Cuba’s Art Scene Awaits a Travel Boom

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Kadir López was working in his studio at his elegant home here when the doorbell rang. It was Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

“I had no idea they were coming,” said Mr. López, whose work incorporates salvaged American signs and ads that were torn down after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

About an hour and $45,000 later, Mr. Smith had bought “Coca Cola-Galiano,” an 8-by-4-foot Coca-Cola sign on which Mr. López had superimposed a 1950s photograph of what was once one of the most bustling commercial streets in Havana.

A year later, recalling the event, Mr. López is still happily incredulous.

“Where else in the world does Will Smith turn up on an artist’s doorstep?” he said.

As collectors, art connoisseurs and institutions eagerly gear up to travel toCuba after President Obama’s decision to loosen the economic embargo, the art scene that awaits them is sui generis: a world whose artists are cut off from supplies and the Internet and, at the same time, celebrated by a coterie of international buyers whose curiosity and determination brought them to Cuba long before talk of a thaw.

Cuban artists — from the most established to those still studying at the Higher Institute of Art — receive visits from institutions like the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Museum of Modern Art and from visitors. Many of the visitors are wealthy intellectuals who travel to Cuba on “people-to-people” trips that are permitted under the embargo.

“The phenomenon is very unusual,” said Carlos Garaicoa, an artist who works with photography and sculpture and splits his time between Havana and Madrid.

He added, “I doubt it happens anywhere else.”

That pipeline of art lovers is about to grow, predicts Alberto Magnan, whose Chelsea gallery Magnan Metz specializes in Cuban art. Mr. Magnan, who is currently in Havana, received 25 calls from collectors on Dec. 17, after President Obama announced that the two countries would move to restore diplomatic ties. He is now booked through March with Cuba visits.

“It’s absolutely crazy,” he said.

Even though Americans can visit Cuba under rules dating to 2009 that allow “purposeful travel” intended to foment contact with Cubans, many shied away, Mr. Magnan said.

“It’s a hassle,” he said, referring to the need to get a license from the American government and pay for works without using an American credit card.

Now, however, “they’re saying, ‘I want to go before everyone else does,’ ” he added.

Steve Wilson, a Louisville, Ky.-based collector with Mr. Magnan in Havana, snapped up eight pieces, mainly by young artists, with price tags between $1,500 and $15,000 on Sunday night at the Fábrica de Arte Cubano, an art space in a converted factory.

Mr. Wilson, a founder of 21c Museum Hotels, which house contemporary artworks, said he hoped the diplomatic opening would allow him to organize residencies for Cuban artists in the United States and vice versa — maybe even open a 21c in Havana.

“I love the fact that more people will be able to come and see this work,” he said.

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