Exchange Planned Between the Bronx Museum of the Arts and Cuba

The Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Cuba recently announced plans for a major exchange of works from their collections. The greatest collaboration to date between the two institutions and the result of recent diplomatic attempts by Cuba and the US to normalize relations, an exchange of this magnitude had not been possible between the two museums since the beginning of the embargo against Cuba imposed by the US in 1960. The exhibitions will be titled "Wild Noise," a reference to a poem by Victor Hugo. The first phase of the exchange will consist of 80 works dating from the 1960s to the present that are part of the Bronx Museum of the Arts' permanent collection and that will be exhibited at the Museum in Cuba from May 21 to August 16, 2015, coinciding with the 12th Havana Biennial. The second phase of the collaboration will occur in the fall of 2016, when over 100 works from the collection of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes will travel to the Bronx Museum. Earlier exhibitions at the Bronx Museum centered on Cuban art include "Revolution Not Televised" in 2012; Carlos Garaicoa's "The Ruins, The Utopia" in 2001; and "The Nearest Edge of the World: Art and Cuba Now" in 1991, a group exhibition that featured works by nine Cuban artists.