Art News

Traveling Art Show Brings Masterpieces to Cuban Provincial Masses

artwork: A security guard stands next to Pablo Picasso's, "Faunne et Flore d' Antibes," on exhibit at the Provincial Museum in Pinar del Rio, Cuba. The Picasso is from a 120-piece traveling collection donated by U.S. philanthropist Gilbert Brownstone. The pieces recently went on display in the western city of Pinar del Rio, known more for tobacco farms than art museums.  -  AP Photo/ Franklin Reyes.


PINAR DEL RIO , CUBA – A traveling exhibition of art donated by a U.S. philanthropist Gilbert Brownstone, is giving Cubans outside the capital a rare chance to see works from masters such as Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol that would normally hang in world-class galleries instead of sleepy provincial cities. Selections from the 120-piece collection have already toured Camaguey and Holguin in the island’s far-flung east and recently went on display in the western city of Pinar del Rio, known more for tobacco farms than art museums. More than a dozen works by Joan Miro, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, Camille Pissarro, Georges Rouault, Roy Lichtenstein and others went up in the glassed lobby of a local TV station, watched over by just a few police and guards and prompting curious passers-by to pop in to see what all the fuss was about.