Richard Selden • January 11, 2016

The Freer Gallery of Art, the oldest of the Smithsonian Institution’s art museums, will be closed for renovations from Jan. 4 through the spring or summer of 2017. The Sackler Gallery, to which it is linked underground — forming a bicameral museum of Asian art — will remain open.

Along with its extraordinary Asian holdings, the Freer is the home of a major collection of works by American expatriate artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler, of “Whistler’s Mother” fame (that painting, formally known as “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1,” is owned by Paris’s Musée d’Orsay), including his stunning Peacock Room.

On the third Thursday of the month at noon, the Peacock Room shutters are opened, allowing its flamboyantly colored and decorated walls and ceramics-packed shelves to be bathed in natural light. The last opportunity to experience this for a year and a half is this Thursday, Dec. 17.

Jan. 2-3 is “Say Goodbye to the Freer” weekend, with many family-friendly activities from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Julian Raby, director of the Freer-Sackler since 2002, was the speaker at Georgetown Media Group’s Nov. 5 Cultural Leadership Breakfast at the George Town Club. In his remarks, Raby brought to life the beginnings of the Freer Gallery of Art, dedicated in 1923 and spawned by the ideals of its founder, Charles Lang Freer, a full-cloth American self-made man.

“There was no silver spoon in the mouth of Charles Lang Freer,” he said, noting his beginnings as a maker and developer of railroad cars, which made him nearly a billionaire and allowed him to retire at age 47. He also had the good fortune, spurred by an interest in art collecting, to meet and be associated with Whistler, from whom he at first bought just a modest etching.

“The relationship was an extraordinary match,” Raby said. “Whistler was choleric, quixotic, and Freer was an extremely thoughtful man. It was a match that would lead to the acquisition of 1,300 works which formed the foundation of the collection and started a passion in Freer, and even obsession, with Asian art and culture, prints and screens and with China.”

“Imagine,” Raby said, “a relationship somewhat like what Velázquez might have had with the hidalgos” (a phrase you won’t hear every day). The complex history of the Peacock Room, created for British shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland and setting off a bitter feud between patron and artist, is currently the subject of a special Sackler Gallery exhibition, “Peacock Room REMIX.” The show’s centerpiece is “Filthy Lucre,” a recreation of the room in ruins by painter Darren Waterston.
Regarding the original Peacock Room, says Raby, “when we open the windows and let the light in, it’s still spectacular.”

Richard Selden • November 5, 2015

Portraitist of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton and other figures of the American Revolution, Charles Willson Peale raised a family of painters in Philadelphia, naming his sons Rembrandt, Raphaelle, Titian and Rubens and his daughters Angelica and Sophonisba (not a complete list).

One of the major works in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new exhibition, “Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life” (on view through Jan. 10) is Peale’s group portrait of his family: nine peaches-and-cream-faced Peales, including himself; the children’s nanny; and his dog Argus. On the green tablecloth is a still life — a tray of fruit next to a paring knife and a curled apple peel (pun no doubt intended).

On each side of this canvas, nearly seven and a half feet wide, are two small still-life paintings by Peale family members; nearby are classic still lifes by Raphaelle, one of the first American artists to specialize in the genre. His father, like many artists before and since, considered flowers, fruit, cheese, cutlery, serving ware, wine bottles, dead fish and the like more a subject for artistic training than for finished works, despite the still-life obsessions of Dutch Golden Age painters (excluding Rembrandt and Hals).

Grouping outstanding examples, many unfamiliar, in roughly chronological order under the thematic headings of Describing, Indulging, Discerning and Animating, the exhibition — the first of its kind in three decades — aims to make the case that, in the words of curator Mark D. Mitchell, “the story of American still life is the story of American life.”

At several points, context is provided in inventive ways. Plate 26 from John James Audubon’s “Birds of America,” depicting now-extinct Carolina parakeets, is accompanied not only by several of the huge folio volumes but by four specimens collected in 1843 and owned by Audubon, their colors — orange, yellow and turquoise — still bright.

In the Indulging section, visitors can explore the language of flowers at “You In Flowers” interactive stations, which generate personalized (sort of) on-screen bouquets from self-submitted adjectives.

Velvet curtains evoke the Gilded Age setting of William Harnett’s largest trompe-l’oeil (trick the eye) painting, “After the Hunt” of 1885, painted for the Paris Salon but purchased for Theodore Stewart’s extravagant New York saloon. Trained in Munich, Harnett was a genius at depicting feathers (dead game birds), fur (a dead rabbit), metal (two firearms and a hunting horn) and the life-size green door — with rusty ornamental hinges, a keyhole escutcheon and a dangling key — on which these and other precisely rendered objects appear to hang.

The superb selection of trompe-l’oeil works in the Discerning section includes “Reminiscences of 1865,” the movingly subliminal tribute to Lincoln painted in 1904 by Harnett’s contemporary John Frederick Peto, which shows a black-and-white portrait of the president and various forgotten scraps of paper tacked to a wooden panel in which ABE and his birth and death dates are carved.

The later works under the theme of Indulging (which overlaps with Discerning) show the influence of Japanese art, both directly — as in Robert Blum’s virtuosic “Flower Market, Tokyo,” of 1891–92 — and indirectly, by way of the French Impressionists.

Finally, the galleries featuring 20th-century art give example after example of modernism’s embrace of the genre. By including works by modern masters with distinctive personal styles — Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keefe, Stuart Davis, Paul Cadmus, Andrew Wyeth, Jasper Johns — the curatorial team compels us to ask “How does this work fit into the American still-life tradition and what does it add to it?”

Several of these works are sculptures, such as Andy Warhol’s seemingly trompe-l’oeil “Brillo Boxes” of 1964. Screen-printed on three wooden cubes, the piece actually proclaims its artifice through the imperfections of its handmade process.

One of the most beautiful works in the show is by an artist, like Peale, with Philadelphia connections: Alexander Calder. “The Water Lily,” c. 1945, constructed from sheet metal and wire, is black with a gray base, as far as could be from the colorful flower canvases in the preceding galleries. The flat piece of metal representing the lily’s seed pod, punched with holes, would never trick the eye, yet it is instantly recognizable, a triumph of observation to rival Audubon’s.

Richard Selden • October 22, 2015

Olga Hirshhorn, 95, fourth wife of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden founder Joseph Hirshhorn, died Oct. 3 in Naples, Florida.

After their marriage, in 1964, she received an education in art from her husband and from the artists with whom they socialized: Calder, Chagall, Giacometti, Man Ray, Miró, O’Keeffe and Picasso, to name a few. She began to acquire art herself, stepping up her collecting after Joe Hirshhorn died in 1981.

In 1995, Olga Hirshhorn donated more than 600 works not to the museum with her name on it but to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Though she pledged the rest of her collection and one-third of her estate to the Corcoran, this promised gift was withdrawn after the 2005 departure of then-director David C. Levy and the cancellation of the museum’s Frank Gehry-designed wing.

A five-foot dynamo well into her 80s, Olga Zatorsky was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, to a chauffeur/gardener and a cook. Twenty-one years younger than Joe Hirshhorn, she first attracted his attention over the phone. Having married and separated from her English teacher at Greenwich High, she was running an employment agency and he was looking for domestic help at his Greenwich estate.

The gift of 6,000 works and an endowment that created the Smithsonian’s museum of modern and contemporary art came two years after they married. The Hirshhorn Museum opened in 1974.

Olga Hirshhorn served on the boards of the Hirshhorn, the Corcoran and the Baker Museum in Naples, which hosted the exhibition “The Mouse House: Works from the Olga Hirshhorn Collection” in 2009 (the show also traveled to the Bruce Museum in Greenwich). That collection of some 200 works was later donated to the Baker Museum.

The “mouse house” was her name for a converted, art-filled carriage house she owned on Embassy Row in Washington. She also owned houses in Naples and on Martha’s Vineyard.

She is survived by her sons John and Denis from her first marriage, to John Cunningham

Richard Selden • October 15, 2015

Having surpassed its original fundraising goal of $125 million by nearly $10 million, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has set a new goal of $175 million to fund its campus expansion. The project is the first new construction since the 1971 opening of the massive, multi-genre center, designed by Edward Durell Stone.

With the expansion plans approved by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission, demolition is set to begin this month. The new facilities are expected to open in the fall of 2018.

No federal monies will go toward the project. Kennedy Center Chairman David M. Rubenstein, co-chair of the “Building the Future” campaign with treasurer Michael F. Neidorff, made a $50-million lead gift in 2013 and Boeing later gave $20 million. The center recently announced additional gifts, including $10-million donations from Jacqueline Badger Mars and Stephen and Christine Schwarzman.

With the planned floating pavilion relocated to dry land and the enhancement of a pedestrian bridge connecting the project to the Rock Creek Park Trail, the estimated design and construction costs have gone from $100 million to about $120 million. The three new pavilions, with high ceilings and river views, will contain flexible, intimate spaces filled with natural light. There will also be an outdoor wall for simulcasting performances.

The remainder of the budget will go toward exhibits in the new public spaces and technology and systems upgrades to the entire campus, meant to support a new level of engagement and “create a more inspiring dialogue between patrons and artists,” according to a press release.

The architects for the expansion are Steven Holl and Chris McVoy of Steven Holl Associates in New York, in partnership with BNIM Architects of Kansas City.

Richard Selden • June 11, 2015

Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Don Quixote. Who are your heroes in real life? Those who serve over in Afghanistan, or six months underwater in nuclear subs.

So answered Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk, then 97, in the October 2012 Vanity Fair. The writer of “The Caine Mutiny,” “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” – the first made into a classic Humphrey Bogart film, the others into television miniseries – turned 100 years old May 27.

Almost half a century ago, a profile in the Nov. 26, 1971, issue of Life magazine reported, “Wouk lives in chandeliered elegance in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., in an 1815 townhouse.” He and his wife Betty along with their sons moved to 3255 N St. NW in 1964.

When the house was renovated about five years ago, architect Simon Jacobsen discovered a small, secret room along with an interesting movie memento: steel balls used as stress-relievers by the cross-examined Commander Queeg, played by actor Humphrey Bogart, in “The Caine Mutiny,” made from Wouk’s novel. There was also a note, which read, “To Herman from Bogie.”

The house, on the corner of N and Potomac Streets, is now owned by dermatologist Tina Alster, M.D., and her husband and political consultant, Ambassador Paul Frazer, who put it on the market several months ago.

The son of immigrants from Minsk, Wouk, the future hewer of bulky wartime narratives graduated from Columbia University and wrote comedy sketches for Fred Allen’s radio show. His World War II service in the Navy inspired “The Caine Mutiny,” which was published in 1951. He moved to Washington, partly to be near the National Archives and the Library of Congress.

In 2000, the Library of Congress gave him its Living Legend medal and, eight years later, the first Library of Congress Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Writing of Fiction. At that time, he donated his journals, more than 100 volumes, to the library, retaining a copy for his own research.

Wouk’s wife, Betty, who had served on the board of directors of the Georgetowner Newspaper, died in 2011.

Wouk now lives in Palm Springs, Calif. His new memoir, “Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author,” will appear in December.

Richard Selden • May 7, 2015

Wrapping up Georgetown Media Group’s spring round of Cultural Leadership breakfasts, Dr. Steven Knapp, president of the George Washington University since 2007, will speak the morning of May 7 at the George Town Club about the university’s expanding activity in the arts, exemplified by the bringing of the Textile Museum and the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design into the GW fold. Until recently, the District’s largest institution of higher education had not positioned itself as a leader in the arts.

Dr. Knapp will speak at 8:30 a.m. and a light breakfast will be served. Admission costs $15. For more details and to RSVP, contact Richard Selden at richard@georgetowner.com.

Richard Selden • April 28, 2015

This Friday and Saturday, visitors to the stretch of upper Wisconsin Avenue known as Book Hill may feel like calling it “la Colline aux Livres.” That’s because the 12th annual Georgetown French Market, organized by the Georgetown Business Improvement District, will have once again turned the blocks between P Street and Reservoir Road into an open-air Parisian-style bazaar.

Between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. both days, more than 40 local fashion and home boutiques, antique shops, art galleries and cafés will be offering special displays and discounts. The sidewalk-sale ambiance will be enhanced with strolling entertainers.

On Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., the TD Bank parking lot on Wisconsin Avenue above Q Street will become a gathering place for families with children to listen to live music, interact with mimes and have their faces painted and caricatures sketched.

Live music with a Louisiana-gypsy-jazz flair will also be presented at Wisconsin Avenue and P Street and the 1600 block of Wisconsin Avenue near Urban Chic. The list of performers includes acoustic swing quartet Laissez Foure (a play on laissez faire – get it?), Yamomanem (said to be New Orleans patois for “your mother and the rest of your family and friends that always seem to be around the house”), the Rachel & Sean Jazz Duo, Swing Guitars DC and the Red Hot Rhythm Chiefs.

With some help from the Alliance Française of Washington, the Georgetown Public Library at the top of Book Hill is going Gallic with three special programs. On Friday at noon, art historian Vanessa Badré will lead a discussion, “From Versailles to China.” On Saturday at 10:30 a.m., there will be a Madeline storytime, with a reading of “Madeline at the White House” and a workshop in which participants will make their very own yellow hat. On Saturday at 2 p.m., Jacques Bodelle will talk about and sign copies of his book “Petite(s) Histoire(s) des Francais d’Ameriqué [A Brief History of the French in America].”

At Wisconsin and Volta Place, Georgetown Lutheran Church, founded in 1769, will invite French Market visitors to stop in for water and treats.

Among the curbside food options will be merguez sausages, sweet and savory crepes, Vietnamese bánh mì sandwiches, BBQ chicken skewers, pizza and dipped fruit. Patisserie Poupon – which will feature chicken with lemon and olive tagine along with their extensive selection of fresh-baked pastries – is running a drawing to win an Illy Y5 Duo espresso machine, now through Saturday.

Free parking will be available Saturday at Hardy Middle School across from the Georgetown Safeway, near the intersection with 34th Street, where there is also a Capital Bikeshare station.
Participating Retailers (west of Wisconsin, north to south):

All We Art
Unique international fine art, wooden/textile handmade crafts, jewelry and bags.
30% off select items.

Urban Chic
Up to 80% off sale items; 15% off full-priced clothing and denim.

Simply Banh Mi
Banh mi sandwiches, Vietnamese coffee, milk tea and more.

Vicky’s Nail Boutique
25% off select nail polishes.

Kennedy & Co.
Stop by to meet our associates and pick up your free gifts.

Edible Arrangements
$3s moothies, $6 six-count and $12 twelve-count of dipped fruit.

Café Bonaparte
Crepe stand, $5 per crepe.

The Phoenix
50% off select clothing, jewelry and accessories.

Little Birdies
10% off spring/summer clothing, shoes and accessories, plus 40% off sale items.

Ella Rue
In-store select merchandise 50-75% off.

P Street Gallerie
Original works and prints by local, regional and international artists. Receive 10% off framing coupon with purchase.

Participating Retailers (east of Wisconsin, north to south)

A Mano
Up to 75% off house and garden.

Cross MacKenzie Gallery
10% off work inside the gallery; 40% off ceramic items outside.

Pretty Chic
60% off jewelry; 50% off clothing, shoes and handbags. Check out our backyard Secret Garden Sales.

Maurine Littleton Gallery
SwitchWood bow ties, art books. 30% off select artworks on paper.

The Bean Counter
BBQ chicken skewers, lemonade, cold and hot drinks. 10% off sandwiches.

The Dandelion Patch
50-90% off select items in our Georgetown store only. Restrictions apply.

Egg by Susan Lazar
Up to 70% off fall/winter apparel, $5 and $10 baskets filled with past season merchandise and 20% off our brand-new spring line.

Comer & Co.
Antiques and home furnishings. Check out our expanded collection of discounted items.

Moss & Co.
Up to 75% off. Assortment of home accessories, antiques, furniture, garden items, jewelry.

David Bell Antiques
Antiques and home furnishings.

Matt Camron Rugs
Rugs and textiles.

Marston Luce
Broad selection of antiques, accessories and jewelry.

Sherman Pickey
Up to 80% off men’s and women’s merchandise.

Patisserie Poupon
Croissants, macarons, and more. Grilled merguez, chicken and steak sandwiches. Illy coffee. French tablecloths, handmade African baskets and more.

Susan Calloway Fine Arts
Middle Kingdom porcelains and discounted frames.

Manny & Olga’s Pizza
$2.50-$3 fresh pizza slices and $1 drinks.

Pho Viet & Grille
30-40% off Vietnamese sandwiches, salads and coffee drink.

Reddz Trading
20% off all merchandise except Chanel and Hermes; table specials.

Bacchus Wine Cellar
Six-pack of French wines in reusable canvas tote, $50. Wine tasting at the cellar, prior to purchase. 15% off all French wines.

Nectar Skin Bar
Spring glam-a-rama sale: select make-up and beauty products 30-50% off.

Illusions
Hair artist styling outside (weather permitting), giveaways and gifts with purchase.

Kiki Lynn
25% off all full-price Kiki Lynn items.

Britt Ryan
Special prices/discounts off select dresses, tops and bottoms.

Winifred Paper
15% off ready-to-order stationery and ready-made note sets.

Ella Rue
50-75% off jewelry, 30% off scarves and hats, 50-75% off select designer merchandise.

Artist’s Proof
20% off art books by Phaidon, Taschen, Rizzoli and many other fine art book publishers. Stop by and indulge in works by both local and international contemporary artists.

Jaryam
Additional 20% off on sale items for savings up to 70% off.

Via Umbria
Take a break from the Frenchiness of the Market and shop Italian artisanal products. Umbria handprinted ceramics, pastas and tools for your Italian kitchen.

Appalachian Spring
Unique gifts and fine American crafts. 20% to 50% off select items. [gallery ids="102058,134553,134552" nav="thumbs"]

Richard Selden • March 19, 2015

Three special exhibitions in 2015 will mark the 25th anniversary of the National Gallery of Art’s photography collection. Two will open May 3: “In Light of the Past: 25 Years of Photography at the National Gallery of Art” (through July 26) and “The Memory of Time: Contemporary Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Acquired with the Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund” (through Sept. 7).

The third, which will open Nov. 1 and run through Feb. 28, 2016, is titled “Celebrating Photography at the National Gallery of Art: Recent Gifts.” Displaying works donated to the museum in honor of the anniversary, it is likely to include gifts that have yet to be made.

Though the collection was launched in 1949 with a spectacular gift – Georgia O’Keeffe’s donation of the “Key Set,” more than 1,600 photographs by her late husband, legendary photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz – the National Gallery began to actively collect photography in 1990.

The collection has expanded under curator Sarah Greenough to nearly 14,000 American and European photographs from 1839 to the present. Photographs are fragile and deteriorate when exposed to light. Most of the collection has never been exhibited and the works that have been exhibited have been on view only briefly.

Curated by Greenough and assistant curator Andrea Nelson, the exhibition of contemporary photographs will include works exploring the complexity of time, memory and history, by photographers including Sally Mann (b. 1951), Vera Lutter (b. 1960), Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948), Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953) and Sophie Calle (b. 1953).

Richard Selden • March 11, 2015

IN – Textile Museum

After nearly 90 years in Kalorama, the Textile Museum will open March 21 in a new Foggy Bottom facility as the George Washington University Museum and the Textile Museum. The largest exhibition in the museum’s history, “Unraveling Identity: Our Textiles, Our Stories,” will display more than 1,000 pieces through Aug. 24. On the grand opening weekend, there will be free activities at the new museum, 701 21st St. NW, as well as a textile symposium on Saturday at the School of Media and Public Affairs, 805 21st St. NW.

The design, by Hartman-Cox Architects, links a new 35,000-square-foot structure with the former university police headquarters, Woodhull House, which will become the home of a collection of Washingtoniana – rare maps, drawings, documents and correspondence – donated to the university by Albert H. Small in 2011. The director of the two museums, also an associate professor of Museum Studies, is John Wetenhall, a historian of modern art who got his Ph.D. at Stanford and was executive director of the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Fla., among others.

The origins of the Textile Museum were similar to those of the nearby Phillips Collection. It opened in 1925 in the S Street mansion of George Hewitt Myers (a collector of what were then known as Oriental rugs) and grew to be one of the major collections of non-Western textiles in the United States. The struggling museum was taken over by George Washington University a few years after a plan to open an annex in Penn Quarter was canceled in 2008. The university is also building a conservation and resource center on its Loudoun County, Va., campus.

OUT – Franklin School

On Feb. 9, Mayor Muriel Bowser abruptly announced the de-selection of the Institute for Contemporary Expression as the developer, with Anthony Lanier’s East Banc, of the landmark Franklin School at 13th and K Streets NW. A new Request for Qualifications, due March 23, has been issued, with a Request for Proposals to follow in the fall.

ICE’s plan to create a space for the presentation of cutting-edge art, especially large installation and multimedia works – along with education programs, a bookstore and a restaurant by José Andrés – was chosen by then Mayor Vincent Gray’s administration in February 2014. The building, designed in 1865 by Adolph Cluss, the architect of the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building, became vacant when it ceased to be a homeless shelter in 2008. Several plans since then for its reuse went nowhere.

Collector Dani Levinas, executive director of ICE, has said that he was not consulted and his plan is solid. (Cost estimates vary from Levinas’s $13.2 million to more than $20 million.) It is not known if ICE will respond to the RFQ. In the meantime, there have been calls for revisiting the decision, with a letter circulating asking the mayor to “Please take this moment of public appeal to bring this matter back before the City Council.”

Richard Selden • January 29, 2015

Born March 2, 1917, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III became the symbol of America’s love affair with Cuba, the country from which his wealthy and prominent family fled in 1934.

Ironically, the original TV run of “I Love Lucy,” in which Desi Arnaz played bandleader Ricky Ricardo, nearly coincided with the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who led the revolt that sent Arnaz’s family – and many others – into exile in Miami.
During the Desilu decade of the 1950s, Cuba was the “Holiday Isle of the Tropics,” 90 miles from Key West. Havana was the Latin Las Vegas.

An earlier wave of Cuba tourism lasted from the 1920s through the early 1930s, the Prohibition years, when famous and infamous Americans went to Cuba to drink, gamble, golf, fish and perhaps sin. After a few visits, Ernest Hemingway bought his winter retreat, Finca Vigía, in 1940. It is now a museum, a mandatory stop along with his favorite Havana bars, La Floridita (for daiquiris) and La Bodeguita del Medio (for mojitos).

But since the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro – now aged 88 and ailing, having stepped down from Communist Party leadership in 2011 – Cuba became known as a police state rather than a vacation paradise. Along with others, the politically powerful Cuban exile community in the United States made sure that economic sanctions, including a travel embargo, remained in effect.

Then, on Dec. 17, President Obama announced a move to reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba, following negotiations (with the assistance of Pope Francis) that led to the release of American Alan Gross, imprisoned since Dec. 2009, in exchange for three Cuban agents.

Unimpeded travel to Cuba from the U. S. will require Congressional approval. However, several regulatory changes will make things easier. For instance, U.S.-based credit and debit cards will now be accepted in Cuba, and U.S. travelers will be able to bring home up to $400 worth of Cuban goods.

The U.S. government will also issue what are called general licenses, for citizens who wish to travel for humanitarian reasons, to perform or compete and for other specific purposes. Currently, only special licenses, requiring an arduous application process, are available. Americans who travel to Cuba without a license or through a travel provider that is not licensed by the Department of the Treasury are breaking the law and risk substantial fines.

The regulatory amendments putting these changes into effect are supposed to be issued “in the coming weeks.” More information may be found online at treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/pages/cuba.aspx, where there is a link to sign up for Cuba Sanctions email updates.

In the meantime, the easiest, if expensive, legal option to visit Cuba is through a “people-to-people” group tour organized by an authorized travel provider, either open to the public or under the auspices of a university, a museum or another nonprofit.

The Cuban government has been investing in tourism since the 1990s, restoring sections of Old Havana and building resort hotels with foreign, but not American, partners. Capacity is limited, and most facilities have not been modernized.

By far the largest source of international visitors to Cuba – nearly a million per year – is Canada, whose citizens tend to go to Varadero, about 14 miles east of Havana, for inexpensive beach and nature vacations. While around 650,000 U.S. citizens visit annually, the vast majority are Cuban Americans with visas to visit family members.

Over the next few years, there will be a strong curiosity factor. Americans will seek to feel the aura of Capone, Hemingway and Sinatra, gawk at the vintage cars, visit unfamiliar beaches and see for themselves what the country and the people are like.

After a few years of opening to America, and, presumably, a surge when the ban is finally lifted, the place that Cuba will come to occupy in the panoply of Caribbean destinations is unknown.

But wouldn’t it be nice to toast Desi’s 100th birthday with rum and cigars in Santiago de Cuba, where both his father and grandfather were mayor?