With the presence of Miguel Barnet, president of Cuba’s League of Writers and Artists (UNEAC); deputy president Jose Villa Soberon; Lesbia Vent Dumois, president of the Fine Arts Association; Maria Caridad Gonzalez, the Excelencias Group’s permanent correspondent in Cuba, and Frank Perez, director of the Excelencias Group’s Art Project, issues two and three of the Art by Excelencias magazine were launched at the UNEAC’s Ruben Martinez Villena Hall.

Luz Merino Acosta, deputy director of the National Museum of Fine Arts and professor at the School of Art History, took the floor for the presentation. In her remarks, Mrs. Acosta underscored the organic way whereby this publication melts into Cuba’s publishing tradition as she compared it qualitatively with such forerunning magazines as Bohemia back in the 1950s and America, that circulated from 1939 to 1958.

In her brief but embracing encouragement to the reading of these two issues, Luz Merino Acosta characterized the main articles, interviews, blurbs, profiles and essays contained therein and highlighted the conceptual and analytical intertwining of the regular sections. On this particular matter she said: “The regular sections, that call on readers to both recognize and identify them, are laid out as a well-articulated peculiar compound in which caricatures, designs, books and memories come together, and where certain contemporary ambiences are explored by means of a broadened art concept.”

When wrapping up her keynote speech, Mrs. Acosta added: “Art by Excelencias has set out on ambitious profiles that can single it out from the rest of the publications in the region on the basis of a swaying between promotion an reflection, in the face of an avalanche of magazines in which promotion, publicity and the market are the name of the game […] I hope this magazine could carry through what its predecessors –regardless of their efforts– never achieved. I mean, holding on to its position in the continent from a refined and inclusive vision of the contemporary art, by adding the latest themes, by keeping the interest in visualizing creative zones that have remained on the sidelines, and by staying aloof from the consequent lurking of the theoretical thinking. Those actions will allow it to build on a new editorial model.”

Frank Perez spoke on behalf of the Excelencias Group to thank UNEAC’s support and explain the foundational objectives and future projection of the Excelencias Group’s Art Project, that includes a website, the specialized magazine on fine arts and its online news complement with over 45 digital issues under its belt.

The presentation, held at the UNEAC headquarters, is a solid step forward in the strengthening of this prestigious organization’s ties with the Caribbean and the Americas.