La Habana Moderna

October 13, 2010–January 9, 2011
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum @ 10975 SW 17th Street

Featuring Wolfsonian collection objects and special loans exhibited at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, La Habana Moderna explored the impact of international cultural, commercial, and political connections on urban development and culture in early twentieth-century Havana. The installation focused on the years between the establishment of an independent Cuban Republic in 1902, and the overthrow of the Batista regime in 1959—decades when Havana grew rapidly and witnessed a range of efforts by artists, designers, intellectuals, and others to define an identity for their city that was at once contemporary and Cuban. Their endeavors produced a rich visual and material culture that advanced competing, and sometimes conflicting, notions of modernity.

Accomplishments in such fields as urban planning, architecture, and graphic design revealed intense engagement with modernist currents from Europe, the United States, and other Latin American nations. At the same time, the economic power of a flourishing tourist industry exerted its own influence on both the built environment and the image of Havana that Habaneros chose to project to the outside world. The result was a parallel emphasis on the colonial heritage of the city and on the picturesque, exotic qualities that made it a thriving vacation destination for Cubans, Americans, and Europeans.

La Habana Moderna was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and co-curated by Marilys Nepomechie, FIU School of Architecture, and Jonathan Mogul, The Wolfsonian–FIU. The Wolfsonian also thanks The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Study Centre, Nujim Nepomechie, and the Special Collections Department at FIU’s Green Library for lending materials, and Eduardo Luis Rodríguez for permitting us to use his photographs.