My Own Past

In late eighteenth-century Havana, residents frequently referred to the existence of large communities of negros and pardos as 'officers in the trade of painter' and the authors of 'exquisite works.' But who are these artists, and where can we find their works? What sort of works did they produce? Where were they trained, and how did they master their crafts with such perfection? By centering the artistic production and social worlds of artists of African descent in Cuba since the colonial period, this revisionist history of Cuban art provides compelling answers to these questions. Carefully researched and cogently argued, the book explores the gendered racial biases that have informed the constitution of the Cuban art canon; exposes how the ideologues of the slave owning planter class institutionalized the association between 'fine arts' and key attributes of whiteness; and examines how this association continues to shape art historical narratives in Cuba.

Alejandro de la Fuente is the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University. He is the author of four books, and his work on slavery, inequality, Afrodescendant mobilization, and art, have been published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and German.