Art City Havana
It’s time to hail Havana as one of the world’s great art cities. The Cuban capital has never lacked artistic credentials, but a growing band of small private galleries, fresh interest in outlandish street art and the emergence of the extraordinary art collectives has sparked a creative renaissance that has truly put the city on the map. Havana’s artistic roots go deep. The city is home to the olde st arts academy in Latin America, the Academia de Bellas Artes San Alejandro , housed in a colonnaded building in Marianao. Founded in 1818, the academy has bred generations of precocious talent, most notably in the 1920s when it spawned the Vanguardia , a loose collection of painters and sculptors who, rejecting the contemporary penchant for mundane landscapes, invented Cuba’s avant-garde. ( Lonely Planet ) Sand Art Mural in Habana Vieja (Old Havana)