of the European Union’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Meeting with these high-level, internationally acclaimed dissidents -- and not government-picked “activists”-- will assure the Cuban people that America has not forgotten them. Frankly, these meetings should have been solidified well before the White House announced your upcoming visit. Fortunately, you still hold leverage – and could postpone your trip to the island until such arrangements have been confirmed and real progress for the Cuban people has been achieved.
Thank you for considering my views on the best way to advance the fundamental human rights of the Cuban people. I think you will agree that the U.S.-Cuba relationship cannot attain its considerable potential until these rights are respected by their government.
Sincerely,
Ed Royce
Chairman
“Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance)” by Amy Sherald |
"Isla Balsera (Raft Island)" - Happy Birthday America, Wishing We Were There! Collage on Paper, Framed to 30x40 inches, c. 1976 Private Collection in New Jersey |
With the rise of speculative collectors cashing in on younger artists—many of them just out of school—whose work is made cheaply and en masse, and resold at a significant profit, there has also been a hyper-professionalization of the role of the emerging artist himself. (My choice of pronoun is not by default: the artist in question is almost invariably male—the gender imbalance in the art market is on full view in this trend.) He has business cards, printed on fine paper stock. His website is pristine. His CV is extensive, and correctly formatted. He may have even hired a Hollywood agent. And yet the art market has refocused his goals toward short-lived commercial success rather than a career.Must read article by Daniel S. Palmer here.
Switzerland’s MCH Group, the company that owns Art Basel, announced on Friday that it will expand further into the art market with a new initiative focused on regional art fairs.Details here.
“Geographic profiling”, a technique used to catch serial criminals, has proved that the elusive artist Banksy really is Robin Gunningham, according to academic research.Read the whole article here.
Scientists at Queen Mary University of London claim to have “tagged” Banksy, by identifying a pattern between the locations where his graffiti artworks most frequently appear and addresses with a close association to Gunningham, named as Banksy in a 2008 newspaper investigation.
From: Julian Smith (juliansmith@126.com)
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Ms Julian Smith, Manager Importation
For a photographer, setting up a website comes with a lot of pressure. As artists, our websites need to reflect our style and showcase our work, but they also need to be easy to navigate, fully functional on all types of devices, and make it easy for clients to book a session or purchase prints. All of this can be overwhelming, but since there is no better forum for displaying photos and having a wide reach, every photographer should consider having a website.Read the whole article here.
This performance, video installation and photographic series explores the intersections of land, labor, and family. Bass went down to her father’s birthplace in Georgia to share his story of growing up in a family of sharecroppers, picking cotton by hand, providing a window on the complicated roots of one aspect of our national identity. The exhibition will remain on view in the gallery through March 26.