It will soon be a decade since the birth of Arte por Excelencias in the clamor of the 2008 Havana Biennial, and it was to the Colombian capital and its contemporary art fair where we arrived later with our new magazine, almost from the same trip to know the then still existing Art America Fair in Miami.
And that ARTBO, founded since then as an arts program of the Chamber of Commerce of Bogotá, is today an important platform for cultural exchange and research in the region, which has been established by its selection of galleries and diverse and innovative content, with more than seventy national and international galleries, a huge showcase of contemporary art that spans the entire artistic scene of the city.
It is worth recalling now that we are returning with a stand at the 14th edition of the ARTBO Fair, for the seventh consecutive year, with the presence of the journalist and art critic José Antonio Piñera and the beautiful magazine Arte por Excelencias, which comes from the successful fair Swab Barcelona and will be presented at Estampa Madrid as a media partner and with special envoys. Between reports and exclusive interviews from more than fifteen countries from America and the Caribbean, our latest edition brings the presence of Génesis Gallleries, the promotion of the Cuban Fund of Cultural Assets and the recent exhibition of the artist Alberto Lescay.
Our presence in the fair is because we believe in the synergy of fairs and festivals, as well as in seminars and conferences, and we have opted to accompany its growth and stimulation processes as the best investment for the incentive of cultural exchange and tourism. This is proven by our Excelencias Awards, which in 2019 we will once again deliver in the epicenter of the Spanish capital during the new edition of Fitur, and which cover the category of art and culture on the tenth anniversary of our publication.
Now that the curtain of his 26th International Ballet Festival is about to be unveiled in Havana and there are figures from the United States, the ballet from Argentina, who have fans from all over the world, we are delighted to open the first edition of the magazine Excelencias Turísticas, published in 1997, which contains four pages dedicated to the National Ballet of Cuba and the passion of Alicia Alonso in the creation of a company without equal, and her ballet school, very unique in the way she established herself in front of her similar in the world seventy years ago.
I thought about all this when I saw the Costa Rican Katherine Muller, as regional director of Unesco, happy in the Trinidad of Cuba, inaugurating along with various creators an exhibition in the art gallery, who climbed a small staircase, spoon in hand, helping to serve in the street the largest canchánchara of the island in a large earthenware jar a mixture of brandy and honey, with some citrus by hand and several dozen bottles of trinitarian rum, made during the two days of the Gourmet Tradition Seminar, which was convened by the Office of the Conservator of Trinidad and was advised with humility by our team.
Right there the idea of documenting the casabe as a joint proposal of Cuba and the Dominican Republic was born, to include it in the list of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity, from a question from the public to the presentation of the Dominican chef Tita about the values of casabe or casabi as Aboriginal food common to Quisqueya and the eastern Cuban area, which unleashed the enthusiasm of those present and the support of the president of the National Heritage Council of Cuba and the Regional Director of Unesco.
And it is that Bogota, Havana, Santiago de los Caballeros and Trinidad have much in common, as the visual arts and ballet, the canchánchara and casabe: you must have the vision of three hundred and sixty degrees of the American condor to be able to climb the flight in the defense and promotion of art and culture of our peoples from Ibero-America.
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