U.S. artist's sculpture goes on display in Cuba with help from Canadians

HAVANA (AP) - Organizers manoeuvred through a web of Cold War politics and bureaucratic red tape this week to bring Louise Bourgeois' renowned giant spider sculpture for the first major show by a contemporary U.S. artist in Cuba.

Recently tightened U.S. restrictions against the island made it necessary to ship the marble and metal sections of the 11-tonne work by boat from Canada, rather than the United States. Special U.S. Treasury Department licences to allow the show to be held were sought as long ago as last August.

Just hours before the Friday-evening opening, the bronze, stainless-steel and marble pieces that snap together to form the 10-metre-tall spider dubbed Maman - French for mother - had not been assembled. Organizers said it is likely the gigantic arachnid won't be fully assembled until the weekend.

Earlier in the week, the shipment papers were temporarily lost on the boat, delaying customs approval. Cranes were hurriedly sought to lift the heavy sections from the wooden crates.

Despite last minute headaches, Phil Larratt-Smith, who travelled to the Cuban capital Havana from New York City to curate the show, was excited to give average Cubans a better understanding of one of the world's most important living artists.

"Our idea was something that transcends all the politics," said Larratt-Smith, the artist's archivist since 2001.

"It is not a political thing...It is simply about bringing American art to the Cuban public."

A Canadian citizen, who now lives in New York, Larratt-Smith said he had visited Cuba earlier and always thought Havana would be an interesting place for a major art exhibit.

"I hope this would encourage American artists to show their work in Cuba," Larratt-Smith said.

"Cubans are sophisticated, they are curious and there is a really good support structure here for artists."

The United States and Cuba have not had diplomatic relations for more than four decades and last summer's tightening of trade and travel restrictions by the U.S. administration have made cultural exchanges between the two countries more difficult.

"We were surprised they even got U.S. permission because so many cultural exchanges have been turned down," said Rafael Acosta, director of Cuba's Council of Plastic Arts, which is hosting the show.

"This show will be an artistic and cultural expression of what the Cuban and American people want: exchanges, contact between the two countries."

Acosta said he was delighted the works of such an important artist would be displayed in Cuba. The French-born U.S. abstract expressionist has work in the collections of some of the world's most important museums. Bourgeois was the first American woman to have a retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1982 and received a U.S. National Medal of Arts in 1997.

"It will probably be the most important solo exhibition of the past five years," Acosta wrote in the catalogue for the show.

For the diverse and rich panorama of contemporary Cuban art, especially in the most experimental and conceptual area of our creation, it will be a unique and unforgettable moment."

Now 93, Bourgeois will not go to Havana for the show, entitled Uno y Otros, or One and Others, running through April 26. She rarely travels now, preferring to remain in New York and labour on new works, the 26-year-old Larratt-Smith said.

The giant spider was displayed outside the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2001 when Bourgeois had a one-woman show there. Later that year, the giant spider and two smaller spider sculptures - representing spider babies - were displayed in Rockefeller Plaza in New York.

In Havana, Maman will be the centrepiece of the show, situated in a plaza outside the Bellas Artes complex constructed in historic Old Havana several years ago to show off Cuban and visiting Latin American and European works. The giant spider and two much smaller ones are among 20 sculptures by Bourgeois going on display. The other sculptures and 20 prints and drawings will be shown at the Wilfredo Lam Centre of Contemporary Art.

Showing any U.S. art in Cuba is rare, although some lesser works, often brought to the island by the artists in their suitcases, sometimes are exhibited.

The show at the Wilfredo Lam Center will include several of Bourgeois' trademark anthropomorphic and highly sexual pieces, including Femme Couteau - French for Knife Woman.

She created the giant spider for her mother.

"My best friend was my mother and she was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat and as useful as a spider," Bourgeois said in the show's catalogue.