Caridad Blanco de la Cruz
The collection’s namesake, Caridad Blanco de la Cruz, is a curator at the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales (Center for the Development of the Visual Arts) in Havana. Comic books and graphic art and humor are a lifelong passion. She is a graphic art scholar, has published articles and books on the topic, and created numerous exhibitions spotlighting Cuban comic book artists in Cuba and in Europe. Her most recent book, published in April 2019, is Los flujos de la imagen: Una década de animación independiente en Cuba (2003–2013). Blanco has collected comic books throughout her life, resulting in a collection carefully curated to reflect the most important themes, artists, characters, publishers, and newspaper inserts of the last sixty years. One of her lifelong goals has been to elevate graphic humor in Cuba to the status of a fine art, worthy of serious consideration in the art world and the scholarly universe. This collection will be a treasure trove for scholars of literature, art, public relations, history, political science, African diaspora studies, Latin American studies, and much more.