By Elizabeth (Liz) Cerejido, Ph.D., Curator for Cuban Collections, CHC
One of the most exciting collections we’ve recently acquired is the Luis Camnitzer and Rachel Weiss papers, which are invaluable to the study of contemporary Cuban art history. Both Camnitzer and Weiss have made significant scholarly and curatorial contributions to the field, laying the groundwork for understanding the artistic movements that emerged in Cuba during the 1980s. This period was marked by a generation of artists who adopted postmodernist approaches to artmaking within the unique context of a socialist-communist society.
Camnitzer and Weiss were deeply involved in the Cuban art scene during this transformative time, witnessing firsthand the nascent artistic movements and broader shifts in cultural politics on the island. Their papers offer researchers access to a wealth of materials, including personal notes, original manuscripts of key publications, interviews with artists, and a treasure trove of ephemera, all of which provide unique insights into this pivotal period in Cuban art.
Luis Camnitzer is a renowned conceptual artist, curator, critic, and academic. His seminal work, New Art of Cuba, first published in 1994 and revised in 2003, is an essential text for understanding the key figures of the Cuban avant-garde in the 1980s and early 1990s and the artmaking strategies they employed. Camnitzer is also the author of other significant publications, including Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation and On Art, Artists, Latin America, and Other Utopias. He is professor emeritus at SUNY Old Westbury College and is represented by Alexander Gray Associates in New York.
Rachel Weiss is an educator, curator, and author with extensive publications on contemporary Latin American art and the intersection of Cuban art and politics. Her notable works include: Making Art Global: The Third Havana Biennial, To and From Utopia in the New Cuban Art, and Por América: la obra de Juan Francisco Elso. Weiss was also a key contributor and curator to the following major exhibitions: Global Conceptualism 1950s-1980s: Points of Origin (with Luis Camnitzer and Jane Farver), Ante América (with Gerardo Mosquera and Carolina Ponce de León), and The Nearest Edge of the World: Art and Cuba Now, one of the first exhibitions of contemporary Cuban art to travel in the US, which she co-curated with Gerardo Mosquera. She is a founding faculty member of the Arts Administration and Policy department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she developed an interdisciplinary curriculum that focuses on culture, policy, institutions, and their practices.
Among the more notable items in the Camnitzer and Weiss papers are the sketchbooks of Juan Francisco Elso. Although Elso’s life was tragically cut short at the height of his artistic career, he is regarded as a pioneering figure among the 1980s generation of Cuban artists. His work infused contemporary art with non-Western elements, evoking both the spiritual as much as the material. Rachel Weiss’ early monograph on Elso is the first critical study of his oeuvre, highlighting his influence on both contemporary Cuban and Latin American art.
Cuban Heritage Collection Blog 