Under the Spell of the Palm Tree: The Rice Collection of Cuban Art. Tampa Museum of Art. On view February 6-July 6, 2025.
Tampa MA
Cornelia Corbett Center
120 W. Gasparilla Plaza
Tampa, FL 33602
Main: 813.274.8130
Curators: Gabriela Azcuy and David Horta.
When it comes to art, the Rice Family’s first visit to Cuba in 2013 was as memorable as it was pivotal to their vocation as collectors. Cuban art became a gateway to embrace the heart and mind of a fascinating culture and its people. Collecting was no longer a hobby, but a passion, and over time the Rices would fall completely “under the spell” of Cuban art. For a decade, Susie and Mitchell’s Cuban Art Collection has been growing consistently in scope and quality, now treasuring the works of more than seventy artists from different generations and aesthetics.
The exhibition deviates from a traditional historical narrative and is presented as a compass rather than a timeline―a map for a journey through the varying themes, genres, and styles that align with the sensibilities of two generations of collectors in the Rice family. This first of six sections, The Language of Forms and the Forms of Language includes early works that demonstrate an affinity for abstraction among some Cuban pioneers of modernism in the late 1940s. The works in The Prophet’s Dream delineate both political and social awareness and the critical communal identity present in Cuban art through generations subsequent to the Cuban Revolution of 1959.
Cuba is described as an island-nation, a term that refers not only to its physical and geographic properties―the cluster of islands, islets and keys that form the biggest archipelago in the Antilles―but also the people who inhabit it. The works in The Great Journey: Archives express the trauma of national exile and the artists’ relationship to Cuba. The section Sensory Landscapes of Memory and Desire delineates the more hedonistic and whimsical imagery that percolates through Cuban contemporary art. These works exude eroticism, playfulness, intimate longings, and explorations into the depths of memory.
The Musings of Narcissus: Through the Looking Glass and What the Artist Found There, the fifth thematic section, examines a range of self-referential works of art and offers a glimpse into the process and philosophy of Cuban artists exploring self-representation and the body. Lastly, The Spirit of the Real, the Reality of the Spirit presents work born of the artists’ spiritual experiences. In most of the works in this section, mythological and symbolic elements from African-Cuban religions underlie or are at the foreground of both the narrative and the visual structure of the artworks.
Organizada en seis secciones temáticas, la exposición reúne 87 obras de 50 artistas cubanos.
Según el comunicado de prensa:
“La exposición se aparta de una narrativa histórica tradicional y se presenta como una brújula más que como una cronología, un mapa para un viaje a través de los diversos temas, géneros y estilos que se alinean con las sensibilidades de dos generaciones de coleccionistas de la familia Rice. La primera de seis secciones, El Lenguaje de las Formas y las Formas del Lenguaje, incluye obras tempranas que demuestran la afinidad por la abstracción de algunos pioneros cubanos del modernismo a finales de la década de 1940. Las obras del sueño del profeta delinean tanto la conciencia política y social como la identidad comunal critica presente en el arte cubano a través de las generaciones posteriores a la Revolución Cubana de 1959”