Going to Cuba’s Presidential Palace since it re-opened after partial restoration and the curatorial revision of many of its exhibits offered the chance to view the office of Cuba’s former presidents. For Cuban history buffs, this was particularly exciting because the office was said to look “exactly as it did” the day General Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship was deposed: December 31, 1958. Behind Batista’s desk sits a bust of Cuba’s revered nationalist and Latin American writer José Martí. The artist’s rendering of Martí’s forehead seems conspicuously designed to ensure his radical ideas of sovereignty, racial harmony, and “a nation for all” could not be denied. Museum of the Revolution (former Presidential Palace), Havana, 2016.
