¿Qué bola? Art Librarians Travel to Havana to Find Out

"Cuba? It's my dream to visit there some day."

That's been the response I've heard most often since I returned from a visit to the country. I was one of twenty art-library professionals who traveled to Havana during the first week of June as part of a study tour organized by the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA). Our mission was to learn more about the current state of Cuban visual culture and librarianship, and to form new, lasting, and rewarding bonds with our colleagues there. I have to say, it was a resounding success.

As for the title of this post? "¿Qué bola?" (with stress on the final syllable) is a largely Cuban expression roughly equivalent in meaning and informality to the English "Whassup?"

Undeterred by recently imposed restrictions on U.S. travel to Cuba, the group "endured" warm, sunny days, delicious tropically informed meals (mojitos optional), intriguing and frequently thought-provoking sights and sounds, and characteristic Caribbean hospitality with a Cuban twist. The tour combined guided strolls through historic Old Havana with hosted visits to numerous libraries, museums, art galleries, and artist workshops.

Our local guide, Alejandro "Ale" Infante, acted as interpreter during our many site visits and kept up a running monologue on the tour bus between stops, combining historical background (on the "Spanish-Cuban-American War"), illuminating stories (including "tobacco stories," which take as long to tell as it does to smoke a cigar), and curious anecdotes. He also graciously and honestly responded to a wide range of questions from the group.

We were welcomed at libraries representing four different parent institutions: the Universidad de La Habana, the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, and the Economic Society of Friends of the Nation (Sociedad Económica de los Amigos del País). At each venue we met the library staff, heard a history of the collection and overview of libraries activities, and a were taken on brief facilities tour. On each visit, the study group engaged our hosts with library-related questions and offered a gift of books brought to Cuba by group members.

The highlight of the visit to the national library was an impromptu display of art posters from its collection of over fourteen thousand examples. Perhaps the information center at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes made the study group feel most "at home." A PowerPoint presentation addressed topics that are well-known to the group, such as bibliographic database migration and cataloging backlog reduction.

However, art librarians can't subsist on library visits alone. We also visited places that attest to the innovative and vital visual and performing arts cultures in Cuba.

The Instituto Superior de Arte, a sprawling campus for college and graduate students in the visual and performing arts, is located on the grounds of a former golf resort once frequented by Fidel Castro and Ché Guevara. Their visit later prompted the idea to repurpose the resort (or so the story goes). Architects Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti, and Roberto Gottardi created a surrealist red-brick tribute to Gaudí and the architectural idioms of Catalonia. Elements of the architecture refer (less than subtly) to female and male anatomy as the creative process itself, a fact that our hosts were keen to point out. We visited the college's printmaking and ceramics workshops, met professors and their students, and seriously pondered buying examples of their artwork.

As an incurable fan of outsider art, I was thrilled that our trip included a visit to Fusterlandia, the fevered brainchild of Cuban artist José Fuster. In 1975, Fuster began imaginatively covering his home in the working-class Jaimanitas neighborhood with ceramic tile, adding whimsical sculptures and architectural elements. Soon his neighbors began asking him to decorate their homes too. Today, much of the neighborhood is covered with playful scenes and fantastic creatures. What's more, while there, we were offered a mouthwatering sit-down lunch of rice, black beans, vegetables, yams, grilled fish, and curried chicken. A feast for the eyes and the taste buds.

At the Wifredo Lam Center for Contemporary Art, housed in a converted eighteenth-century mansion, curator José Manuel "Pepe" Noceda Fernández and artist Adonis Ferro took us on a tour of the current multimedia exhibition. As part of the installation, Ferro commissioned the creation of three musical instruments, which are included in the display and were performed with a small choir at the opening and closing of the exhibition.

But for me, perhaps the most eye-opening experience was touring the incomparable Cuban art collection at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, where more than nine hundred paintings and sculpture are arranged across two floors of a modernist building dedicated solely to Cuban art. The permanent display embraces the full range of artistic expression from the Colonial period to the present, with particular emphasis on early modern and contemporary art.

When I visit an art museum for the first time, I am seldom so gobsmacked by each new artwork I encounter, nor am I usually so unfamiliar with the artists on display. By counterexample, the collection of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes skillfully demonstrates how under-represented Cuban art still is in most museums and art surveys. Picking a "favorite" object is simply impossible and ultimately pointless—which is why I ended up taking the majority of my travel photographs there.

And, yes, Cuba is all about vintage cars, resplendent in vibrant shades of pastel and glimmering chrome. While the spiffiest examples are used as taxis, a stunning assortment of less elegant but equally historic vehicles also ply the streets of Havana and surrounding communities.

What have I left out? So much: a visit to Ernest Hemingway's hilltop retreat, Finca Vigía; a tour of the La Corona cigar factory; the lively Experimental Graphics Workshop (Taller Experimental de Gráfica); a glimpse of Sunday mass at the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception; a modern dance performance; and so many of the delicious lunches and dinners we enjoyed in the shared company of our colleagues.

Cuba? It's my dream to visit there again some day.