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Unusual exposure

An exhibit of controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's work is set to open this week in Cuba.

HAVANA - Sensuality pervades the streets of Havana. A short stroll finds sultry young men scouting new sex partners outside a major movie house and Lycra-clad women tossing saucy suggestions to foreign tourists.

But is communist Cuba ready for Robert Mapplethorpe?

Cubans will find out this week, when an exposition of photographs by the controversial artist opens in Havana, testing the limits of art in this highly sexualized society that is nevertheless ruled by an authoritarian government.

It's true that the exhibit opening Wednesday at the Fototeca in Old Havana doesn't include what some people consider to be Mapplethorpe's roughest images. There are no bullwhips, no blatant homosexual acts.

That a Mapplethorpe exhibit is being held at all, and that Cuban officials signed off on the pictures, demonstrate a certain openness to art that celebrates sexuality. This is quite unlike the reception Mapplethorpe's works received in the United States in the 1990s. In 1990, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati and its director were charged with obscenity for exhibiting Mapplethorpe. Both were acquitted. The case sparked a national debate on government funding for the arts, with conservative lawmakers and religious fundamentalists attacking the National Endowment for the Arts for subsidizing Mapplethorpe shows.

"I'm really interested to see how Cubans will react," said Philip Larratt-Smith, a New York-based Canadian who will curate the show. Allowing any kind of Mapplethorpe exhibition in Cuba "flies in the face of charges that there is no freedom of expression" on the island, he said.

Titled "Sacred and Profane," the exhibit, which runs through Feb. 15, includes 50 black-and-white photographs from the late artist's career, including portraits, still lifes and a sprinkling of sexually explicit work, namely several male nudes. Larratt-Smith thinks it is those male nudes that may provoke the most attention here.

Sexual mores tend to be relaxed in Cuba, much as they are in other Caribbean societies, and images of nude female bodies barely raise an eyebrow, even though pornography is officially forbidden.

Mapplethorpe is virtually unknown in Cuba, which still remains largely isolated from the neighboring United States through trade and travel restrictions stretching back more than four decades. Only a small circle of Cubans, mostly artists, have even heard about the photographer, and then just distant echoes about his sex life and controversial shows, according to Rafael Acosta de Arriba, former president of Cuba's Council for the Plastic Arts.

Most Americans learned of Mapplethorpe in 1989, when a national controversy exploded over an exhibition of his work by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The show was canceled after conservative lawmakers declared Mapplethorpe's homoerotic and sadomasochistic images to be highly offensive.

Writing in the catalog for the show, Acosta called the Mapplethorpe exhibit in Cuba "an old dream that has now become reality."

"The great New York artist, one of the paradigms of 20th century photographic art and, in my view, one of the major energizers and promoters of photography, deserved to enter into contact with the Cuban public, Cuban artists and critics," Acosta wrote.

The Cuban exhibit is being funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation in Mexico City, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and money raised by art galleries and private individuals through the nonprofit Cuban Artists Fund of New York.

The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, set up by the artist's estate, is also participating, with foundation representatives traveling to Havana to supervise the mounting of the show. Mapplethorpe died of AIDS at age 42 in March 1989.

Because of the trade restrictions, a license from the U.S. Treasury Department was necessary for those traveling with the show, Larratt-Smith said. The photographs are being shipped from Canada to avoid additional red tape.

In the mix are portraits Larratt-Smith hopes Cubans will find interesting, such as a photo of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his Mr. Universe days. Another features artist Louise Bourgeois, whose work was shown in Cuba in February.

Larratt-Smith, who curated the Havana show featuring Bourgeois' trademark giant spider sculptures, hopes to continue introducing Cubans to American art by bringing the works of great artists under the general theme of "Sexuality and Identity."

"I want my next show to feature Andy Warhol," he said.

[Last modified December 12, 2005, 01:10:15]