Art by Excelencias: open path to the avant-garde

On Tuesday Jan. 25, the eighth issue of the Art by Excelencias magazine was launched in Havana, right on time to celebrate the publication’s second anniversary.

For this occasion attendees gathered at the National Museum of Fine Arts Theater (NMFA) with Miguel Barnet, president of the Cuban League of Writers and Artists (UNEAC), Jose Villa Soberon, deputy vice president and Lesbia Vent Dumois, president the Fine Arts Association; Moraima Clavijo, director of the NMFA; Maria Caridad Gonzalez, director of the Excelencias Group in Cuba, among many other colleagues and friends, visual artists, curators, art critics and experts dealing with art galleries and art centers across the country.

Initially, magazine editor David Mateo recalled the two years the magazine has already put behind, mentioning the Excelencias Group for supporting, bankrolling and producing this project, and thanking each and every one of the people involved in this effort. The list includes editors, designers, promoters and marketers, including the team that posts the magazine’s online version on its website, and the staff working at AxE News and the social networks.

The keynote speech on this issue was delivered by Dr. Nancy Morejon, president of UNEAC’s Writer Association, who referred to the Art by Excelencias project as a forum, a space of confluence, a platform whose “natural purpose is to make way for the very best of the arts in the Americas and the Caribbean.”

By highlighting the “vocational willingness” of this publication, Mrs. Morejon added: “During its first two-year cycle, the magazine has left everlasting marks in the memory of a daily going that groups highly expressive creators. This publication has sometimes added transgressing dynamism to the process, always eager to move past the line.”  Mrs. dedicated her remarks to the late art critic and essayist Rufo Caballero, a former contributing writer who ran the All by Oneself column.

Nancy Morejon’s speech will be published in the upcoming issue of our magazine.