Luz Merino Acosta

Outstanding educator, dedicated for several decades to the development of Cuban art. Throughout her professional career she has held various teaching and management positions, among which stand out: she worked in the Art Department of the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí. She directed the Art Department of the Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of La Habana, where she served as Vice Dean of Research and Graduate Studies.

She holds a Bachelor's degree in Art History in 1967. Full Professor at the University of La Habana since 1989. Since 1966 she has been a professor in the Department of Art History of the Faculty of Arts and Letters, since 1989 full professor.

Luz Merino was very closely linked to the University of the Arts as an undergraduate and graduate education professor, especially in the Department of Theoretical Studies on Art of the Faculty of Visual Arts.

She has given various lectures and courses. She has taught Master's courses since 2001 in the subjects Research Methodology and Art Criticism.

She has made numerous pedagogical and research contributions. Author of the Selection of readings on Cuban art in the Republic, which includes her own texts.

She has participated in numerous international events held in Cuba and has taught courses and lectures at Universities in France, Honduras, Puerto Rico and El Salvador. She presents various publications in prominent Cuban journals. She has created the catalog of various exhibitions in Cuba and abroad.

She has published:

Art in Cuba 1902-1958, Essay.
Painting and illustration: two paths of modern art in Cuba, Essay.

Collaborations
She has directed various research projects and taught courses on Art History, Cuban Culture, Cuban Art, Research Methodology at the University.

Recognition and honors
For her outstanding work over the years in the development of culture in Cuba, she has received numerous recognitions and honors from Cuban institutions and other countries.

Luz was a brilliant and dedicated Art Historian, teacher of all generations of students in the career for half a century, with an indelible mark on the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, writer of essential texts and compilations, such as "Havana critical spaces of Cuban art: the 1950s decade", with simple and captivating prose, spontaneous communicator, scrutinizer of Cuban art in little-explored topics, and in those corners where the necessary "critical fortune" was lacking, she opened new paths to the understanding of important themes through her keen vision and, particularly, to "highlight the value of" some of our visual arts productions barely known or unrevealed, such as illustration in our republican flat press of the first half of the past century, the discovery and conceptual reconstruction of the pictorial change of centuries in our island, and the systematic and rigorous analysis of visual arts criticism in Cuba.

But Luz was also a great friend and companion, a vibrant personality, possessed of an overwhelming charisma, brimming with a Cubanness that she knew how to combine with the bearing of a grand lady that always distinguished her. In few words: she did honor to her name.