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Roberto Behar has been a Professor in Practice at the University of Miami School of Architecture since 1986. He is a principal founder of R & R Studios, the collaborative office he shares with Rosario Marquardt. R&R Studios is a multidisciplinary practice weaving together visual arts, architecture, design and the city. Behar frequently lectures in the United States, Europe, Israel, and South America, and his work has been published in over 200 publications worldwide. Behar's work has been presented in galleries, museums, and events in America and abroad. Exhibitions venues include solo and group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the Miami Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Madison, Miami International Airport, The Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, the Centre International pour la Ville, I’Architecture, et le Paysage (CIVA) in Brussels and the Institute Francais d’ Architecture in Paris, as well as Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

He was the Director of the Architectural Club of Miami from ADD DATES Cultural Director of the Centro de Arquitectos de Rosario.

Behar has a Diploma of Architecture from the Universidad Nacional de Rosario in Argentina, and later studied at The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City.

Margarita Cano is an artist and librarian born in Havana, Cuba on February 27, 1932 to Rafael Fernández Ruenes, an architect, and Margarita Villaurrutia Suarez. Cano attended the Ruston Academy, a bilingual American school in Havana, and earned degrees in physics and chemistry from the University of Havana in 1956. She worked at the Havana National Museum and at the Julio Lobo Napoleon Museum and obtained a Master of Library Science (MLIS) from the University of Havana in 1961. Cano migrated to the U.S. in October of 1962 and settled in Miami, Florida with her family. When she arrived in Miami, she recalled in a 2019 interview, the city was still lacking in cultural events and institutions, that there were only three art museums, and no full seasons of ballet or opera performances. This was all to change in the following decades and Cano played a large role in the city’s cultural development.

Cano worked at the Miami-Dade Public Library as a Community Relations and Art Services Coordinator for 29 years. She organized arts programs that highlighted the work of African-American and Cuban-American artists. Her efforts resulted in the establishment of a substantial, permanent art collection at the library. In 1977, Cano acted as project coordinator and organized the first exhibition of works by the CINTAS fellows at Miami-Dade Public Libraries. The show exhibited 57 pieces by Cuban artists living in the United States, as well as Spain, France, Puerto Rico and Colombia. Cano was also instrumental in organizing the 1983 exhibition “Nine Cuban-American Artists, The Miami Generation,” which traveled to Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, while she was serving on the board of directors of the Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture. Cano was also part of the group that founded the now renowned Miami Book Fair.

Cano’s son Pablo Cano (b.1961), a prominent Miami-based artist, cites his mother and father Pablo Cano, a musician, as inspiration for his career in the arts. His large post-Byzatine style painting, Saint Sebastiana, was shown at “The Miami Generation'' exhibition. He also was a CINTAS fellow in visual arts from 1983-84. His work is housed in several permanent collections, including at the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum.

Upon her retirement in 1993, her art practice became more than just an enjoyable hobby. She began developing a unique art style, painting portraits of family and religious figures like virgins, saints, angels and archangels, memories of Cuba, still life paintings, and landscapes, and creating hundreds of unique artist books based on the medieval Illuminated Manuscripts such as The Book of Hours. She says: "My paintings are a window into a dream world of memories which are unattainable but become alive in my pictorial narratives. With metaphors and allegories I retell the story of Cuba so close to us and yet so far away. I will continue my quest in pursuit of a happy closure to this never ending saga." Her works have also been described as “creating interaction between the sacred and the mundane” and “creating tension between surface ornamentation and three-dimensionality is enhanced by the rich jewel-like finish that belies the presence of the brush, which strengthens the narrative content of the work.” And that, “it is in the storytelling that Cano invites the viewer to partake of her memory and her magic.” Cano’s works have been featured in a number of solo exhibitions including “Dreaming Cuba” at the Gallery of the Eccentric in Coral Gables in 1993, “Visions And Definitions” at Cultural Resource Center in Miami in 1998, “Transcending Exile” at the Coral Gables Library in 2003, “Cuba-Paradise Lost” at Books and Books in Coral Gables and the Connors Rosato Gallery in New York in 2005, “Memories and Metaphors” at Oñate Fine Art in Miami in 2006, “Images and Memories” at Cremata Fine Art in Miami in 2007, “Divine Presence/ Presencia Divina” at Viota Gallery in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2008, and “Explorations” at Miami Dade Public Library Main Library in 2016. Her work has also appeared in numerous group exhibitions in South Florida and Puerto Rico including at the University of Miami Libraries. In her artist statement, Cano writes: “My Cuban roots are reflected in my art work. It tells and retells my personal vision of Cuba. Installations of my painting visually narrate the Cuban drama: an island frozen in time surrounded by a seawall where Cubans wait for change. I document this quest for democracy and freedom through allegories and metaphors.”

In 2009, Cano was honored for her role in establishing a permanent, major art collection of Cuban American art for the Miami-Dade Public Library system and for her participation on the Board of CINTAS and commitment to the foundation for more than three decades. Hortensia Sampedro, the President of the CINTAS Board, said: “Margarita Cano has dedicated her life to the arts and has worked selflessly for the benefit of Cuban artists… in promoting the fellowships and the works of art of the fellows in numerous exhibitions.”

She is the author and illustrator of books for children, including Isabel y Su Cama Nueva (2014) and Isabel y Su Gato Coco (2008) and stresses the importance of children’s literacy and creative expression.

Most recently, in 2019 Cano’s artists books have been displayed in exhibitions at LNS Gallery in Miami as part of the “Artful Book 2019” as well as at the “Spheres of Meaning: An Exhibition of Artist Books” at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University.

An architect and an artist, Rocco Ceo teaches courses in design, Design/Build (with Jim Adamson), foundation courses in freehand and mechanical drawing, drawing seminars on color theory, Michelangelo, Historic American Building Survey/HABS and Historic American Landscape Survey/HALS. He has produced drawings of the elements of Florida’s landscapes as well as the documentation of seminal sites in the history of South Florida such as Vizcaya and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas home. His published work includes the award winning books, Redland: A Preservation and Tourism Plan done with Margot Ammidown and Maria Nardi and Historic Landscapes of Florida co-authored with Joanna Lombard. His architecture practice focuses on the unique relationship between architecture and landscape found in the American Tropics. His work has received awards from the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, Progressive Architecture, and I.D. Magazine and the Miami Chapter of AIA. His interest in paradox found in the study of the natural world informs his architecture, research and painting.

Carlos Enrique Prado (1978, Cuba) is a visual artist and professor of visual arts, particularly of ceramics. He is currently Lecturer of Ceramics at the University of Miami's Art and Art History Department.

Throughout his career, he has been working predominantly in sculpture and ceramics, but has also made drawings, paintings, photographs, digital art, installations, interventions, and performances. His works have been focused towards contextual and social commentary, always with a strong anthropological perspective. In 1996 he graduated in sculpture and drawing at the National Academy of Fine Arts "San Alejandro." In 2002 he received a BFA from ISA University of the Arts of Cuba, the most important center of arts education in the country. He also received a MFA from that University in 2008. His works have been exhibited at major art institutions, museums, and galleries in the United States and Europe, and they are part of important private and public collections. He has also been an organizer and curator of several projects of solo and group shows as well as exhibitions of students of his courses.

As a visual artist, he has a very large body of work. Recently, much of his sculptures and installations have been made in ceramics. In this medium has achieved great reputation with first prizes in Ceramics Biennials and works in collections of major museums such as the National Museum of Ceramics in Havana and the ASU Art Museum Ceramics Research Center, Arizona. He has also been a visiting artist and lecturer at several universities and art schools such as University of Southern California in 2013, Midwestern State University in 2012, Arizona State University in 2011, and University of Alabama in 2010. He has been a visiting professor teaching ceramic courses and demonstration classes, such as summer course taught at University of Mary Washington (Fredericksburg, VA) in 2011, which culminated with an exhibition in one of the major galleries in the city.

Digital art is another medium where Prado has developed much of his recent work, achieving great recognition. The works are the result of a symbiosis between sculpture and digital media, particularly the construction of 3D designs and further processing as photographic images for print. The final digital prints have been part of several exhibitions and have been published in art magazines.

Painter, sculptor, cartoonist, and illustrator Enrique Riverón was born in 1902 in Cienfuegos, Cuba, and belonged to the first generation of Cuban modernists, experimenting with Cubism and pursuing abstraction from very early on in his career. During his early twenties Riverón traveled to France, Italy, Belgium, and Spain to study under scholarships and attend the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. In 1926 Riverón's first major one-man exhibition took place at the Association Paris Amerique Latine where the catalog introduction was written by noted Mexican writer Alfonso Reyes.

In 1927 Riverón returned to Havana and had a one-man show of his European work at the Asociación de Pintores y Escultores, as well as several other shows in Havana and New York. He moved to the United States in 1930 and became a United States citizen in 1943.

In addition to being known for his naturalistic drawings of street life in Paris and Cuba, Riverón began working with collage in the 1930s and was, for a number of years, a cartoonist for newspapers in Havana and other publications such as The New Yorker and Cine Mundial, which was published in New York and widely circulated in Latin America. He also worked in Hollywood for a time as an illustrator for Walt Disney Pictures.

From 1940 on, Riverón focused on painting and sculpture. He moved to Miami from Wichita, Kansas, in 1964. Enrique Riverón died in 1998.

Miguel Rodez was born in 1956 in Casablanca, Cuba. Rodez and his family immigrated to Manhattan, New York, in 1969, later moving to Miami in 1973, where he currently resides. His art is made on multiple media including drawing, installation, painting, photography, and sculpture.

Sina Sutter (b.1951) is an Orlando based Cuban-American visual artist and educator originally from Matanzas, Cuba. Her works, many of them landscapes and composites, weave in themes that relate to her Cuban roots through the use of color and choice of subject.

Sutter began exploring her passion for creating art when she was seven years old. In an interview, she states that she was driven by her love for nature and all living things to become an artist.

In 1962, when Sutter was just 11 years old, her family fled Cuba. They arrived in Miami eight years later in 1970. At age 18, Sutter put her artistic skills to work as a scenic artist at major entertainment venues and corporations, including the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus World, and Vision Enterprises. She also worked as a potter at Axner Ceramics, and as a miniaturist on the "White House in Miniature," which was exhibited worldwide, as well as many other projects. In 1981, she opened an art gallery, the Tropic Art Design, with a business partner and her husband Ben Sutter.

During the 1980’s, Sutter reconnected with her roots, which changed the course of her future work and was the starting point for the decade-long development of her artistic style and philosophy. This new turn in her life as an artist put her identity as a Latina front and center. She especially explored the textures, colors, styles, and locations that are unique to Cuban culture and important to Cuban identity and nationality. Her embrace of her roots did not make her work less accessible to audiences, but rather produced “a style that is sometimes complex yet able to reach people at many different levels.” Many of the titles of her works are bilingual in both Spanish and English. Sutter’s artist statement exemplifies her belief in art’s connection to the living world and personal identity:

"Art is the essence of feeling in its diverse forms. It includes the broadest aspects of life and how each singular personality manifests its perception of each existing experience by means of an aesthetic and comfortable wrapper that stimulates the imagination."

(Su filosofía artística: Arte es la esencia de los sentimientos en sus diversas formas, llevados a las exposiciones más amplias de la vida, en la cual se manifiestan cada una de las personalidades y su manera de sentir frente cada situación existente; mediante una envoltura estética y confortable que desarrolla la imaginación del hombre.)

Sutter has also worked with government grants and initiatives on behalf of women and the Latinx community. She is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Women’s Caucus for Art and was the Chair of the Latina Caucus. She worked with the National Hispanic Leadership Institute creating the posters for the 2000 and 2002 Mujer Award, and from 1999 to 2008 at the National Hispana Leadership Institute (NHLI) Mujer Awards Gala, in Orlando, Florida, La Jolla, California, San Antonio, Texas, and Denver, Colorado. She also worked with the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives event for Women's History Month (2001), for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2003, 2004), and for UNIFEM's fundraising event for the women of Afghanistan (2004).

Sutter has had her work exhibited all around the country including at the Epcot Guest relations lobby since October 2002, and in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, and in Florida at Walt Disney and other locations in Orlando. Her work has been featured in the following exhibitions: Ritmos Místicos (Mystic Rhythms), City Hall, Casselbury, FL in 2011; Art Buyers Caravan, Atlanta, GA, Chicago, IL, Orlando, FL, and Los Angeles, CA from 1987-1997; Latin American Art in Orlando, Terrace Gallery, City Hall, Orlando, FL; Art Expo, Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA; Professional Pictures Framers Association, Las Vegas, NV; Art Expo, Galleria, New York, NY; The Year of the Ox, Orlando, Terrace Gallery, City Hall, Orlando, FL; Celebrating Hispanic Heritage, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL; Archivers Exhibitions, Celebration of Hispanic Art, The Plaza Hotel, New York, NY; The 10th Annual National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education, Lake Buena Vista, FL; Great Southern Gallery, Key West, FL; Diversity, Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, Orlando, FL; Ofrendas, Border Crossings: Voices of the Past (Installation), Maitland Art Center, Maitlan, FL; Latin Colors Reflexions, Casselberry, FL; The Hispanic 100 (Honoree and Exhibitor), Disney’s Boardwalk Resort, Lake Buena Vista, FL; and Valencia Community College, Orlando, FL.

Sutter has won awards for her creative work including the People’s Choice Award at the Osceola Art Center at the Creativa Art Show, exhibited at the Mexican Consulate in Orlando celebrating Frida Kahlo’s life, and successfully completed an Art & Development Partnership with CREOG APGO, a Medical Education Conference.

During her career, Sutter worked not only as an artist, but as an educator. Sutter founded the Learn to Be Creative and Art Mindfulness Series professional workshops that provided creative outlets and education in corporate settings. She also led workshops at the Family Leadership Institute, Educational Achievement Services, Learning to be Creative Seminar, Empowerment Works, and Chronic Diseases Stress Management Program in Orlando and Miami.