In Havana, Marcelo Pogolotti opens at the MNBA, and Yornel Martínez and Nelson Villalobos open in galleries around town. Carlos Garaicoa opens in Santiago de Compostela and London, outsider artists come to the Frost Art Museum, and a Cuban performing arts festival kicks off in Philadelphia, with two more coming up.

Beginning Thursday, April 28, and running through Thursday, June 9, the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City is presenting a series of talks by scholars and curators on contemporary Cuban art. Speakers will include collector and print publisher Alex Rosenberg, artists Tonel and Ernesto Oroza, Bronx Museum of the Arts director and curator Holly Block, and curator/critic Lourdes Socarrás.

In the second installment of this two-part survey of visual arts in Cuba in 2011, Mabel Machado looks at solo exhibitions, awards, publications, auctions, and international events held on the island. Our thanks to the author and to the online cultural journal La Jiribilla for permission to present this comprehensive review on Cuban Art News.

Close to 20 Cuban productions and co-productions anchor an ambitious schedule of features, documentaries, and short subjects from Latin America and the Caribbean. Entries from the island range from film noir to children’s animation, plus tributes to Isabel Santos, Enrique Molina, and Titón—and a sneak preview of Viva.

Harvard scholar Alejandro de la Fuente, curator of the exhibition Drapetomanía: Exposición Homenaje a Grupo Antillano (Drapetomania: An Exhibition Homage to the Antillean Group) offers a moving tribute to sculptor Rafael Queneditt Morales and his contributions to Cuban culture.

Is contemporary Cuban art fixated on a handful of familiar icons that represent “lo cubanidad”? Is it taboo to depict the “historic leaders” of the Revolution in artistic practice? Does a current reading of “lo cubanidad” demand new symbols—or any symbols at all? Orlando Hernández, co-curator of Waiting for the Idols to Fall, shares his thought-provoking exhibition essay with Cuban Art News.

Exactly 250 years after the entry of the British fleet into the Havana harbor, the curator of British Art at Havana’s Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes reflects on engravings made by British artists in 1762.

This past Friday, the exhibition Climate Change: Cuba / USA opened at the USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa. Here, the show’s artists—Javier Castro, Glexis Novoa, Celia y Yunior, and Tonel (Antonio Eligio Fernández)—and curator Noel Smith talk about their work, the show, and its themes.

The architect and urban planner wraps up his two-part Cuban Art News interview with a discussion of architecture in Cuba, the problems caused by “architecture of the author”—known in the U.S. as “starchitecture”—and what Americans think of Cuba’s architectural heritage.