Wallach Gallery, October 2022

A Cuban audio/visual experience in Harlem.

A wonderful exchange between Columbia University and contemporary Cuban artists. The ‘Sin Autorización’ exhibition opened on Friday, October 21 and will remain open through January 15, 2023. Don’t miss it. Located on the 6th floor of the Lenfest Center for the Arts in Columbia’s new Manhattanville campus, the Wallach Gallery hosts audio/visual exhibits of Cuban artists portraying every day life in a way we do not often see come officially out of the island.

As travel restrictions to Cuba relaxed at the end of President Obama’s second term, there was a brief period of increased hope (‘obamismo’) between Cuban artists, collectors, and tourists. A Trump era return to stricter regulations along with economic instability in Cuba ended ‘obamismo’. In April 2018, one of the harshest decrees of suppression of artistic practice was signed, basically constituting the ban of artwork made ‘sin autorización’, i.e., without authorization. In other words, the art we got to experience in this amazing exhibition is independent and outside of the "official" arts discourse of Cuba.

We attended the very first day of opening on Friday, and a smaller group of us, went back today, Sunday, October 23, to listen to the panel discussion including some of the artists in the exhibition. The artists discussed their work and how the new decree turned them into unwitting activists. Some of the artists still reside in Cuba, while others have found refuge in the US, Spain and other parts of the world.

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery advances Columbia University's historical, critical, and creative engagement with the visual arts. Serving as both a laboratory and a forum, The Wallach Art Gallery offers opportunities for curatorial practice and discourse, while bridging the diverse approaches to the arts at the University with a welcome broader public. We present projects that:

Are organized by graduate students and faculty in Art History & Archaeology or by other Columbia scholars;

Focus on the contemporary artists of our campus and communities;

Offer new scholarship on University special collections.

Established in 1986, The Wallach Art Gallery is the University's premier visual arts space. We are a platform for critically acclaimed exhibitions, a dynamic range of programming, and publications that contribute to scholarship. The Wallach Art Gallery also animates other university spaces as opportunity arises.

We operate in close relationship to the Department of Art History and Archaeology, School of the Arts, and the university Libraries, particularly Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library.