Well, the big day finally arrived in Havana - the official public opening of the 7th International Havana Art Biennial. Hundreds of journalists, art lovers, collectors, artists, and politicians gathered this morning in the Plaza Vieja in Havanas Historical Center for this event. Cubas Minister of Culture, Abel Pietro, was also present. The highlight of the mornings program was the announcement of the UNESCO Prize 2000 recipients - Jean Pierre Raynaud from France, Diana Domingues from Brazil (see her article about this award-winning interactive installation in our Art Issues), and Los Carpinteros and Galeria Dupp, both from Cuba. All artists were present to accept this important award.

Afterwards, the many exhibitions located in various cultural spaces around the Plaza Vieja opened to the public. We will present all these exhibitions later in the next few days, but today we will show a few images from the exhibitions that opened in the Convento de San Francisco de Asis, also in the Historical Center next to the Harbor. The three main exhibitions presented here were new installations by renowned Cuban artist Kcho, a group exhibition on The Post-Medieval Cubans, and an exhibition of Cuban movie posters. Please join us each day for more inside information and photos on the important events and exhibitions at the Havana Biennial.

Next there was a press preview of many of the Biennial art exhibitions, some installed at the Wilfredo Lam Contemporary Art Center, and others around Old Havana in the Convento de San Francisco de Asis. Elsa Mora, a Cuban artist born in 1971, exhibited her recent works at the Galeria Carmen Montilla. At the National Library in Revolutionary Square, the Wilfredo Lam Contemporary Art Center today launched their new CD-ROM on the life of the great Cuban artist, Wilfredo Lam. The CD-ROM was made in collaboration with CEISIC (Center of Cultural Information and Applied Systems). It includes 166 works of art, music from the noted Cuban composer Juan Pineira, and is bilingual. Following this conference, the library gallery inaugurated an exhibition of works of Wilfredo Lam from the Fine Arts Museum of Cuba. Entitled "La Aventura de la Creación," the exhibition features his works on paper from the period of the late 1930s when the artist was in Paris, up to 1947 in Havana.