Margarita Cano is a Cuban-American artist, curator, scholar, former liaison of the Miami-Dade Public Library System and Center for the Fine Arts, and former Head of Community Relations for the Miami-Dade Public Library System. She was a significant contributor to the development of the Latin American art market of South Florida as a leading figure in the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County public library systems. Cano is responsible for launching the permanent art collection of the Miami-Dade County Library System as well as spearheading several milestone Miami art and literary events of the 1980s, such as Surrounded Islands, The Miami Generation exhibition, and the Miami Book Fair.
Background and early life in Cuba
Margarita Victoria Fernandez y Villa Urrutia was born in Havana, Cuba on February 27, 1932, to Margarita Villa Urrutia Suarez and Rafael Antonio Maria Fernandez Ruenes. She is the second of their two children, following her brother Rafael, who was born five years previously. Her father was an architect and held master's degrees in physics and chemistry. He became a notable figure in Cuba for designing the landmark Bacardi Building, which in 1930 became Havana's first Art Deco building. Her mother was a housewife from a family of Basque descent that had migrated to the Canary Islands before settling in Cuba.
Her upbringing with her brother Rafael in the Fernandez household within el Vedado included an frequently eclectic roster of notable visitors that included pianists, archeologists, and artists such as Wifredo Lam, who was an early supporter of her own art career. Margarita and her brother attended the Ruston Academy for their education, taking classes in both English and Spanish and also learning French. Cano graduated in 1949 and subsequently enrolled in the University of Havana, earning her doctorate in physics and chemistry in 1953. That same year, at the age of 21, Cano worked on the Cuban television program “Las Toallas Antex,” a trivia game show, as a panelist who was tested by answering audience questions. Her brother, Rafael Fernandez, later became the Chief Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Clark Art Institute in Williams College of Williamstown, Massachusetts.
In the 1950s she would frequently visit Miami, where her brother was then residing while securing a second law degree from the University of Miami. In that period Miami was a mid-sized city with more affordable commodities than the more metropolitan Havana. She would also frequently visit New York City and Washington, D.C., in her youth before the Cuban Revolution.
Cano's mother died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism when Cano was in her twenties and employed in an industrial chemical lab in Havana. Following her mother's death, a close relative was appointed by the Castro government as director of the National Library and Margarita became her personal assistant. During this period the National Library was a central element of Castro's campaign to increase literacy in rural areas. While working in the library, Cano also returned to the University of Havana to study library science, after which she was tasked with reorganizing the National Library’s serial publications department. As Castro became more personally involved in the Library's operations, the government also began banning and censoring books and publications that countered the government's positions, such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, The Anatomy of Revolution, as well as capitalist publications such as Life, Time, and The New York Times. During this stage of censorship, Cano left her post at the Havana National Museum for a position in the Napoleonic Museum, led by Julio Lobo.
She married Pablo Benigno Cano Diago, an agricultural engineer, in 1956. He was also active as a musician and played electric guitar and bass alongside high-profile figures visiting Havana including Liberace, Maurice Chevalier, Roberta Flack, Sarah Vaughan, as well as jazz musicians. In 1959 the Cano's had her first child, her daughter Isabel. In 1960, Cano earned her master's degree in library science from the University of Havana. Their second child, Pablo, was born in 1961.