This is an update on a scandalous story we featured some months ago.
Holly Block, executive director of the Bronx Museum, decided to spend a huge chunk of her museum’s funds to create a replica of the Jose Marti statue in New York’s Central Park and to send it as a gift to the criminal Castro regime.
Ms. Block seems to have a very soft spot in her heart for Castro, Inc. and has involved her museum in highly questionable Castro-friendly ventures.
Some of the museum’s governing executives resigned in protest of the outlandish misuse of funds for the Marti statue replica, to no avail.
The donations kept coming in from New York’s many leftist Castrophiles and Ms. Block’s horrendously offensive and unethical project pushed ahead, full steam.
Now the statue is finished and on its way to Castrogonia.
For Castro, Inc., with love
Never mind the fact that the Bronx Museum is supposed to serve one of the poorest communities in New York City, in which very few Cubans live.
Imagine what that 2.5 million dollars could accomplish there, if distributed to the needy.
Or imagine what 2.5 million dollars could accomplish in hurricane-ravaged Cuba — if kept out of the hands of Castro, Inc.
And never mind these two other facts:
1. That the Castro regime has totally falsified the genuine ethos of Jose Marti and turned him into a communist caricature.
2. That this statue will be employed by Castro, Inc. to enhance that caricature and to boast of its legitimacy.
This has nothing to do with history, truth, justice, fairness, or with art.
It’s all about extreme leftist politics and the bigotry and racism that underlies such politics.
What decent person would send such a lavish gift to one of the most repressive regimes on earth?
To send such a gift the sender must certainly regard those oppressed by that regime as subhuman.
So, in the parlance of the day, it seems that Ms. Holly Block is a white supremacist who loves the apartheid regime of the Castro dynasty.
Meditation for the day: Imagine the Bronx Museum sending a statue of Martin Luther to the Third Reich in 1940 –which loved to promote his anti-Semitic rants — and then imagine how that gift would be viewed today.
Below is the full update distributed by the Bronx Museum. It’s long, yes, but it deserves to be held up for public scrutiny somewhere.
And its full nauseating stench needs to be publicly aired, for all to smell.
A suggestion for all Bronx Museum personnel involved in the installation of this statue in Havana: bring some heavy-duty earplugs.
Granite base for statue set up in Havana
September Update on the Jose Marti Sculpture Project
From Project Director Leanne Mella
On August 7th, thirty-two granite panels, weighing close to 40,000 pounds began their journey to Havana by truck from KC Fabrications. The panels, comprising the 16.5-foot tall base for the sculpture, included three with inscriptions faithful to those on the original base at Central Park: the name of Jose Marti, inscribed on the front of the base, and a tribute to Marti, in English and Spanish, on the left and right panels.
The granite shipped to Havana on August 20th, having cleared export by U.S. Customs and importation by Cuban Customs. Currently, the panels are stored in a warehouse under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Historian of Havana, and will be installed by expert stone setters from the U.S. the first week of October.
The Export/Import process was without any complication at all, which we largely attribute to the work of the Washington DC – based law firm Crowell and Moring, which represented the project on a pro-bono basis, specifically for the purpose of ensuring that we complied with all U.S. regulations regarding cultural and educational exchange with Cuba, under which this gift of art is permitted, and providing us with the justification and citations from U.S. law that we incorporated into tour export documentation. Crowell and Moring reached out to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control on behalf of the project to make them aware of our plans and received their tacit approval of the gift and its export.
In addition, we remained in touch with the Public Diplomacy Officer on the Cuba Desk at the U.S. Department of State throughout the planning process, keeping them up to date on our plans. We assisted our Cuban colleagues on Importation of the granite by providing the necessary documentation needed for their receipt of the work.
On August 11th, as the Marti sculpture was nearing completion at the KC Fabrications in Gardiner, New York, we were pleased to welcome Cuba’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Anayansi Rodriguez Camejo, and the Deputy Representative, Ana-Silvia Rodgriguez Abascal, and their families to the workshop. Kurt Wulfmeyer and Chris Powers described steps of fabrication with the group and demonstrated the patination process. Nathan Newman represented the Bronx Museum.
The sculpture left KC Fabrications on September 5th via truck to Miami. Transit was delayed due to weather in Miami, but is now set to ship to Havana on Monday, September 25th.
Once we have completed the installation of the base and the sculpture, we will set a date for a dedication ceremony and opening activities. We are planning a one-day convening of Cuban and U.S. practitioners in Architecture, Design and Urbanism to exchange ideas and work about the Urban Future. We haven’t yet selected the participants, but will update the Board with more information after we have had a chance to consult with key Cuban and U.S. advisors. We’ll assure that invitations to the dedication and opening events are sent with sufficient lead time to allow as many Board members, supporters and friends of the project to attend as possible.
We continue to fund raise for expenses related to the dedication and public programs we want very much to stage during that time. The remaining goals of the project from the outset have been a bi-lingual curriculum based on Marti’s social justice ideas and a focused exhibition at the Bronx Museum of Art of artist’s depictions of Marti and ephemera related to him/his life. We also hope to create a publication and banners for the dedication. These will be designed in the U.S. and printed in Havana.
Great location for statue in Havana
3 thoughts on “Unethical stink bomb: $2,500,000 statue of Jose Marti sent as gift to Castro, Inc. by Bronx Museum of Art”
Oh, I’m sure Ms. Block has her reasons–their legitimacy, however, is another matter entirely.
The, uh, gift looks like a slick tchotchke on steroids. The real José Martí spent most of his life outside Cuba because he was incompatible with oppression and lack of freedom, and now some artsy fartsy idiot (at best) from the Bronx presumes to send him back to the worst oppression Cuba has ever known. In a way it’s pathetic, a grotesque gaucherie comparable to the Juanes “peace” concert in Havana or Diana Nyad’s desecration of the Florida Straits, but it is also deeply offensive. I hope, for her sake, that Block is merely as stupid and shallow as she looks, and really has no clue as to what she’s playing at. Even if she’s no worse than that, she’s beneath contempt. Blaming the Castro people for this sort of chanchullo is as pointless as blaming them for breathing, but their foreign enablers and collaborationists are another matter.
Once again, a man who was the antithesis of Fidel Castro and would have unequivocally abhorred and rejected his fraudulent and totalitarian “revolution” is being used as pretext for a repugnant baboseo between Castro, Inc. and American useful idiots or fellow travelers. The obscenity of the business could hardly be clearer, but of course that never stopped the kind of people involved here. Lord, the disgust.
I loved that idea of the great location for the statue, Professor.
Oh, I’m sure Ms. Block has her reasons–their legitimacy, however, is another matter entirely.
The, uh, gift looks like a slick tchotchke on steroids. The real José Martí spent most of his life outside Cuba because he was incompatible with oppression and lack of freedom, and now some artsy fartsy idiot (at best) from the Bronx presumes to send him back to the worst oppression Cuba has ever known. In a way it’s pathetic, a grotesque gaucherie comparable to the Juanes “peace” concert in Havana or Diana Nyad’s desecration of the Florida Straits, but it is also deeply offensive. I hope, for her sake, that Block is merely as stupid and shallow as she looks, and really has no clue as to what she’s playing at. Even if she’s no worse than that, she’s beneath contempt. Blaming the Castro people for this sort of chanchullo is as pointless as blaming them for breathing, but their foreign enablers and collaborationists are another matter.
Once again, a man who was the antithesis of Fidel Castro and would have unequivocally abhorred and rejected his fraudulent and totalitarian “revolution” is being used as pretext for a repugnant baboseo between Castro, Inc. and American useful idiots or fellow travelers. The obscenity of the business could hardly be clearer, but of course that never stopped the kind of people involved here. Lord, the disgust.
I loved that idea of the great location for the statue, Professor.