The much awaited arrival of the Art Basel
Miami Beach fair this December not only acknowledges Miami as a centre
patronised by the cultured and wealthy, but also signals the wider
recognition of the city as a focal point for artistic production and
diffusion. Over the past couple of decades, Miami has been gradually
accumulating the ingredients which make for a dynamic art context. There are
well-known collectors such as the Rubells, Norman Braman, Martin Margulies,
and Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz, all of whom have been active in the city for
some time. There are the numerous museums, all now more active than ever
before. And finally there are the artists. The arrival of the art fair sees
the convergence of all of these factors into a critical mass focused on a
changing urban fabric and marking a broader interest in emerging art. It is
now fashionable to collect contemporary art from Miami. Moreover, everyday
the situation grows more complex. While it was Cuban exiles in the eighties
who first started the scene here, it has since developed a truly
international dimension. Even those Cubans who remain integral to the
situation are now more international, many having spent their earlier
careers under the Castro regime while exhibiting extensively in Miami, New
York and Europe. Now resident in Miami, these artists represent a
substantial opening up for the city’s art world.
The Beach is no longer the ‘in’ place in Miami. North Miami is now the
city’s fashionable focus; that is the area which runs north from downtown to
the design district and then on to the Museum of Contemporary Art. The
design district, developed by Craig Robbins, and the industrial area just to
its south, marks the hub of this new activity. The Spanish artist Antoni
Miralda was an early pioneer of this district, just as he was one of the
first on the Beach a decade before. His Gondola Shoe, first presented at the
Venice Biennale in 1990, has found a permanent home in the centre of the
Robbins’ design building, where Miralda’s partner, Montse Guillén, also runs
The Meeting Point, her recently opened restaurant.
Several blocks further south is Miralda’s studio, Trans-Eat, where he is working on an ongoing series of ‘foodculture’ projects, and where Guillén caters private events, often for the Miami art world. Trans-Eat builds on Miralda and Guillén’s earlier Miami restaurant, Big Fish, where art and food happily coexisted in a permanent installation. Miralda’s most recent Miami projects include Home Tender Home on Miami Beach (2001), commissioned by The Wolfsonian-FIU (a decorative and visual arts museum in Miami), and Tastes and Tongues: 13 Cities (2002), celebrating the ever more complex social mix of Miami through an exploration of culinary traditions. Incorporating the designs for a series of plates, Tastes and Tongues brought together eleven of the most important Latin American cities as well as Madrid and Miralda’s native Barcelona, with visitors being invited to write recipes culled from local food cultures on the blackboards that formed part of the installation.
Miralda’s project was commissioned by the Centro Cultural Español (located in Coral Gables near little Havana), where a dynamic programme is directed by Guillermo Basso. In October, the Centro staged Proyecta, an ambitious group exhibition of young Spanish designers working across the board, from graphic, industrial and magazine design, to digital and fashion. During Art Basel Miami, the CCE is presenting a solo show of the Barcelona-based painter Gino Rubert, whose figurative works are infused with a surreal sense of the uncanny. The aim of the CCE is not just the promotion of Spanish art, but the links between Spain and a broader Iberian-American culture.
The area surrounding Trans-Eat plays host to various alternative initiatives, such as Locust Projects, a non-profit space which from the beginning has achieved a surprisingly national and international profile. A recent show paired two video artists: the London-based k r buxey and Ivan Depena from Miami. Both explore subjectivity through video, buxey in terms of sexual desire and Depena in terms of our relation to the architectural landscape. The nearby Dorsch Gallery, along with a space dedicated to the Margulies Collection, adds further interest to an area already dense with art activity.
The positioning of the Museum of Contemporary Art in the north helps to define what is now seen as Miami’s new axis, running from downtown to 125th Street. Under the direction of Bonnie Clearwater, the museum not only explores significant emerging trends, but has sought to give a historical edge to the city’s growing appreciation of contemporary art. During the last season, the exhibition Salvador Dalí: A Dream of Venus situated the Spanish artist as a forerunner of installation art, while this autumn saw the museum presenting Yes Yoko Ono, just another stopover on the extended tour for the Fluxus artist, but a touchstone for a younger generation of multi-media artists here in Miami.
The planned relocation of the Rubell Collection to North Miami will also complement the artistic environment near the Museum of Contemporary Art. A number of commercial galleries have opened in this area, most notably Frederic Snitzer and Ambrosino. At the time of writing, the latter, directed by Genaro Ambrosino, was showing Florencio Gelabert. Exploring themes of ecology and violence, Gelabert’s elegant and deceptive inkjet digital drawings (based on photographs of his own sculptures) point to our ever distant connection to both nature and basic human relations. This artist also illustrates how the ‘Cuban’ scene has changed over the last decade. Trained at Havana’s legendary San Alejandro Academy and the Instituto Superior de Artes, he is now a Miami resident represented by galleries in New York, Latin America and Europe. As part of the group project Inside and Out, last season Gelabert presented Miami with a permanent outdoor light installation in the gardens of the Bass Museum of Art (Miami Beach).
At the other end of the axis is the Miami Art Museum, currently located downtown but planning to relocate further northwards to a new multi-million-dollar arts complex. The programme, under Director Suzanne Delahanty and Senior Curator Peter Boswell, explores major areas of contemporary art practice. Recent projects have included Let’s Entertain, Vito Acconci, Matta, and Ultra-Baroque, the latter providing a fresh and provocative view on international Latin American art. The museum also features a ‘new work’ series which has included Miralda, Glexis Novoa, Donald Lipski, and most recently the Nigerian Odili Donald Odita. Throughout December, the Miami-born but New York-resident sculptor Teresita Fernández will be featured, as will the exhibition Miami Currents, with work drawn from their permanent collection and borrowed from Miami collectors, presumably with the idea of demonstrating acquisition priorities. Associate curators Lorie Mertes and Cheryl Hartup are largely responsible for much of this activity, as well as having fingers in many other pies on the Miami art scene.
But perhaps the most striking feature of Miami is its multilingual dimension, for this is truly a bilingual city. In many ways it is predominantly Spanish-speaking, and it is not really necessary to speak English at all. It thus differs dramatically from other American multicultural cities with their segregated linguistic ghettoes. In Miami everyone, whether Hispanic or not, is speaking Spanish, for it is now the lingua franca of a heady mix of politics, commerce and culture. Post-crisis Argentinians are the most recent arrivals, but the presence of Haitians means that Creole French is also on the rise. It is likely that such cultural and linguistic flexibility distinguishes Miami as a new cultural capital.
Dr William Jeffett is Curator of Exhibitions at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, Florida