Cuban Art & Living

Welcome World.

People ask all the time, “I thought we couldn’t go to Cuba. How do you get to go, and I don’t?” They are referencing the decades long U.S. economic embargo with Cuba that disallows normal trade and travel with the country.

My first experience with the forbidden island was from the deck of a trimaran at the break of dawn, watching Havana reveal itself as its tall buildings developed slowly out of the sea. That was thrilling. That was 1999, during one of the last, then-legal yacht races from Key West to Havana. And, that’s when I discovered the art of Cuba. I knew I would be back.

I was back the next September with Dawn Schnuck, who would be my partner for the next few years in procuring, exhibiting and selling Cuban art in the U.S.

We arrived in Havana on a specially chartered flight from Miami with foreign service agents that work in the American Interests Section in Havana, and tearful Cuban-Americans carrying medical supplies and clothing to relatives in Cuba. Crisply folded into our passports was written permission to do business in Cuba, from the government of both Cuba and the U.S. Going back to our own revolutionary days, our First Amendment rights include the right to access informational material, including art, found anywhere in the world. But getting a license to go after Cuba’s art is another story; the qualifying rules are stringent and the permitting process is lengthy.

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