Conference with Jorge Fernández Torres: De La Bienal de La Habana al Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Estrategias Curatoriales

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DATE

05 Feb 2026

AUTHOR

Umbigo

Conference with Jorge Fernández Torres: De La Bienal de La Habana al Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Estrategias Curatoriales

AUTHOR

Umbigo

On 13 February, at 3 p.m., the Auditorium C1 at NOVA FCSH (Av. de Berna) will host the conference De La Bienal de La Habana al Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Estrategias Curatoriales, with Jorge Fernández Torres, Director of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana and Professor at ISA – Higher Institute of Art in Cuba. The session will be moderated by Margarida Brito Alves and Cristina Pratas Cruzeiro.

In this conference, Jorge Fernández Torres will discuss his curatorial experience, based on an analysis of his work as curator of three editions of the Havana Biennial, highlighting the interdisciplinarity and close relationship with the social context, based on micro-politics and micro-communities, that marked these events. These processes will be placed in dialogue with the curatorial strategy he has been developing at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, where he questions the traditional model of museography in the form of an art gallery, proposing a cross-cutting approach to discourse through thematic axes that contextualise the works. Based on these elements, a curatorial project will be discussed that reflects on the role of collecting and art in constructing the narrative of a country project.

Jorge Fernández Torres is currently director of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, where he develops a wide-ranging curatorial programme at local and international level. He was director of the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Centre and the Havana Biennial between 2008 and 2016. An art critic and curator, he has held various positions in national and international institutions linked to contemporary art and museology. Since 1999, he has been a professor of Theoretical Art Studies at ISA – Instituto Superior de Arte de Cuba, and has given lectures and conferences at numerous international institutions, including the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), ZKM (Karlsruhe), the Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, the Complutense University of Madrid and UNAM (Mexico).

The conference was organised by the Autonomous Section of Artistic Studies, in collaboration with the Department of Art History, with the support of the IHA – Institute of Art History at NOVA FCSH. You can find more information about the event here.

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