Unfinished Spaces

"Elegantly traces the brief heyday and dark period of Cuba's art schools." –Variety

"The topical intersection of aesthetics, politics, history and Hispanic culture should afford plenty of venues across the media spectrum for this absorbing film." –The Hollywood Reporter

Coral Gables Art Cinema and the Coral Gables Museum proudly present a screening of Unfinished Spaces at the cinema, accompanied by a viewing of the exhibition across the street at the Coral Gables Museum at 285 Aragon Avenue.

"Cuba will count as having the most beautiful academy of arts in the world." —Fidel Castro (1961)

In 1961, three young, visionary architects were commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to create Cuba's National Art Schools on the grounds of a former golf course in Havana, Cuba. Construction of their radical designs began immediately, and the school's first classes soon followed. Dancers, musicians and artists from all over the country reveled in the beauty of the schools, but as the dream of the Revolution quickly became a reality, construction was abruptly halted, and the architects and their designs were deemed irrelevant in the prevailing political climate. Forty years later the schools are in use, but remain unfinished and decaying. Castro has invited the exiled architects back to finish their unrealized dream.

Unfinished Spaces features never before seen footage of Fidel Castro, showing his devotion to creating a worldwide showcase for art, and it also documents the struggle and passion of three revolutionary artists.

Tickets are $10 General Admission ($8 for cinema and museum members). $20 Film + Exhibition combo tickets grant admission to the film screening and to the All Stars: CINTAS Foundation Fellows in Architecture & Design from 1963 to 2022 exhibition at the museum, which is on display until July 30, 2023. Patrons are welcome to visit the museum before the movie or on another day with their tickets.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION AT CORAL GABLES MUSEUM
A collaboration with the CINTAS Foundation, this project gathers, for the first time in history, work by the CINTAS Fellows and Lifetime Achievement Award recipients in the Architecture and Design category, since 1963.

Included in the exhibition are both projects realized during the time of the fellowship, as well as recent work by these architects, designers, and planners of Cuban origin and descent. The selection encompasses models, drawings, reports, photographs, videos, and other ephemera. They are largely drawn from the personal collections of the fellows, as well as from the CINTAS Collection, and attest to the diversity of styles and approaches to architecture and design within the Cuban American community.

This exhibition features the work of renowned Cuban architect Ricardo Porro, who appears in Unfinished Spaces. Porro began his architectural career in the late 1940s in Havana, where he designed several villas and in the early 1960s the School of Art and School of Modern Dance in the National Art Schools complex. A resident of Paris since 1966, Porro earned international acclaim for his design for the Art Center in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, and several other major buildings in Europe. His paintings, sculptures, furniture, and architectural projects have been the subject of numerous exhibitions and publications around the world.

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