CAMAGÜEY.- For Culture Week, the Office of the Historian of Camagüey (OHCC) prepares an always peculiar program, related by its director José Rodríguez Barreras with the sense of an institution destined to "save the physical footprint of the city."
Its star proposal will be the 16th International Symposium on Challenges in City Management, February 1st and 2nd, with experts and participants from Uruguay, Mexico, Ecuador, France and Cuba.
The Santa Cecilia Convention Center will host the exchange called with the theme of creativity as a promoter of development, and with a tribute to Eusebio Leal Spengler (1942-2020)
“Camagüey walked as if Havana walked. He was a mentor to us. He greatly appreciated the work that was done, hence his permanent presence in the Hall," commented Rodríguez Barreras when remembering Leal, whose name identifies the Santa Cecilia plenary session, although he never visited that convention center.
María Isabel Carmenate, responsible for the academic program, insisted on the consolidation of the Symposium as a platform for good practices from other Cuban and foreign territories for the protection of heritage from the legal environment and to learn to look at the city with the concept of urban historical landscape.
Within this context, the closing workshop of the Arte Plaza Creative Industries Project was set, financed by the European Union and the Camoe Institute of Portugal, and carried out for three years by the NGOs Care and Oikos together with the OHCC.
To commemorate the 510th anniversary of the founding of the former Villa de Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe, the institution will deliver works taken from public spaces of a social nature such as the Plaza del Teatro Principal, now with an enhancement of the values of the building and with the return, now restored, of the iconic sculpture of Aisar Jalil that was believed lost.
The population will have access to the Coppelia Park, considered a novelty due to its operation with renewable energy, and a large LED screen where the daily Culture Week billboard will be published.
Among the options starring plastic artists is a personal exhibition by Ileana Sánchez at the Fidelio Ponce Gallery on the 2nd at 4:00 p.m., the day of the 510th anniversary.
In addition, Maceo Street will resume its character as an open gallery with the permanent collective exhibition Retablo de Ciudad, with vinyl and acrylic reproductions of works by 18 artists whose works contain Camagüey as evidence and legacy. The opening will be on the 4th at 9:00 a.m.
Yamina Martínez, main specialist at the Fidelio Ponce Gallery, listed the selected ones: Jorge Santos, Isabel de las Mercedes, Flora Fong, Lorenzo Linares, Yolanda Ulloa, Oscar Lasseria, Nazario Salazar, Martha Jiménez, Orestes Larios, Ileana Sánchez, Joel Jover, Rodrick Dixon, Joel Besmar, Nelson Miranda, Celso de Zayas, Roberto Estrada, Eduardo Rosales and Miguel Vizoso.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez