Founding the Academy of San Alejandro and the Politics of Taste in Late Colonial Havana, Cuba

ISSN： 1466-1802

Source： Colonial Latin American Review, Vol.21, Iss.2, 2012-08, pp. : 293-318

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Abstract

The founding of Havana's fine arts academy of San Alejandro in 1818, initially as a school for instruction in drawing, was modeled upon strategies by the Spanish monarchy to establish art academies and drawing schools for the cultural improvement of the empire. Sponsored by Spanish Intendant Alejandro Ramírez and the city's Royal Economic Society of the Friends of the Country, the opening of the Havana academy coincided with the island's escalating racial politics. Tensions between the work of popular painters of African descent and a nascent curriculum in fine arts directed by European masters are reflected in discourses surrounding the academy's foundation. The story of San Alejandro's early years thus reveals that the establishment of a school of drawing for Havana was tied not only to an imperial objective to spread buen gusto</i> (good taste) throughout the empire, but also to agendas within the local socio-racial hierarchy.