Wealthy U.S. Collectors Look To Cuba As Next Hot Market For Art

``I would love to see a Cuba where I can produce my work,'' Leon said in an e-mail. ``If this happens I think many artists living abroad will come back. Here there's no professional framing house, no professional photo laboratory, no machines for working with wood, for printing high-quality photographs, for working with plexiglass.''

“Cuban artists producing today are going to have an easier time promoting their work,” said Virgilio Garza, head of Christie’s Latin American art department. “They’re going to have a bigger stage.”

Artists based in Cuba are legally allowed to sell their work internationally, and market specialists said it will take time to implement improved services such as payment methods and shipment of the works.

‘Enormous’ Attention

“Collectors will be able to buy with more confidence and much more information,” Garza said. “Galleries are going to be more willing to represent Cuban artists if they have access to them more easily.”

Cuba will gain an important spot in the increasingly popular Latin American art market, executives said.

“There’s an enormous amount of attention to the Latin American contribution to art,” said Noah Horowitz, executive director of the Armory Show in New York, an annual art fair that attracts 65,000 people and includes galleries from Latin America. “Within Latin America as a whole, Cuba could play an interesting part of that story in the next five to 10 years.”

Holly Block, executive director of the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York, was on a plane to Cuba when the U.S. announcement was made. The Bronx Museum is in talks to organize an exhibition at the fine arts museum in Havana during the Biennial, and for a team of Cuban curators to work with the Bronx Museum on a show in 2016.

“People were so emotional and crying,” Block said about the diplomatic news in a phone interview from the museum, where she was attending an organizational meeting. “When I first came here in ’94, many artists had never shown in the U.S. So we’re hopeful that things will change. Everybody here is excited.”

Spain, Germany

Even with an initial rush, the Cuban art market is unlikely to explode overnight.

European and South American collectors have been free to visit galleries and artists’ studios in Cuba for decades. Some artists don’t live full time in Cuba.

“A lot of these artists are in Spain, Germany or other countries,” Garza said. “It was limiting to live in Cuba.”

Liz Klein, an art adviser at Reiss Klein Partners in New York who toured Havana and met artists for five days in 2012 with collectors and trustees of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, said anyone interested in Cuba should visit soon.

“Once it really opens up and the landscape changes and Western dollars fix things up, you worry a little about how quickly the charm will be lost,” she said.