Navigating the Waves offers an in-depth look at how Cuban artists have responded to the economic and political forces that have shaped the country while negotiating the changing prescriptions and proscriptions of official cultural policy. With 100 photographs drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition explores themes of political and social critique, individual identity, the body and spirit, Afro-Cuban heritage, and the margins of society. Navigating the Waves, celebrates the recent acquisition of the Madeleine P. Plonsker Collection, some 300 photographs that mesh perfectly with the Museum’s existing collection to create one of the richest representations of post-revolution Cuban photography anywhere.
Malcolm Daniel is the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, a position he assumed in December 2013 after 23 years on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, including 9 years as head of that museum’s Department of Photographs.