Margarita Cano

Margarita Cano is a much-loved and celebrated artist, curator, scholar, and former Miami-Dade Public Library System liaison. She played a formative role in developing the library’s formidable art collection, also overseeing innovative public programs, commissioning murals, such as Purvis Young’s, and hosting the first exhibition of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s famous Surrounded Islands project, which Cano and colleague Barbara Young also helped facilitate. Cano’s tireless contributions to Miami’s nascent art and literary evolution, including leadership roles in the Miami Book Fair, Cuban Museum, and Center for the Fine Arts, led to a CINTAS “lifetime achievement” award – more than a decade ago When NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale hosted her 90th-year retrospective in 2022, Director and Chief Curator Bonnie Clearwater characterized Cano’s work as “a portal into a celestial world, in which memories are transformed into sacred visions of life and loss.” Cano’s vital, ongoing practice – comprising drawings, photos, books, sculpture, prints, and painting – often features detailed, dream-like landscapes, nostalgically evoking her Cuban childhood.