Julia P. Herzberg is an art historian, independent curator, and Fulbright Senior Specialist living in New York. She completed her PhD in art history at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, in 1998, with a dissertation on Cuban artist Ana Mendieta. She is a specialist of Latin American artists living in the United States, and has curated more than twenty-five exhibitions. Herzberg was a co-curator of The Decade Show (1990), held in New York at the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, the New Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and she was the curator of the official U.S. representation for the III Bienal Internacional de Pintura in Cuenca, Ecuador (1991). In addition to serving as a consulting curator at El Museo del Barrio in New York (1996–2001), she was a consulting curator for the 2003, 2006, and 2009 Bienales de La Habana, and she is a contributing and consulting editor for Arte al día Internacional. Herzberg has taught, lectured, and published extensively in the United States and abroad and received two J. William Fulbright Scholarship Board awards: one at the Pontificia Universidad Católica (2007) and another at the Universidad Diego Portales (2013), both in Santiago, Chile, and also served as a visiting professor at the Instituto de Arte, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile (2016).
This review provides considerable documentation of the 9th Bienal de La Habana, which took place from March 27 to April 27, 2006. Founded in 1984, the first edition of the biennial was dedicated exclusively to Latin American and Caribbean artists. Since its second edition (1986), however, it has included artists from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe and North America as well, and has gained a reputation as an expansive venue for gathering and exhibiting contemporary non-Western art and art from the Global South. Since its third edition in 1989, it has been organized around broad themes. The 9th Bienal de La Habana was curated by Margarita González, Nelson Herrera Ysla, José Manuel Noceda Fernández, Ibis Hernández Abascal, Margarita Sánchez Prieto, José Fernández Portal, Hilda María Rodríguez, and Antonio Zaya. Some artists presented the city as modern and upbeat: Laura Messing (Argentina), Michel Najjar (Germany), and Polibio Diaz (Dominican Republic). Others explored the urban clashes between tradition and modernization: Sze Tsung Leong (Mexico/United Kingdom/United States) and Liu Guangyun (China). Others tackled the topic of urban poverty: Roberto Diago (Cuba), Alejandro Ramírez (Costa Rica), Roberto Stephenson (Haiti/Italy), and Yennyferth Becerra (Chile). Hany El-Gowley (Egypt) and Delores Cáceres (Argentina) confronted personal histories and, in turn, Sue Williamson (England/South Africa) and Claudia del Fierro (Chile) gave a voice to marginalized groups. Solo exhibitions by Shirin Neshat (Iran/ United States), Jean Novel (France), Lucy Orta (United Kingdom/France), Anne and Patrick Poirier (France), Carlos Aura (Spain), and Spencer Tunnick (United States) are mentioned, but not described or analyzed in depth. The biennial included over one hundred artists from fifty-two countries and took place over six official and seventeen participating venues, in addition to a three-day symposium organized by Dannys Montes de Oca Moreda. [As a complementary reading, see in the ICAA Digital Archive Herzberg’s review of the 10th Bienal de La Habana in Arte al día Internacional, “Integration and Resistance in the Global Era: Personal Reflections, 10th Havana Biennial” (doc. no. 1344023).]
