The Havana Biennial art exposition wrapping up Monday has been held 12 times since the 1980s. But this is the first since U.S. efforts to improve relations with Cuba began six months ago, allowing an unusually large contingent of American visitors. Here are some observations from U.S. art collectors and their representatives about how Havana's art scene has evolved and the impact of detente. Janda Wetherington, whose Pan American Art Projects gallery in Miami specializes in Cuban art, says prices have gone up since the last Biennial.

The correction was delivered with a smirk: “Trienal.” [...] When the Havana Biennial was founded in 1984, it was set up, like much of the Castro government’s internationalist initiatives up to that point, as a Latin American rejoinder to the Anglo-European — or imperialist — skew of global culture. The second biennial expanded its reach to Asia and Africa, and by the third, in 1989, this focus was articulated theoretically, with landmark texts on “Third World aesthetics” published in the official catalogue that have since become part of the art historical canon.

Ever since President Obama’s historic announcement in early December 2014, calling for the restoration of diplomatic ties between Washington and Havana, eyes have turned toward Cuba, waiting to see what changes the new dynamic will bring to the island nation.

Last week, Cuban-American painter Emilio Perez (b. 1972, New York, New York) returned to Cuba for the first time since 2001. The reason? To create a 65-foot site-specific installation along the Malecón—a five-mile long sea wall on the North shore of Havana. Perez's work, Un Verso Sencillo (A Simple Verse), is part of the group exhibition Detrás Del Muro II (Behind the Wall), which will be on view during the 12th Havana Biennial (running through June 22). 

She was one of the international artists invited to exhibit in the Havana Biennial. And the only Jamaican!  [...] The theme of this year's Havana Biennial is 'Between the Idea and the Experience'. And the curators took the decision to move some of the art out of conventional exhibition spaces into the street.