Cuba to Have New Workshop Aimed at Cultural Heritage Restoration

A workshop is being built in Santiago de Cuba, targeting the preservation and restoration of cultural heritage in the easternmost region of the country. The institution is located in Aguilera Street and San Félix.

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The two-story facility is going to include departments aimed at the preservation of artworks made of stone, metal, pieces of furniture, paintings, textiles and documents.

The property will also feature a quarantine warehouse to determine the physical or chemical damage of the pieces, as well as a laboratory where biologists and microbiologists will run the analysis related to the preservation and restoration work.

Different foreign-collaboration projects are being prepared in an effort to equip the facility and obtain the expensive tools and consumables needed to develop different works.

“Once the constructive phase is done and the areas are equipped, the workshop will cooperate with different institutions that have been established in the province in order to safeguard the heritage, starting with the Emilio Bacardí Museum”, Héctor del Toro Torres, specialist with the Provincial Center of Cultural Heritage, told Sierra Maestra newspaper.

Del Toro stressed that special attention is going to be paid to the work with documents, as they represent a prioritized line of work in the country, including pictures, manuscripts, antiques, since they are the most fragile and damaged because of different reasons, and represent most of our national heritage.

The workshop will count on the collaboration of specialists from the whole country, mainly from Havana and Santiago de Cuba, where there is great experience when it comes to working with documents and paintings, unlike the process with textiles as there is no expert in this field.

Because of the importance of safeguarding our cultural heritage, this institution will support and collaborate with other provinces, and this action will give a decisive boost to the preservation policy in the country.

Ten years ago, Marta Arjona, former president of the National Cultural Heritage Board, pointed out the need to have this facility at the easternmost region of the island, due to the historic material heritage in those provinces.