A trip to Yale University to view the work of Lopez Oliva
By: David Campbell
Princeton High School Spanish teacher Marty Hayden and students had a close encounter this weekend with the art and culture of Cuba.
"Cine Hispanohablante," Ms. Hayden’s Spanish film class, new this year at PHS, offers a cinematic journey through Latin America in which she challenges her students not only to hone their Spanish-language skills, but also explore the rich tapestry of cultures, lifestyles and arts of this country’s neighbors to the south.
On Friday, she along with members of her advanced language-studies course and other PHS students, traveled to Yale University, where they were special guests at the opening of a new exhibit of paintings by Cuban artist Manuel Lopez Oliva a painter, playwright and journalist famed in his own country.
The PHS visitors spent the night in rooms provided by Yale, then returned home on Saturday. The exhibit runs through March.
Mr. Lopez Oliva was not present at the Yale opening, because he was denied a visa by U.S. authorities. But Professor Lillian Guerra, an expert in Caribbean history at Yale and the curator of the show, provided an exclusive tour of the exhibit for Ms. Hayden and the students, explaining the history and context of the art they were seeing. Along with Mr. Lopez Oliva’s paintings, there is an exhibit of 100 never-before-seen photographs of the Cuban Revolution, apparently snapped, the PHS teacher noted, by someone secretly working for CIA.
"The paintings were amazing amazing," Ms. Hayden said. She noted that Professor Guerra knows the artist personally, having met him when she went to Cuba for her dissertation. "It was just very interesting. You could connect the dots. The kids were just totally mesmerized. They were totally excited," Mr. Hayden said.
Ms. Hayden and the students gained new perspectives on the cultural context from which Mr. Lopez Oliva’s paintings arise. For example, some of his pieces were done on bed sheets because he had no canvas the sheets are 50 years old and were provided to Communist Cuba by the Soviet Union.
Another painting that looks unfinished is titled "Lack of Primer" for the very reason that the artist ran out of the stuff. This, too, offers a window into the lives of Cubans, who have long had to make do with less.
Meanwhile, daily e-mails from Mr. Lopez Oliva to the class have further helped to illuminate ordinary life in Cuba. He talks about everything from the weather to the small day-to-day details from the life of a working artist, Ms. Hayden said.
So how did the Yale trip come about in a language class on Latin American film? Better yet, how did Ms. Hayden manage to arrange a class trip to Yale and in a sense, into the very life of Cuba in only 13 days, from when artist’s first e-mail turned up in Princeton?
It began with a documentary on contemporary Cuban artists the students watched, titled, "A Great Day in Havana," and a viewing of the 1995 Cuban film "Strawberry and Chocolate."
Ms. Hayden was loaned a video about a teacher in New York who had her students contact contemporary Latin American artists. She thought that would be a good project for her own students, and so assigned each of them to research a Cuban artist and try to make direct contact with the artist via the Web. All the e-mails went through Ms. Hayden, who also wrote the artists a letter of introduction explaining the project.
One of the students, who had picked Mr. Lopez Oliva, was late in producing her letter. Ms. Hayden forwarded it along on Jan. 1 and the artist responded immediately. The class hadn’t heard from any of the others.
The reason, it turned out, was that all communications systems in Cuba were shut down at the end of the year for the anniversary of the revolution there Cuban authorities feared sabotage. Mr. Lopez Oliva, who knows the other artists, also pointed out that the students had incorrect e-mails and so sent along the correct ones, Ms. Hayden said.
"It’s so first-hand," she said of the correspondences from Cuba she and her class have now shared. "It’s cool for the kids."