HAVANA.- The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and the Watch Hill Foundation are pleased to announce the opening of “Without Masks,” on view July 28 - October 2, 2017 at the MNBA. Following successful exhibitions in Johannesburg, South Africa and Vancouver, Canada, the third exhibition in Havana commemorates the 10th anniversary of the von Christierson Collection of contemporary Afro-Cuban art.

Curated by eminent Cuban art critic, curator and researcher in Afro-Cuban ritual arts Orlando Hernández, the exhibition is comprised of 149 works by 40 Cuban artists from the last three decades, showcasing a diverse range of media from painting and drawing to sculpture, photography, and more. The artists include Wifredo Lam, Bernardo Sarría Almoguea, Belkis Ayón Manso, Manuel Mendive Hoyo, José Bedia Valdés, Juan Carlos Alom, Elio Rodriguez, Roberto Diago Durruthy, Andres Montalván, and Douglas Pérez Castro.

“What distinguishes the collection and renders it exceptional is that it assembles for the first time such a numerous and varied group of Cuban artists and works devoted to exploring two great themes that hitherto have been regarded separately,” said Hernández, “namely cultural and religious traditions of Africa in Cuba, and the multiple problems and conflicts related to race.”

These two major themes are supplemented by the artistic portrayal of Cuba’s presence in the Angolan Civil War and by portraits of Angolan women, as Hernández deems it important to include not only the presence of Africa in Cuba, but also the presence of Cuba in Africa.

As part of the MNBA exhibition, a series of 29 historic photographs by Cuban photographer Roberto Salas will be shown for the first time. Photographed during the early days of the Cuban Revolution, the series captures ethnographically significant moments of Afro-Cuban religious processions and candid moments of daily Cuban life from this period.

The opening week of “Without Masks“ will be accompanied by a program of events including lectures, artist talks, documentary viewings and conversations. Among the highlights of the program will be lectures delivered by four renowned academics, expert in the fields of African, Afro-American and Afro-Cuban art, namely:

• Professor Robert Farris Thompson, Professor of History of Art, Yale University.

• Professor Henry John Drewal, Head of Department of Art History and Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

• Professor Charles Daniel Dawson, Head of the Institute for Research in African American Studies, Columbia University.

• Professor Bárbaro Martinez-Ruiz, Leverhulme Fellow in African Studies, Oxford University.