Raft found off coast of Florida "Museo de los Balseros" Fraklin Furnace, 1996 Raft found 5-miles off coast of Florida "Museo de los Balseros" Fraklin Furnace, 1996 Installation View "Museo de los Balseros" Fraklin Furnace, 1996 Raft found 2-miles off coast of Florida "Museo de los Balseros" Fraklin Furnace, 1996 Installation View "Museo de los Balseros" Fraklin Furnace, 1996 Installation View "Museo de los Balseros" Fraklin Furnace, 1996

museo de los balseros at franklin furnace by Mary Anne Staniszewski Last February when the Cuban military shot down two U.S. civilian airplanes, killing four members of the Florida-based organization Brothers to the Rescue and creating the latest catastrophe in Cuban- American relations, there was something missing in the media coverage that I saw. In the television stories on Cuban and American reactions, the Time magazine exclusive interview with Fidel Castro, The New York Times editorials assessing the crisis, the pro-Castro cable tv shows, and the PBS special report with footage of The Brothers to the Rescue throwing memorial wreaths into the sea, there was nothing about the rafts and the Cuban people who have been sailing them since the 1960s in order to reach the United States. Opening one month after this crisis, George Sánchez's "Museo de los Balseros" (The Museum of the Rafters) at Franklin Furnace could not be more timely. Installed on the walls and floors of Franklin Furnace are several of these rafts, along with a vitrine of shoes, cans of unopened food, compasses, air pumps, and handmade Santeria figures. These worn and very human traces of the Cuban-American situation were found in rafts that floated to the shores of Florida empty of their inhabitants, many of whom had drowned making the journey to the U.S. This "museum" also includes a billboard with clippings and photos that document aspects of this migration as well as a shelf of publications and objects related to these people's beliefs--and hopes--such as the votive card and booklet about Cuba's patron saint and protector La Virgen de la Caridad. Like any museum or gallery, this installation does estheticize these exhibited objects; at the same time, however, this particular project magnifies the social and political dimensions of these rafts and their meanings to the people of Cuba and the United States. The documentary material as well as a "conference" held during the first week of the installation tether these battered, handmade boats to their origins, history, and the people who tried to use them to cross the Florida Straits. The "Museo de los Balseros" presents often overlooked elements of the story of the rafters, like the boxes of food that were the standard fare at the refugee camp at the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base. The Museo's components also regroup conventional affliations. The panel discussion held in conjuction with the show brought together an unlikely mix: a founding member of Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban-American sociologist, a Borges scholar, and art critics. The installation also includes information about The Brothers, whose official mission is to save rafters and who are also associated with a conservative agenda to increase U.S. sanctions and aggression against Cuba. But their cause is reconfigured here as a much more complex element of this cultural landscape. However indebted the "Museo de los Balseros" may be to artist-museums such as the installations of Marcel Broodthaers, the Museo is distinguished by its hard-hitting emotional clout. Devoid of any sense of exploitation, the "Museo de los Balseros" forces the viewer to bear witness to remnants of the lives of the Balseros and in doing so offers a rare, and moving, experience to the gallery visitor. Franklin Furnace, New York Mar. 15 - Apr. 19 Mary Anne Staniszewski is author of Believing Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art (Penguin). She teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.