The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) is to participate in “¡Sí Cuba!” a major citywide presentation of arts, music, and culture related to Cuba taking place in New Orleans January through April 2010. ¡Sí Cuba! is a collaborative venture between museums, universities, galleries, and other arts organizations in New Orleans, co-organized by NOMA, Newcomb Art Gallery, and the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University.
NOMA’s participation in ¡Sí Cuba! includes two exhibitions: Luis Cruz Azaceta: Swimming to Havana, asolo exhibition of paintings and Polaridad Complementaria: Recent Works from Cuba, a traveling show organized by the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Havana. Polaridad Complementaria will be co-presented at the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Newcomb Art Gallery at Tulane University.
The solo exhibition Luis Cruz Azaceta: Swimming to Havana will feature a suite of new paintings, all from 2009. The phrase “Swimming to Havana” proposes the impossible as no unassisted human is capable of traversing ninety miles across the Caribbean Sea from Florida to Cuba. Yet it is a journey said to have taken place countless of times in the minds of Cubans wishing to reach the United States, and Cuban immigrants dreaming of returning home. In his suite of new paintings, Azaceta invites viewers to undertake their own imaginative journeys through his imagery. These paintings explore the idea of “crossing over” in myriad ways: between abstraction and figuration, between geometric and organic forms, between Cuban and American culture, and between the historically linked cities of New Orleans and Havana.
Luis Cruz Azaceta: Swimming to Havana is organized by Miranda Lash, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. The exhibition will be on view in the Great Hall from through March 28, 2010.
Born in Havana, Cuba in 1942, Luis Cruz Azaceta immigrated to New York at age eighteen. Since 1992, he has lived in New Orleans. Azaceta’s work has been exhibited at major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum Of Modern Art, New York, and the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C. He is the recipient of many grants including the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Grant, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Polaridad Complementaria: Recent Works from Cubais a major group exhibition, presented jointly at the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Newcomb Art Gallery. On view from January 16 through March 14, 2010, the exhibition offers audiences the opportunity to become acquainted with Cuba’s current artistic production. The participants are artists who have attained international acknowledgement. All have exhibited in Europe and Latin America and several in the United States. The artists presented at NOMA will include Abel Barroso, Luis Enrique Camejo, Ricardo Elías, Douglas Pérez, and Ludmila Velasco and Nelson Arellano.
