Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Denies Entry to Tania Bruguera / Diario de Cuba

Tania Bruguera
Tania Bruguera

diariodecubalogoDiario de Cuba, Havana, 24 May 2015 – This Saturday the Museo National de Bellas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts) denied entry to the artist Tania Bruguera, who had been invited to the opening of an exposition by the painter Tomas Sanchez.

Deborah Bruguera, the artist’s sister, reported on her Facebook site that the justificiation “was that the Museum reserves the right of admission.”

Diario de Cuba received a recording of the conversation between Bruguera and a museum official charged with communicating to her the prohibition of entering.

The artist demanded “logical reasons” and no just that the communication “is an order.”

“I am a Cuban citizen who has the right to know why I am not permitted to enter a place,” Bruguera stated.

“Fine, we have arguments that you have caused certain difficulties at other expositions of the Biennial,” the official responded.

Bruguera rejected this accusation. “In what expositions, because I haven’t been to any. I have been in my house, this is the first and only time since the Havana Biennial started that I have left my house,” where she was “staging her performance,” she replied.

With regards to the invitation from Tomas Sanchez, the official affirmed that it was “not applicable” and that those who decided who could or could not enter a cultural institution are responsible.

Last Wednesday Bruguera began a performance in her house consisting of 100 hours of reading the book “The Origins of Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt.

Since Friday, the regime hijacked the reading with loud noises caused by supposed Electric Company repair work, sending workers to break up the street in front of her house.