Frost Art Museum Revisits Landmark Exhibition of Modern Cuban Painters
Written By Dennys Matos September 12, 2026 at 6:04 PM
Tené Portocarrero. “Figure for an Imaginary Mythology,” 1945. Gouache on paper mounted on cardboard. 36 x 27 inches. Courtesy of Latin Art Core. (Photograph by Rogelio López Marín “Gory”)
Revisiting an art exhibition means reconsidering its original concept and the works of the artists it featured from a new perspective.
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited,” on view through Sunday, Oct. 18 at Miami’s Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, is a must-see in a city with a sizable Cuban population.
Originally titled “Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York,” the exhibition was first presented at Bonhams’ New York headquarters for a month beginning in February.
The word “Revisited” was added specifically for the Miami edition to distinguish this new version from the one previously shown in New York.
Both, however, draw inspiration from the landmark 1944 exhibition Modern Cuban Painters at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, organized by Alfred H. Barr Jr., the museum’s founding director, and Cuban art critic and curator José Gómez Sicre.
By the time MoMA presented the exhibition, Cuba was experiencing a period of renewed cultural confidence and artistic innovation. The country had been operating under the 1940 Constitution for four years, following the 1934 repeal of the Platt Amendment, whose inclusion in the 1901 Constitution had long undermined Cuban independence and sovereignty in its relationship with the United States.
“Modern Cuban Painters” (MoMA, New York, 1944) brought together 13 Cuban painters, including figures from two generations of the country’s modern art movement, including artists from the first avant-garde (1920–1930) and the second (1940–1950). Barr distinguished between the two groups, referring to them as “the older generation” and “the young artists.”
Comparing the artist rosters, “Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited,” curated by Elizabeth T. Goizueta and Cristina Figueroa Vives, features Carlos Enríquez, Amelia Peláez and Fidelio Ponce de León from the first avant-garde, along with Mariano Rodríguez, Mario Carreño, Cundo Bermúdez, René Portocarrero and Roberto Diago from the second.
One notable addition is Wifredo Lam, who was not included in the 1944 MoMA exhibition.
This edition at the Frost Art Museum is far more expansive and in-depth than Bonhams.
“With larger galleries, we have the wonderful opportunity to add more works—whether from the original MoMA exhibition or from the leading New York galleries of the 1940s—as well as photographs and letters,” Goizueta said.
The expanded scope also was what prompted the addition in the exhibition’s title.
“With so many new gems,” Goizueta added, “we realized that the character of this second exhibition had changed—for the better, I dare say—and that change is reflected in the new title.”
The exhibition also incorporates previously unseen materials from the José Gómez Sicre Visual Archive.
“Moreover, it allows us to bring together, eight decades later, a significant group of works, while incorporating previously unseen materials from the José Gómez Sicre Visual Archive—photographs, correspondence, and scrapbooks—that enrich our understanding of the context in which these works were produced and circulated,” Vives said.
The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see in Miami works such as Amelia Peláez’s “Marpacífico” (1936) and “The Balcony” (1942); Cundo Bermúdez’s “Portrait of María Luisa Gómez Mena” (1943); and Antonio Gattorno’s “Self-Portrait” (1944) and “Portrait of Concha” (1941).
Also on view are important works by Mario Carreño (“Goddess of the Sea,” 1943), Wifredo Lam (“Le Sorcier de l’océan (Alafi Incam / Ogun Ferraille),” 1947), Mariano Rodríguez (“The Breakfast,” 1943, and “Gladioli,” 1942), and René Portocarrero (“Spring,” 1940), as well as signature works by Carlos Enríquez (“Nude,” 1940) and Fidelio Ponce de León (“Saint Ignatius of Loyola,” 1940).
Taken together, these elements broaden the interpretive horizon of “Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” and shed new light on the Cuban avant-garde movement.
In this sense, the first avant-garde constructed a modern vision of Cuba, one whose The first Cuban avant-garde helped shape a modern vision of the country’s national identity, viewing it as a cultural and social achievement. Two influential movements, “Revista de Avance” (1927) and the Grupo Minorista (1923), played central roles in developing that vision.
“Revista de Avance” challenged the prevailing academic artistic traditions rooted in colonialism, while the Grupo Minorista embraced the idea that art and politics were inseparable. The group opposed Gerardo Machado’s dictatorship and U.S. imperialist interventionism and, in many respects, aligned itself with 20th-century Cuban political and revolutionary thought.
Although the first and second avant-gardes differed in style and artistic approach, both explored themes including mestizaje, landscape, rural and domestic life, popular culture, the relationship between the individual and society, desire, solitude and Afro-Cuban identity. Together, these subjects helped define and express a modern sense of Cuban national identity.
Those themes were shaped in part by international artistic influences, but Cuban artists transformed them through their own experiences, subjects and visual language.
Barr emphasized that modern Cuban painting succeeded in blending influences from Paris, Mexico, the Renaissance and the Baroque with what he described as “native Cuban elements.”
Goizueta said the exhibition “takes a broader view: recognizing and bringing to light the importance of that exhibition, along with others, during the 1940s, the difficult years of the world war and its aftermath.”
Rather than simply recreating the 1944 MoMA exhibition, the Frost presentation expands the story through additional artworks, photographs, correspondence and archival material.
Seen together, the paintings and archival materials offer a broader view of how Cuban artists of different generations developed a modern visual language while exploring questions of national identity, everyday life, landscape, race and culture.
The political climate that culminated in the 1940 Constitution was embraced by much of Cuba’s artistic and intellectual community as part of a broader quest for democracy and modernization. More than 80 years later, “Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” offers a chance to reconsider that cultural moment and the artists who helped define it.
ADDITIONAL PROGRAMMING
A series of special lectures are planned surrounding the exhibition. On Tuesday, Sept. 15, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., “Revisiting Modern Cuban Painters: From Archive to Exhibition, features a panel discussion with Elizabeth T. Goizueta, Cristina Figueroa Vives, and María Martínez-Cañas about the roles of archives and primary sources in researching, writing, and exhibiting the history of Cuban modernism.
Mario Carreño. “Goddess of the Sea,” 1943. Duco, seashells, sea fan, and textile collage on panel. 37¼ x 46½ inches. Courtesy of Latin Art Core. (Photograph by Rogelio López Marín “Gory”)
The panelists will discuss the research and writing processes behind the project and the ways archival materials helped reconstruct the artistic exchanges between Havana and New York during the 1940s. The conversation will consider the José Gómez Sicre Visual Archive and its integration into the exhibition. The event is free, but an RSVP is required.
On Thursday, Sept. 24 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., “Curator’s Cut,” a series of daytime conversations, features curator Cristina Figueroa Vives, co-curator of “Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited,” and Miami-based artist Alejandro Piñeiro Bello discuss the role of identity and memory in his paintings and the Caribbean influences that have shaped his practice. RSVP required.
WHAT: “Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited.”
WHERE: The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum,10975 SW 17th St., Miami
WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. Through Oct. 18.
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com
Written By Douglas Markowitz August 25, 2026 at 3:27 PM
“Count it All Joy!” brings together work from 15 Miami-area artists, all intended to evoke joyful feelings or express what the artist takes joy from at MiMi’s Green Space gallery through Thursday, Sept. 27. (Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy of Green Space)
At MiMo’s Green Space gallery, a new exhibition places joy at its center, bringing together works that explore pleasure, optimism and delight.
Organized by curators Donnamarie Baptiste and Arsimmer McCoy, “Count it All Joy!” brings together work from 15 Miami-area artists, all intended to evoke joyful feelings or express what the artist takes joy from.
The show includes work in a variety of mediums, all giving distinct perspectives on the show’s theme and occasionally doubling as insights into the diverse backgrounds that cohabit in Miami.
Photographs taken in the Everglades by Maggie Steber and Lisette Morales show subjects cohabiting with nature. (Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy of Green Space)
Photographs taken by Maggie Steber and Lisette Morales show people cohabiting with nature – women float and swim in still waters, a man looks out at the expanse of the Everglades – while Sophie Wong depicts scenes of Caribbean life in her paintings. An installation by Chinese-Panamanian artist MaiYap features sculpted mooncakes arranged in a traditional batea, or wooden tray, from Panama’s Bayano region, reflecting the artist’s heritage. And a quilted work by Genesis Moreno features a screenshotted TikTok video demonstrating the “butterfly hug,” a self-soothing technique; the video itself plays nearby on a monitor.
MaiYap’s installation features sculpted mooncakes served in an indigenous batea tray reflecting the artist’s Chinese Panamanian heritage. (Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy of Green Space)
Baptiste and McCoy were both separately selected by Green Space to curate the show. Both were enticed by the theme, which they saw as providing an antidote to a zeitgeist dominated by politics.
“They wanted to activate the gallery space with works that were centered around joy and create this joyful space,” McCoy says. “Everybody feels a little uneasy, and they wanted to bring into the space a place of ease, a place that brings joy to folks.”
The two found their contrasting, yet compatible curatorial styles worked well together. McCoy treated selection more intuitively, selecting work that “moved her immediately.” Baptiste, meanwhile, took a more measured, research-based approach by visiting studios and having conversations with artists.
One of the largest artworks in the show comes curator Arsimmer McCoy, an “archive install” of furniture and other heirlooms from her grandmother’s living room. (Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy of Green Space)
“I wanted it to be something where whoever walked in the room could take a look at something and either immediately connect with it or dig into the context a little deeper and find a bit of themselves in there,” she says. “And I think Arsimmer came from a point of, immediately as an artist, seeing something and feeling joy.”
One of the largest artworks in the show comes from McCoy herself, an “archive install” of furniture and other heirlooms from her grandmother’s living room. Decorated with items such as an ornate couch, a reclaimed-wood coffee table, and a CRT television stand complete with Disney films on VHS, the space is meant to evoke nostalgic memories of time spent in similar spaces, for the artist herself and for others. The installation is part of the Carol City Museum, a long-gestating project in which McCoy plans to transform her home in Miami Gardens into an arts and community institution.
“That installation is an homage to the joy that I find in iconography, the joy that I find in the archives,” McCoy says. “You can see those moments of rest, of connectivity, of love, of culture. And it’s also a little disruption of the white-walled gallery space as well, because I know people will gather in that space, and they will find themselves.”
Sophie Wong depicts scenes of Caribbean life in her paintings. (Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy of Green Space)
McCoy says visitors have offered a variety of comments on the artwork and the comforting feelings it generated. “I had an elder hit me up and say ‘I just wanted to watch ‘Touched By An Angel’ with Della Reese in that room,’ it reminded me of my grandmother’s room,” she says. “And then we see younger folks who are like ‘Man, I remember that, the color of that carpet,’ or ‘I remember those photos, the obituaries.’”
Whether through McCoy’s nostalgic archive, Steber’s photos, or the self-soothing depicted in Moreno’s quilts, the works in “Count it All Joy!” prove that happiness can come from a variety of places, some more unexpected than others.
WHAT: “Count It All Joy!”
WHERE: Green Space, 7200 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
WHEN: noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday through Thursday, Sept. 27.
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” at the Frost Art Museum expands on a landmark 1944 MoMA exhibition with additional works, photographs, and archival material.
Milton Mizell’s Blackquetry, Black identity through the craft of marquetry
Written By Jonel Juste August 23, 2026 at 12:50 PM
“I Said I Love You” by Milton Mizell is one of the works featured in “Blackquetry” at CLAUG Creative Studio, Miami Shores. (Photo by Leesa Richards)
A clean slate awaiting inspiration and creativity to become something beautiful and meaningful. This is how marquetry artist Milton Mizell describes “Blackquetry,” his work that will be on view from Saturday, Aug. 22, to Wednesday, Sept. 30 at CLAUG Creative Studio in Miami Shores.
Marquetry is defined as the covering of the surface of a board or piece of furniture, either entirely or in part, with wooden veneers in the form of a skillfully applied design or picture. In the hands of Mizell, it becomes Blackquetry, Black identity expressed through the craft of marquetry.
“It is a visual language shaped from wood, memory, and cultural truth. The name reflects that union,” says Mizell. “It honors resilience, beauty, and ancestral storytelling while expanding the tradition into a space where Blackness is centered and celebrated.”
Miami-based artist Milton Mizell brings together marquetry, graphic design, and woodworking in his art. (Photo by Leesa Richards)
Mizell, who was born and raised in Miami, didn’t start his artistic career in woodworking. He studied fine art and graphic design and has been working as a graphic artist for many years. However, as a child, he used to watch his father — a jack of all trades — working on wood, fixing and building all kinds of things.
“That planted the seed. I returned to woodworking as an adult when burnout pushed me back toward making physical objects. Wood has been a constant thread, even before marquetry,” he says.
The artist’s journey has not been without challenges. In the past few years, aphasia has taken a toll on his communication skills, limiting his ability to speak, read and write. “However,” he said, “I continue to communicate powerfully through my art, demonstrating that creativity often speaks louder than words and that my intelligence, artistic vision, and passion for storytelling remain as strong as ever.”
The artist describes marquetry as moderately difficult, requiring patience, precision, and a steady hand.
“The Man in the Fedora Hat” by Milton Mizell (Photo by Gregory Reed)
“I admired marquetry for years, ” he says, “but only discovered my path into it when I bought a diode laser in 2023 and joined a weekly Zoom group. After a lifetime of drawing, I finally found a way to merge drawing with wood — everything clicked.”
Among Mizell’s woodworks are handcrafted boxes, keepsake boxes, jewelry boxes but most of all portraits whose subjects come from his community, his culture, and the stories that move him.
“Some portraits depict specific individuals whose presence or emotion I want to preserve; others represent broader aspects of Black identity, resilience, and humanity.”
The process begins with simplifying an image, almost like creating a painter’s palette. Mizell prints a full‑size poster, cuts every shape with the diode laser, a computer-controlled machine that cuts or engraves material with a concentrated beam of light, and assembles hundreds or thousands of pieces with tape.
“Then I create a three‑layer sandwich: veneer, MDF, veneer backer, pressed in a vacuum bag,” he explains. “Sanding is delicate because veneers vary in thickness, and dark dust can stain lighter woods. I dye my own veneers, so color penetrates deeply enough to survive sanding. Step by step, the face comes into view,” he adds.
“Ebony Portrait” by Milton Mizell (Photo by Leesa Richards)
Donnamarie Baptiste, a Miami-based arts producer and cultural strategist who consulted on “Blackquetry” and wrote its curatorial statement, sees the works as both painting and sculpture.
“When you see it, it’s so masterfully done. It’s almost hard to tell whether you’re looking at a painting or something else. Once you understand the process and see how it’s put together, you realize it’s quite sculpture in its essence. It’s sort of like a painting made of wood.”
Since Mizell is a graphic artist by trade, technology plays a central role in his marquetry. In fact, it is foundational, as Mizell puts it. “Adobe Illustrator has been part of my life for over 30 years, and CNC and laser tools allow me to translate digital design into cuttable sections. Technology maps the structure; craft gives it soul.”
For this exhibition, Mizell will show a total of 21 new original pieces and prints. His declared goal is to celebrate resilience, beauty, identity, and humanity — the aspects of Black life that often go unseen. “Blackquetry gives voice to the unspoken,” says the artist.
CLAUG’s resident artist and studio owner Carlos Andrade recalls that Mizell, after receiving a grant from the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs was looking for a space for a solo exhibition. “He was having a hard time finding one. One day, he was walking by, and we connected right away,” he says.
About Mizell’s work, Andrade says, “I think it’s very powerful. When you’re standing in front of one of the portraits, you see the amount of details, and I think that makes an impression on people. You begin to understand the process, how tedious it is, and also the talent that Milton has as an artist.”
But beyond showcasing Mizell’s craftsmanship, the exhibition also tells the story of his personal journey.
“Dream Big” by Milton Mizell (Photo by Gregory Reed)
“Obviously,” Andrade says, “we want to showcase his work, but we also want to showcase his journey. Because of his condition, one of the best ways for him to communicate and connect with people is through his art,” he adds.
The artist is also the curator of Blackquetry. Curating his own work, Mizell says that means shaping how viewers encounter the pieces — guiding the rhythm, the scale, and the emotional arc. “It’s an opportunity to frame the craft, the stories, and the cultural context with intention. It’s both vulnerable and empowering: I’m presenting not just the art, but the journey behind it,” he says.
As a curator, he selected works that show the evolution of his voice, pieces that merge tradition with technology, and craft with culture. Each portrait was chosen for its grain, tone, and emotional resonance. “The arrangement highlights the layered construction, the narrative depth, and the diversity of identities represented. The goal was to create an experience that feels both intimate and monumental,” he says.
“Break of Dawn” by Milton Mizell. (Photo by Leesa Richards)
When people walk out of Blackquetry, especially Black viewers, Mizell hopes they feel seen.
“I want them to carry a sense of pride and connection, knowing these portraits honor the beauty and humanity within our community. I hope they leave feeling uplifted, affirmed, and part of the narrative.”
WHAT: “Blackquetry: My Fusion of Marquetry and the Black Experience”
WHERE: CLAUG Creative Studio, 9703 NE 2nd Ave, Miami Shores
WHEN: Opening receptions: 6 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 22 and 4 p.m., Sunday, Aug.23. Regular hours noon to 6 p.m., Tuesday to Saturday. Through Wednesday, Sept. 30.
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com.
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” at the Frost Art Museum expands on a landmark 1944 MoMA exhibition with additional works, photographs, and archival material.
One of the most important, yet underrated American modern artists of all time is getting the retrospective treatment at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at FIU – and it’s not who you might expect.
Louise Nevelson may not be among the first names that come to mind in the pantheon of important artists of the modernist movement. In the mid-20th century, she was a household name, representing the U.S. at the Venice Biennale and appearing on the cover of Life magazine. Today the public is more likely to know Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, even Georgia O’Keeffe and Helen Frankenthaler.
But the Russian-born Jewish-American might just dwarf them all in terms of influence. Her large-scale, abstract sculptures made way for a bold new typology: installation art, going beyond sculpture and considering the way an artwork is staged.
“She is, in many ways, the founder of what we understand as installation art,” said Jaime DeSimone, chief curator at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Nevelson’s hometown of Rockland, Maine. “In one of her first shows, she creates an environment where she’s inviting the visitor to engage with these sculptures. She’s thinking about the way the floor is, the way the walls are covered, using blue lights. This is so much more than just a sculpture that she’s created from discarded wood and fragments and unified by paint.”
“Louise Nevelson: Dawn to Dusk,” opening at the Frost Museum on Thursday, Aug. 20, features a number of Nevelson’s installation works. The artist executed most of her sculptures monochromatically, usually in solid black but also occasionally working with white or gold. These colors correlate to specific themes in Nevelson’s life. Black often represents her interest in space and celestial bodies amid the technological progress of the 20th century, as do the futuristic, abstract forms they take influenced by cubism, Art Deco, and the rising skyscrapers of her adoptive home of New York.
White works such as “Dawn Column I,” meanwhile, indicate matrimonial themes, sometimes reflecting on the artist’s own failed marriage. The piece comes from the larger 1959 installation “Dawn’s Wedding Feast,” created for the Museum of Modern Art’s group exhibition “Sixteen Americans” in New York. The installation marked a major turning point for Nevelson’s career and progression as an artist – it was the first time she had used white on such a scale – and earned her the Venice commission, for which she appropriated parts of the installation into a new work, “Voyage.” The individual components have been split up and are now held by various museums.
“Because of what we understand of Nevelson’s work, she’s constantly creating, and as pieces evolved, she would disassemble them and make them into new works,” DeSimone said. “So people can see how a single column has kind of lived on into a unique work of art.”
But there’s more to her career than the large-scale, sculptural pieces she’s best known for. “Dawn to Dusk,” which travels to the Frost from Rockland, features a number of objects from the Frost’s own collection that offer a broader view of Nevelson as an artist. These include jewelry and a unique set of works on paper: a series of collages made from photographs of Nevelson’s own work.
“What’s nice about this exhibition is that it shows these early paintings, it shows sculpture, it shows collage, it shows other forms of assemblages,” said Natalia Zuluaga, chief curator at the Frost Museum. “And I think when you’re able to see the full breadth of her practice. You see the way in which she developed that language.”
And beyond her art, there are ways in which Nevelson’s life story is likely to appeal to Miamians. The artist was a first-generation American, joining a wave of Jewish immigration from the Russian Empire – specifically what is now Ukraine – to the United States. Her family spoke Yiddish at home and struggled to assimilate into the small town, which led Louise to marry early in order to escape to New York in the early 1920s. There, she rebelled against the stifling confines of her husband’s conservative values and expectations of submissive domesticity, eventually divorcing him and taking up art full-time.
“I think Louise was an intellectually curious person, and it’s worth looking at the kinds of questions that she asked about the moment in time that she was living in, right? Like for me, maybe this is like a story that kind of touches upon the way in which we learn and read and think about the world,” Zuluaga said. “But yeah, she was an immigrant. She was a first-generation immigrant who was growing up in a port town, trying to find her way into New York City in order to pursue a career in art. I think from that perspective, also, there’s a lot of compatibility or parallels to many stories in our community.”
Though she may not be as famous as Picasso or Pollock, Louise Nevelson’s place in the modern art canon is as solid and firm as her sculptures are pitch black. Now, Miami will get the chance to come into deeper contact with this vital artistic voice.
WHAT: “Louise Nevelson: Dawn to Dusk”
WHERE: Patricia and Philip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University Modesto A. Maidique Campus, 10975 SW 17th St., Miami
WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Thursday, Aug. 20 through Sunday, Jan. 17, 2027
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” at the Frost Art Museum expands on a landmark 1944 MoMA exhibition with additional works, photographs, and archival material.
John Baldessari was one of the great iconoclasts of 20th century art. Coming of age as abstract expressionism ruled the art world, he rejected the dominant style and looked towards conceptualism, art focused on ideas rather than aesthetics. He embraced text and photography, creating work that interrogated what art can be and how it can be made, forming a bridge between conceptual and pop art. He also influenced countless artists both as a teacher at institutions such as UCLA and CalArts – some of his students include David Salle, Jack Goldstein, and Analia Saban – and as an inspiration to artists like Cindy Sherman, Barbara Krueger, and Anastasia Samoylova.
John Baldessari, “Intersection Series: Embrace (Hand and Ear)/Seascape,” 2001, Five digital photographic prints (one with acrylic paint) mounted on foam PVC board. (Courtesy Estate of John Baldessari; Spruth Magers)
“I think someone like Baldessari is super impactful,” says José Diaz, senior director of curatorial affairs and chief curator at PAMM. “He was someone who broke the rules. I think he helped define that art can be reinterpreted in new ways, and I think he’s done that with visuals, but also with text. And because he was also a professor, I think he’s also been able to contribute to the way artists think today.”
Now, six years after his death in 2020, Pérez Art Museum Miami is celebrating Baldessari’s legacy with a new retrospective of the boundary-pushing artist. “John Baldessari: The End of the Line” is the first major survey of Baldessari’s work in South Florida. It features nearly 40 works from across the artist’s career, mostly drawn from the collection of Craig Robins, the Miami-based property developer best known for developing the Miami Design District. The show comes to PAMM in its largest format yet after successful runs in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Maldonado, Uruguay.
Miamians are already likely to be familiar with the artist, even if they don’t realize it. Thanks to the artist’s friendship with Robins, Baldessari’s art has become an integral part of the built environment of Miami. In the early 2010s the developer invited the artist to design two murals for the Design District, both titled “Fun,” which incorporate vintage photos of beachgoers that wryly comment on the city’s tourism industry.
“I think Craig likes art that is smart and punchy, and that sort of has an impact through either sense of humor or wit,” says Karen Grimson, curator of the Craig Robins Collection. “That’s always something that attracts him, and that’s why he has a significant roster of conceptualists in the collection.”
Indeed, while Baldessari’s work might seem bland and intellectual at first glance, plenty of pieces in the show put his sense of humor on full display. These include a series of photographs with the self-explanatory title “Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts)” and his “Repository” series, ironically responding to Marcel Duchamp’s famous urinal-turned-artwork “Fountain” by inscribing a succession of colorful bedpans with the slogan “The artist is a fountain.”
Other works in the show are more provocative, such as an archival, nine-minute film documenting the one-time performance of his infamous “Cremation Project.” A major turning point in the artist’s career, the piece saw Baldessari famously burning nearly all of his early paintings in 1970, repurposing a destructive act as a creative one.
“It’s sort of a rebirth,” says Diaz. “It’s really inspirational because he starts to think about photography as he transitions away from painting, thinking about cameras and how they can function as an artistic medium. That’s how he accumulates this abundant inventory of film stills and images that you see throughout his later work, and I think that use of images to tell stories is something you see in a lot of artists.”
The Baldessari show might also be seen as something of a rebirth for PAMM itself. It’s the first presentation at the museum under Diaz’s stewardship as chief curator after joining PAMM last year from the Seattle Art Museum. It’s also part of an intentional pivot in programming towards what Diaz calls “landmark artists,” household names from the 20th-century onward. Baldessari, with his outsize influence on contemporary art, is one example, as are a concurrently running show of paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat and an upcoming presentation featuring work by three masters of modern art: Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and Henri Matisse.
For Diaz, a born-and-raised local who witnessed Miami’s transformation into an art city in the post-Art Basel era, the shift reflects a belief that PAMM should serve the community by allowing them to engage with important, canonical art, not just the ultra-contemporary work that the city has become famous for.
“The fact that somebody can come here and see close to a dozen works by Basquiat from the particular period ‘82 to ‘85, it’s like a really fantastic opportunity,” Diaz says. “But it’s also like being very thoughtful of people who actually live here that get a chance to see these types of arts without having to go to New York or having to have to go to other places.”
Throughout his life, Baldessari made reference to his outsider status in the art world, particularly his birthplace of National City, Calif., near the Mexican border – “the end of the line,” as he called it, the phrase that gives the show its name. As another city on the margins of America, a place caught between commercialism and conceptualism, there are perhaps few artists better suited to Miami than Baldessari.
WHAT: “John Baldessari: The End of the Line”
WHERE: Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), 1103 Biscayne Blvd, Miami
WHEN: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, Friday and Saturday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday; 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday. Opening Thursday, Aug. 20 through Sunday, May 9, 2027.
COST: $18 adults; $14 seniors 62 and older, students with ID, and ages 7 to 18; free for members, children 6 and under, and free admission for all on Thursdays after 5 p.m.; Other free admissions with ID: active U.S. military and veterans, health care professionals and first responders, Florida educators, and visitors identifying as disabled and their accompanying caregiver.
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com.
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” at the Frost Art Museum expands on a landmark 1944 MoMA exhibition with additional works, photographs, and archival material.
Kit Pancoast Nagamura returns with her family legacy at The Kampong
Written By Miguel Sirgado July 27, 2026 at 6:32 PM
“Backbone,” acrylic on canvas, is featured in Kit Pancoast Nagamura’s “When We Come to Paint,” an exhibition of works by the great-granddaughter of botanist and plant explorer David Fairchild, and selected works of her parents. On view through Saturday, Aug. 15 at The Kampong in Coconut Grove. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
Whenever Kit Pancoast Nagamura returns to The Kampong, she’s greeted by a scent that has stayed with her since childhood.
“When I go back to The Kampong, the first thing I notice is the smell of the mangoes,” says the native Miamian visual artist. “I think our first memories as human beings are olfactory.”
That memory inspired “When We Come to Paint,” on view through Saturday, Aug. 15 at the National Tropical Botanical Garden’s nine-acre garden in Miami. The exhibition features 26 large- and medium-scale paintings by Nagamura, approximately 40 mixed-media works she calls “Afterworks,” selected works by her parents and original haiku accompanying many of the pieces.
Kit Pancoast Nagamura works on “Where We Connect” (2026) at The Kampong. It is one of the paintings created for “When We Come to Paint.” (Photo courtesy of the artist)
Nagamura, who spent the first four years of her life at the garden, sees the exhibition as both a homecoming and a reflection on the people and places that shaped her artistic voice.
Her connection to the property runs deep. Nagamura is the great-granddaughter of botanist and plant explorer David Fairchild, whose Coconut Grove estate became The Kampong, now part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden. Her father, Lester Collins Pancoast, was an architect and watercolorist; her mother, Hélène Muller Pancoast, was a Japanese-style woodblock print artist and co-founder of Miami’s Bakehouse Art Complex.
Yet growing up surrounded by accomplished artists came with unexpected advice.
“My parents always said, ‘Don’t talk about your family,'” Nagamura recalls. “What they meant was, ‘Don’t boast about it. You have to make your own life.'”
A family legacy returns home
Only now does Nagamura feel she is ready to bring those generations into the same conversation.
“My family legacy is pretty heavy duty,” she says with a laugh. “I’m old enough now. I can bring them to the table.”
Visitors first encounter works by Lester and Hélène Pancoast before arriving at galleries devoted to Nagamura’s paintings, allowing connections and departures to emerge organically.
“In Stillness Fruit,” acrylic on wood panel, reflects the childhood memory that inspired “When We Come to Paint.” For Kit Pancoast Nagamura, the scent of mangoes is the first thing she notices whenever she returns to The Kampong. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
“I wanted people to see where some things came from and where I diverged,” she says. “When you spend enough time with the work, you begin to see the echoes, the similarities, the reverberations that we share.”
Brian Sidoti, director of The Kampong, says that connection made the exhibition feel almost inevitable.
“When we finally sat down together,” he says, “it was one of those conversations where you think, ‘Well, of course you’re going to have an exhibition here.'”
Sidoti believes Nagamura’s work belongs at the garden not simply because of her family history, but because of the way she understands the landscape itself.
“She has such a deep understanding of the collections here,” he says. “She could highlight that through her work.”
Sidoti looks for artists whose work grows naturally from the garden’s landscape, history and collections.
“We’re a small garden,” he says. “That allows us to create exhibitions that feel intimate and connected to our mission.”
Artmaking as Life
Rather than presenting a traditional solo exhibition, Sidoti embraced the idea of pairing Nagamura’s paintings with selected works by her parents, creating what he describes as a “living lineage of creativity.”
“We wanted to give Kit a strong platform for her own voice while also celebrating her parents’ remarkable work,” Sidoti says. “The conversations around how much of their artwork to include were a delicate balancing act. We wanted every voice to resonate.”
The exhibition also marks a return to the place where making art first became part of everyday life.
Her mother often worked on Japanese-style woodblock prints while the children created artwork nearby.
Part of Kit Pancoast Nagamura’s “Afterworks” series, this mixed-media work is created on recycled Sarasota Herald-Tribune newsprint using acrylic, handmade Japanese washi paper, ink and natural and collage elements. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
“For me, that meant freedom time and quiet focus time,” Nagamura recalls. “I loved the smell of the inks. Even today, if I open a box of crayons, everything comes back.”
Art, she learned early, was inseparable from observation, patience and daily practice.
“People think you just sit down with a paintbrush and become free,” she says with a laugh. “Not at all.”
A fellowship after college took Nagamura to a country that would shape both her artistic practice and the way she observes the natural world.
After graduating from Brown University with an independent concentration in studio art and literature—while also studying at the Rhode Island School of Design—Nagamura received an IBM-funded fellowship in Japan.
Initially, she imagined herself pursuing journalism rather than painting.
For more than 25 years, she wrote “The Backstreet Stories,” a monthly column for The Japan Times that took her through Tokyo’s neighborhoods in search of the histories hidden behind everyday streets.
“I was basically a flâneur,” she says. “A professional stroller.”
Living in Japan influenced Kit Pancoast Nagamura’s artistic language. The techniques and materials she embraced there—including handmade washi paper, mineral pigments and calligraphy—continue to shape the work featured in “When We Come to Paint.” (Photo courtesy of the artist)
Walking through historic neighborhoods, she often navigated the terrain as much by trees as by streets. Old maps revealed layers of history beneath ordinary places.
Without realizing it, those same ideas gradually found their way into her paintings.
“I realized the maps in my artwork come from this searching for meaning and development and history,” she says.
Throughout “When We Come to Paint,” maps reappear layered with handmade Japanese washi paper, mineral pigments and fragments of calligraphy. Many works are accompanied by original haiku.
“I’ve always resisted the idea that you’re either a writer or a painter,” Nagamura says. “To me, it’s all part of the same artistic practice.”
Nature became the thread connecting those disciplines.
Painting the Natural World
Rather than treating plants simply as botanical subjects, Nagamura paints them as living presences.
“I think plants communicate,” she says. “Science is finally beginning to recognize that, but in Japan that idea has existed for centuries.”
Mangrove roots, banyan trees, coconut palms and shifting light appear throughout the exhibition—not simply as botanical studies, but as reminders of humanity’s relationship with the natural world.
One recurring idea comes from the Japanese word komorebi, the shifting sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees.
“Mangrove Inlet,” acrylic on canvas, reflects the landscape that surrounded the artist during her earliest years at The Kampong. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
“Those things are worthy of worship to me,” Nagamura says. “I hope people feel connected to plants in a new way. I hope they fall in love with them—love-affair level.”
That relationship with nature extends beyond the paintings themselves.
Among the exhibition’s most distinctive works are Nagamura’s “Afterworks,” intimate mixed-media pieces created from recycled studio materials. For Sidoti, the series reflects the same spirit of stewardship that defines the garden’s approach to conservation.
One of the larger paintings, “Aubade,” holds particular significance for the artist. The luminous five-foot-square canvas celebrating the first light of dawn represents a turning point in her creative process.
“It spoke to me about translucency,” she says. “Every time I thought I should add another layer, the painting itself seemed to say, ‘I’m perfect the way I am.’ So I listened.”
Another painting, “Road Home,” was inspired by the entrance to The Kampong and Nagamura’s reflections on what the idea of home had come to mean after decades abroad.
“If I had not been obsessing about the meaning of home,” she says, “that painting would not have appeared.”
WHAT: “When We Come to Paint,” an exhibition by Kit Pancoast Nagamura
WHERE: The Kampong, National Tropical Botanical Garden, 4013 S. Douglas Rd., Miami
WHEN: 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Last admission at 3 p.m. Through Saturday, Aug. 15.
COST: $17 for self-guided admission. $2 discount for visitors arriving by foot, bicycle, Uber or Lyft; EASY Perks Transit Card holders; guests of members (unless a greater discount applies); PreK-12 teachers; and residents of zip code 33133 with ID. Admission includes gardens and exhibition.
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” at the Frost Art Museum expands on a landmark 1944 MoMA exhibition with additional works, photographs, and archival material.
MOAD at Freedom Tower Explores How America Shaped Abstract Art
Written By Michelle F. Solomon July 22, 2026 at 8:12 PM
At left, Joan Mitchell, “Untitled” (1960), oil on canvas. At right, Willem de Kooning, “Figures in a Landscape #2” (1976), oil on paper laid on canvas, are among the highlights in “Abstraction as Legacy,” MOAD at the Freedom Tower, Miami, through Sunday, Oct. 18. (Photo by Oriol Tarridas)
Inside the Freedom Tower, where exhibitions focus on immigration, the Cuban exile experience and, for now, a journey through the world of soccer, abstract art isn’t necessarily what people expect to find. On a recent afternoon, a father and son visiting Miami for the FIFA World Cup discovered the Museum of Art and Design galleries on the landmark’s second floor where “Abstraction as Legacy” is hung.
They stuck around and examined each work. For Amy Galpin, that’s exactly the kind of unexpected encounter she had hoped for. The executive director and chief curator of the Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College conceived the exhibition as part of the nationwide America250 initiative.
George Morrison’s “Traversal” (1958), is one of the first works visitors encounter in “Abstraction as Legacy,” reflecting on the exhibition’s expanded view of American abstraction. (Courtesy of Art Bridges and the Estate of George Morrison. Photo by Oriol Tarridas)
“We wanted to do something that would be unique and distinctive,” Galpin said. “Quickly we came to the idea of abstraction and thinking about the role of abstraction in postwar U.S. visual culture and history.”
The exhibition explores how American abstraction became one of the nation’s most influential contributions to art history.
“It is really the first time following World War II that we see the international art world looking to the U.S. as innovators, particularly what’s happening with the New York School of painters and that’s represented in the show by William de Kooning, Hans Hofmann as well as Joan Mitchell.”
Bringing together many of those artists required borrowing extensively from private collections. Nearly every work in the exhibition is on loan from collectors, artists, and institutions, giving visitors a chance to experience paintings that are seldom exhibited together. Only the salon-style installation at the end of the exhibition is drawn from the museum’s permanent collection.
“For me, it was an incredible opportunity to present work that are not often seen in public spaces in Miami,” said Galpin.
Vaughn Spann’s “Mercy after Rage” (2025), made with polymer paint and mixed media on wood, is featured in “Abstraction as Legacy” at MOAD at the Freedom Tower. (Courtesy of the artist and David Castillo. Photo by Oriol Tarridas)
Broadening American Abstraction
There are works by artists who deal with the environment, who are influenced by architecture, and some who focus on the body. “In terms of putting this together, I was looking for all the different story points to bring together. I wanted to make sure that I told certain stories, that there was a lot of different types of abstraction and to show the breadth of abstraction in the United States. And how it would all work.”
The first work visitors encounter is George Morrison’s “Traversal” with its vibrant blues, turquoise and fiery reds welcoming with an explosion of color.
George Morrison’s “Traversal” (1958), opens “Abstraction as Legacy.” (Courtesy of Art Bridges and the Estate of George Morrison. Photo by Oriol Tarridas)
The painting broadens the idea of who belongs in the story of American abstraction, according to Galpin. “For an America250 show I think it was important to have American Indigenous artists – he’s a member of the Chippewa Tribe, spent much of his life in Minnesota, lived in New York and showed alongside de Kooning.”
It was also a way, she said, to start the show in the moment.
“The year of the piece is 1958, and while there were abstract artists active in the U.S. in the early 20th century, this is when the post-war conversation was really beginning. I wanted a painting that was of that spirit. And this is one of the works, too, in the show that speaks also to the international.”
Born in Havana, Zilia Sánchez fled to New York after the Cuban Revolution and later settled in Puerto Rico. Her “Untitled” (1960) is featured in “Abstraction as Legacy” at MOAD at the Freedom Tower. (Courtesy of Cota Cohen. Photo by Oriol Tarridas)
Nearby is Zilia Sánchez’s “Untitled,” (1960). Born in Havana, she fled to New York to escape the Castro regime. “She became part of a Cuban exile group in New York of poets, of painters, and then spent much of her adult life in San Juan, Puerto Rico,” said Galpin.
Like Morrison, Sánchez challenges a traditional understanding of who shaped American abstraction.
“One of the things that was important in presenting this exhibit is to show that American abstraction is many things… just as our country is not one thing… it’s a multitude of voices.”
Amy Galpin, executive director and chief curator of MOAD at the Freedom Tower, with Barbara Young and Dan Gelfman at the opening of “Abstraction as Legacy” in front of Noemí Ruiz’s “Vibración en rojo y azul” (1981). (Painting courtesy of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Gift of Dr. Gamaliel R. Herrera. Photo by Barbara Perales)
And it is fitting at the Freedom Tower, she emphasized. “It speaks to the role of migration. In our country, artists first as immigrants, but also artists moving to different artistic centers and being influenced by different artistic centers. There are also two Cuban artists represented in the exhibit, Sánchez and Carmen Herrera,” said Galpin, pointing out that both were impacted by international influence, and both were women.
Borrowed Works Tell the Story
After Morrison there’s Joan Mitchell paired with Hans Hofmann.
On loan from collector Jorge M. Pérez’s contemporary art space El Espacio 23 in Allapattah is Hofmann’s “Yellow Glow” (1960).
“It’s a small work, but it really packs a punch,” Galpin exclaimed.
Hans Hofmann’s “Yellow Glow” (1960), courtesy of Jorge M. Pérez, El Espacio 23, is featured in “Abstraction as Legacy” at MOAD at the Freedom Tower. Photo by Oriol Tarridas.
Patricia Hanna, the curator of the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, said that the selection of the painting was an intentional and smart choice by Galpin. “It’s a kind of transition between the hard-edge abstraction to more gestural with hints of figuration,” Hanna explained.
As visitors move through the gallery they encounter works by Sam Gilliam, Lloyd Kiva New, Noemí Ruiz, Young-Il Ahn and Vaughn Spann.
The “coda” of the exhibition is a salon-style wall of works from MOAD’s collection.
“The collection was really founded by Miami artists, the two Bobs, Robert Thiele and Robert Huff, who were employed by Miami Dade College as professors and built the collection for this space.”
Hanna said that a show focused on the legacy of abstraction and its history in the U.S. that includes works from Miami collectors at the Freedom Tower was an exceptional choice for America250.
“People think about Miami as everything new and contemporary, but there are art collections in Miami that have this historical perspective.”
WHAT: “Abstraction as Legacy”
WHERE: Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) at Freedom Tower, 600 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
WHEN: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Through Sunday, Oct. 18
COST: $18, adults $14, seniors (62 and older), $12, students and children (ages 7–12) Free for MOAD members, Miami Dade College students, faculty and staff with ID, and select other visitors. Admission includes access to Freedom Tower exhibitions.
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” at the Frost Art Museum expands on a landmark 1944 MoMA exhibition with additional works, photographs, and archival material.
Honey-Barrel Boat Becomes the Heart of ‘Exile’ at Piero Atchugarry Gallery
Written By Michelle F. Solomon July 20, 2026 at 6:00 PM
The work that gives the exhibition its title, “Exile” is a large-scale installation centered on a refugee boat salvaged from the coast of Miami after washing ashore in Key Biscayne, by Ruben Millares and Antonia Wright at the Piero Atchugarry Gallery in Miami, through Sunday, July 26. (Photo by Rudy Duboué, courtesy of the artists)
An ingeniously engineered refugee boat washed ashore on Key Biscayne in 2022. Four years later, it is the centerpiece of Antonia Wright and Ruben Millares’ exhibition “Exile.”
Now at the Piero Atchugarry Gallery in Miami, this is the last week to catch a glimpse of the vessel and other works in the show. It closes on Sunday, July 26 and is part of the Progressive Art Brunch, an event which features a dozen local galleries open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
In a darkened room in the gallery, Wright and Millares have kept the refugee raft intact, bringing emotional meaning through thoughtfully orchestrated sound and light.
Welded together from steel honey barrels, marked with the words “Cuban Honey” and powered by a pre-Castro Chevrolet engine, the homemade balsa washed ashore at Crandon Beach and was headed to a scrapyard. A friend at the Key Biscayne Nature Center contacted the artists to ask if they were interested.
They jumped at the chance.
“When we saw it, we said, ‘We have to preserve this thing. This is beautiful,’ ” said Millares.
Engineering as an Escape
Rather than altering the boat, Wright and Millares took care to preserve the object exactly as they found it.
“Whoever made it made this beautiful object,” Millares said. “We didn’t want to mess with that integrity of the boat.”
However, the idea of what to do with the salvage didn’t come to the two artists immediately.
A homemade balsa washed ashore at Crandon Beach in Key Biscayne in 2022. It is now the centerpiece of the installation “Exile” by Antonia Wright and Ruben Millares. (Photo courtesy Ruben Millares)
After deciding they wanted to do something with it, they arranged to have it towed across Biscayne Bay and up the Miami River to their studio.
“We lived with it for four years,” Millares said. Living with the boat became part of the artistic process.
The artists examined every detail of its construction, discovering an extraordinary level of craftsmanship hidden beneath its rusted exterior.
The vessel was built from welded steel barrels once used by Cuba’s state honey industry.
“When it came to the beach, it had ‘Cuban honey’ on each barrel in English. We started looking into, what is Cuban honey?’ “ Wright said.
Researching the barrels revealed another layer of the story.
Wright said they discovered that the Cuban government produces the honey and sells it to Europe as one of the country’s prized exports.
“They have a whole organic farming system in Cuba because they can’t afford pesticides; everything is still done with ox and cart, so there’s no big machinery. They claim it is the purest honey in the world. It is very regulated,” she said.
Constructing a boat as an escape vessel carried significant risk on its own, but stealing the government-owned barrels to build it added another level of danger.
“If you get caught making any boat in Cuba, you’re not allowed to have a boat,” Millares said. “It was all hand-welded in secrecy.”
A piece of “Exile” on a flatbed truck on the way to the exhibition passes by the Freedom Tower. (Photo by Rudy Duboué, courtesy of the artists)
The boat’s ingenuity extended well beyond its materials.
“It has a 1942 Chevy engine,” Millares said. “The engineering is incredible.”
A handmade propeller, water-cooling system and carefully hammered steel siding all suggest the painstaking effort required to secretly build a vessel capable of crossing nearly 100 miles of open water. Although handmade from steel barrels and salvaged materials, Wright said its silhouette evokes that of an inflatable Zodiac.
The artists estimate as many as 12 to 15 people could have made the crossing aboard the vessel.
Early ideas for the project were dramatically different.
The artists discussed filming the boat burning at sea or filling it with books before setting it ablaze.
“It felt so heavy,” Millares said. “It was such a loaded object already. How do you intervene in a respectful way?”
Ultimately, they realized the structure itself already carried the emotional weight.
Art From Artifact
Instead of physically altering it, they composed a seven-minute soundscape that emerges from speakers concealed inside the boat.
Deep ocean recordings blend with orchestral timpani, distant explosions, vibrations and the recorded buzzing of bees. An inaudible heartbeat reverberates through the space at a frequency below human hearing, producing vibrations that can be felt by those standing nearby.
“The boat itself is like a being,” Millares said. “As the sound is playing, the boat is physically vibrating, and you’re getting a physical sensation.”
The buzzing bees reference the honey barrels from which the vessel was constructed.
The artists: Ruben Millares, left, and Antonia Wright. (Photo of Wright by Butch Quick, photos courtesy of the artists)
The exhibition’s lighting slowly reveals another haunting detail.
As visitors spend time in the gallery, beams of light emerge through seven bullet holes scattered across the hull.
“We wanted to highlight that,” Wright said. “To talk about the violence that’s embedded on our borders, but also to use the bullet holes to honor these people.”
Both artists have Cuban family roots, making the work personal. Although the boat came from Cuba, Wright and Millares said they intentionally broadened the exhibition beyond a single migration narrative.
“It starts from the Cuban experience for us,” Millares said. “But we were really talking about worldwide migration and all the migration crises around the world. This is a symbol, a metaphor for migration in general.”
Beyond the Boat
The gallery’s second room expands on those ideas.
Wright presents a series of cyanotypes made by placing shattered glass over light-sensitive paper before exposing each image.
She explained the process. “I smash glass over light-sensitive paper and make an exposure using the glass. So, the glass becomes like a negative print to each one.”
Antonia Wright, “OK,” 2026, cyanotype, broken glass, artist steel frame. (Photo courtesy of the artist and Piero Atchugarry Gallery)
The finished works echo the violence suggested by the bullet-riddled boat.
“The photos reflect those moments of violence,” Wright said.
Millares’ silkscreen paintings are built from thousands of numbers cut from financial statements, tax returns and investment documents.
He describes them as “visual cacophonies,” dense fields of information that overwhelm on purpose.
Ruben Millares, “Paint by Number,” 2017, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 in. (Photo courtesy of the artist and Piero Atchugarry Gallery )
“I just layer number upon number. So much data that you can’t decipher and you can’t come to some conclusion from,” he said. “How many migrants are there in the world? How many applications for asylum? How many people died crossing?”
One collaborative sculpture in the middle of this room embeds the boat’s handmade paddle into a block of South Florida oolitic limestone sourced from material associated with Vizcaya.
“When we first saw the boat, the paddle was with it and when we got back it was gone,” said Millares. They tracked it down to “reunite them.”
Displayed apart from the vessel, “Desembarco” becomes both a marker of arrival and a reminder of everything left behind. “It was this idea of the crossing and the migration, and the paddle being the arrival.”
Antonia Wright and Ruben Millares, “Desembarco,” 2026, wood, metal, paddle, oolite, 78 x 24 x 29. (Photo courtesy of the artists and Piero Atchugarry Gallery )
The boat offers no names and no history beyond the evidence welded into its steel. The artists said they never discovered whether the Cuban balseros aboard reached Florida, were intercepted or died at sea.
“We didn’t want to simulate what it was to be on the boat. That wasn’t the idea. We’ve never done it. We didn’t want to try to make something didactic like, oh this is what it is to cross through the Florida Straits,” Millares said.
For Wright, it is a representation of the emotional state of migration that’s been going on for centuries.
“These boats, for instance, have always been a barometer for a level of desperation.”
WHAT: “Exile”: Antonia Wright and Ruben Millares
WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; special showing on last day of exhibition, Sunday, July 26, as part of Progressive Art Brunch, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. See the galleries participating in the PAB.
WHERE: Piero Atchugarry Gallery, 5520 NE Fourth Ave., Miami
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” at the Frost Art Museum expands on a landmark 1944 MoMA exhibition with additional works, photographs, and archival material.
Fountainhead Artist Residency Leaving Morningside for Bigger Home
Written By Michelle F. Solomon July 9, 2026 at 7:05 PM
An AI-assisted image shows the front of Fountainhead Arts’ new artist residency. AI was used to change the building’s paint color and add the striped awnings; the structure is unchanged. (Courtesy of Fountainhead Arts)
Fountainhead Arts is leaving the Morningside house that has defined its artist residency for 18 years. The move will, for the first time, separate studios from artists’ living quarters and give the organization twice the space of its previous location.
The Miami nonprofit runs a year-round residency program that brings three artists at a time from across the country and internationally to live and work in Miami for a month.
The new property is located in what Fountainhead Arts founder and executive director Kathryn Mikesell described as “a tucked-away spot just west of Midtown and just north of Wynwood.” She did not want to disclose the exact address because, she said, the space is still being prepared for its public debut.
An AI-assisted image shows what an outdoor work area at Fountainhead’s new space. AI was used to change the building’s paint color and decorative elements; the structure and spaces remain unchanged. (Courtesy of Fountainhead Arts)
Mikesell sees the expansion as a way to do more than improve the residency: It will allow Fountainhead to develop residencies for curators and art writers, revive a program that connected Miami artists with one another and expand its public programming.
“Fountainhead is all about connections . . . connections between the artists, the artists and the community, but it’s also about connecting with Miami and people in the community,” she said.
At roughly 4,000 square feet, the new location is about twice the size of Fountainhead’s 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom residence in Miami’s Morningside neighborhood. It includes a two-story 1950s duplex and a separate one-story building.
“The big difference is that the artist studios are private and located steps from the home where they’ll be living,” Mikesell said. “Their living space will be separate from their studios and connected by a beautiful courtyard.”
At the current house, artists have lived and worked in the same space.
The Morningside home has hosted The Fountainhead Arts residency for the past 18 years. (Photo courtesy of Fountainhead Arts)
“We’re still keeping the home aspect of it, because that’s a very important part of Fountainhead,” Mikesell said. “A home is welcoming, and that’s one of the most important aspects to Fountainhead, is that it be welcoming to all.”
Fountainhead will take over the new location in September but continue operating its residency at the Morningside home through the end of the year. Mikesell said the organization did not want to disrupt the experience of artists who had been selected and were expecting to live and work at the longtime residency.
Mikesell expects the new space to be introduced during Miami Art Week in December and officially start operations there in January. The Morningside home will be sold.
The ground floor of the two-story residence has four bedrooms and three bathrooms. A separate two-bedroom apartment upstairs initially will allow Fountainhead alumni to return to Miami for visits.
An AI-assisted image shows what one of the artist’s studios will look like when completed at Fountainhead’s new space. AI was used to show the furniture, paint and elements.; the structure and spaces remain unchanged. (Courtesy of Fountainhead Arts)
The second building will contain private studios for the three visiting artists who participate in each residency cycle. Once Fountainhead has settled into the new location, Mikesell also plans to launch residencies for curators and art writers.
Fountainhead will rent the property for what Mikesell expects to be five to 10 years, using that time to test new programs and determine what the organization needs before eventually buying or building a permanent home.
Fountainhead is now in fundraising mode for the move, including the cost of rent, renovations and furnishings.
“We want to grow, but I’m very conservative in my approach to growth,” Mikesell said. “I think it’s very important to try things first, kind of work out the kinks, see what works, see what doesn’t work, reevaluate and then move forward.”
The move comes as Fountainhead is changing how it selects artists for its residency. For 2027, the organization has replaced its limited open call with a full nomination process. Artists will be nominated by a group of curators hand-selected by Fountainhead, along with alumni artists from the program.
“We have curators spread around the world, so that will ensure that we are truly reaching globally for the artists that we are bringing to Fountainhead,” Mikesell said.
Fountainhead’s leadership team will make the final selections in October.
What won’t change is the residency’s makeup: only three artists will participate in each cycle. Mikesell said the small group is central to a program in which artists who often have never met live together and become immersed in Miami’s arts community.
The move also will allow Fountainhead to revive MEET, a pre-pandemic program that brought Miami artists together over a meal with no formal agenda. Mikesell said connections made through the gatherings led artists to find roommates, studio space and collaborators, and sometimes even life partners.
Fountainhead Arts founder and executive director Kathryn Mikesell at an Open House at the Morningside residence. (Photo courtesy of Fountainhead Arts)
The program ended during the pandemic and did not return, in part because of the cost of hosting it in restaurants. With its own courtyard and gathering spaces, Fountainhead expects to bring it back next year.
The new location also will allow for more public programs, including artist-led dinners and talks, while continuing the monthly Open Houses that invite the public into the residency.
Founded in 2008, Fountainhead has hosted more than 600 artists. Its earlier footprint also included a complex in Little Haiti with about 30 artist studios that Fountainhead operated for nearly 15 years before the property was sold.
Mikesell said the cost of Miami real estate makes recreating that studio complex unrealistic now. With the new space, Mikesell said Fountainhead’s focus will remain on building relationships: among visiting and Miami artists, and with the curators, writers, collectors and institutions that can bring their work to a broader audience.
The new location came about through one of those relationships. Alex Degwitz, the son of arts leader and collector Milagros Maldonado and a close friend of Mikesell’s, knew she had begun looking for a new home for Fountainhead and told her he might have the right place. Maldonado owns the property, according to Mikesell.
Mikesell and the Fountainhead team visited and immediately saw its potential.
“Relationships are everything,” Mikesell said. “If you can create an environment that fosters that, it can be a game changer.”
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story atwww.artburst.com.
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” at the Frost Art Museum expands on a landmark 1944 MoMA exhibition with additional works, photographs, and archival material.
Wolfsonian Goes Shoe Crazy with ‘Foot Notes’ Exhibition
Written By Douglas Markowitz July 8, 2026 at 7:52 PM
Shoe displays from the Bullock’s Wilshire department store, Los Angeles, are part of The Wolfsonian-Florida International University Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection and are one of the design objects on display as part of the Miami Beach museum’s latest exhibition “Foot Notes: Shoes, Symbolism & Society.” (Courtesy of The Wolfsonian –Florida International University, Miami Beach, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection)
Could anyone go without shoes for even a day? Footwear is one of those important things most of us take for granted, an everyday object that we nevertheless can’t live without. Now a new exhibition open at The Wolfsonian–FIU uses the museum’s extensive collection of 19th- and early 20th-century design objects to adjust our perceptions of the things we put on our feet.
Far from a mere collection of footwear through the ages, “Foot Notes: Shoes, Symbolism & Society,” which is on display through Feb. 28, 2027, defies expectations from the very start. In the first room, a hulking pair of Nazi overboots, used by German infantry to guard against frigid Russian winters during World War II, serves as the centerpiece of a display on the symbolism of footwear.
It was the X-ray Shoe Sizer, circa 1946, that inspired curator Danielle Charlap to create an exhibition about shoes. Simplex for X-Ray Shoe Fitter, Inc., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, manufacturer. Wood, glass, metal. 48 x 24 x 36 inches (Courtesy of The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection)
Propaganda posters from the era from both the democratic United States and the Axis powers surround the imposing, heavy-duty boots, covered in animal hair and insulation. If one were to imagine a real-life version of Orwell’s vision of “a boot stamping on a human face,” this would be it.
“Foot Notes” is the first show at the Wolfsonian by Danielle Charlap, who joined the museum as curator in November 2025 and describes working at the museum as “a dream job.” Charlap got the idea for the show not from a shoe, but from a bizarre machine she found in the Wolfsonian’s collection catalog: a shoe sizer that beams X-rays at people’s feet. The dangerous-in-hindsight 1940s contraption inspired the curator to dig deeper into the museum’s holdings, uncovering everything from propaganda and advertising artifacts to “random recreational footwear” like ice skates and bouncing toy “rocket shoes” with springs attached to the soles.
Design drawing, “Foire de Paris Mai 1939 (Fair of Paris, May 1939),” c. 1939, France. Gouache and graphite on paper. 48 x 32 in. (Courtesy of The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection)
“We are not a fashion museum, but it turns out we had so many materials related to shoes,” Charlap says. “It really just became a lens into the collection, and I remember in the beginning we were thinking, was there enough material? And it turns out there was way too much.”
While most of the show is sourced from the Wolfsonian’s holdings, a few key works were secured through loans. The Ferragamo shoes came from the company’s museum in Florence, for instance. Though the show is light on sneakers due to the collection’s focus on objects from before 1950, they did manage to secure a gaudy “Solid Gold” Adidas sneaker from the Miami Shoe Museum designed by Jeremy Scott. The shoe ties together a section on the theme of Mercury, the Greco-Roman messenger god who wore winged sandals. Posters for Goodyear Tires and the 1939 Foire de Paris retail expo flank the flamboyant shoe.
Elsewhere, the show features extensive discussion of the materials used to make shoes and how industrial processes and design innovations changed the nature of our everyday footwear. Two sections profiling famous designers highlight this ingenuity.
Salvatore Ferragamo’s “Rainbow” (1938) was designed by Salvatore Ferragamo for Judy Garland. Suede, gilded leather, leather and cork (Photo courtesy Museo Ferragamo, Florence)
A display of vintage shoes by Salvatore Ferragamo details both the Italian designer’s reputation as “shoemaker to the stars” and the constraints he faced during his career. One rainbow-colored shoe with a bulky heel, created for singer Judy Garland in 1938, uses lightweight cork, while other models repurpose cellophane and rattan, a result of creativity enforced by the economic and political environment of fascist Italy.
A set of different imperatives motivated the work of Beth Levine, the pioneering designer behind the Herbert Levine brand. Though the sexism of the times forced Beth to take a back seat to her husband as the face of the company, her work dominated the mid-20th century American shoe market and brought avant-garde ideas into shoe design. Most famously, Levine pioneered the fashion boot, giving the utilitarian footwear a sleek, feminine form that sparked a craze after Nancy Sinatra wore the boots to promote her hit song “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”
One of the most unique artworks welcomes visitors in the museum’s Art Deco lobby: A giant inflatable pair of legs wearing stiletto heels by artist Ann Slavit. “Della (Waiting),” 20-foot, inflatable sculpture, 1978. (Photo courtesy of the Wolfsonian-FIU, Copyright Ann Slavit)
Other innovations include the “no-shoe,” a heel secured to stockings via adhesive that serves as a precursor to more contemporary designs such as Demna Gvasalia’s “Speed Trainer” sneaker-socks for Balenciaga.
One of the most unique artworks welcomes visitors in the museum’s Art Deco lobby: A giant inflatable pair of legs wearing stiletto heels. The sculpture by artist Ann Slavit, titled “Della (Waiting),” serves as a commentary on the degradation of women in the media. Slavit designed and named the artwork after Della Street, played by Barbara Hale, the secretary to lawyer Perry Mason on the 1950s and ’60s legal drama of the same name. While Street is depicted as a staunch professional in the show itself, Slavit observed that the camera consistently cut to her legs, servicing the male gaze and objectifying the character.
“I was thinking about, as I was growing up in the ‘50s, how crazy it was that the moms around us were literally wearing high heels all day long just to take care of the kids, cook, do laundry. Because there were less and less women working at that time, at least in my memory,” Slavit recalls. “I was also aware of billboards where they were using women to sell cars, or objectifying women by body parts, and that memory kind of stayed with me.”
Design drawing, Harry cipöpaszta vezet (Harry Shoe Polish is in the Lead), c. 1925; Hungary, Budapest Gouache, watercolor, ink, and graphite on paper, 8 7/8 x 13 7/8 in. (Courtesy of The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection)
As well as being a collision between feminism and pop art, two of the dominant movements at the time, “Della (Waiting)” also serves as an early example of inflatable art, a medium made famous in recent times by the likes of KAWS and Cyril Lancelin. Slavit decided to allow the piece to be used in the show after some discussion with Charlap about the show’s concept, and the idea of exploring history and changing social trends through common objects. In the process, the artist herself ended up connecting the same childhood experiences she’d used in her art with some of the objects in the show.
“She was talking about the X-ray machine, and I had forgotten all about it, but I actually remember that from getting shoes,” Slavit says. “I think it takes a kind of awareness to point these things out, because we take them for granted. Like now, people are okay about wearing sneakers…When I was growing up, you never wore sneakers unless you were playing a sport. I mean, you put them on to play basketball, but you didn’t walk around in sneakers. No one walked around in sneakers.”
Toy, “Rocket Shoes,” c. 1953, United States. Metal, paint, 6½ x 5 x 10½ inches. (Courtesy of The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection)
It’s a powerful observation: Few things change more quickly and dramatically than fashion.
“We’re moving so fast that, in a way, slowing down to think about what we’re wearing means a lot,” Slavit says. “Where is it made? Who made it? All those kinds of questions.”
WHAT: “Foot Notes: Shoes, Symbolism & Society”
WHEN: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday. Through Feb. 28, 2027.
WHERE: The Wolfsonian–FIU, 1001 Washington Ave., Miami Beach
COST: $12 for adults, $8 for seniors, students with ID, and children ages 6 to 18; free for Florida residents, children under 6, state university system students, faculty and staff, and active U.S. military and veterans with ID.
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” at the Frost Art Museum expands on a landmark 1944 MoMA exhibition with additional works, photographs, and archival material.
How Studio Vizcaya turned artmaking into a Miami summer tradition
Written By Miguel Sirgado June 30, 2026 at 4:20 PM
Participants parade sections of a deconstructed dragon lantern across Vizcaya’s East Terrace during the 2019 finale of “Weave.” This year, Studio Vizcaya is inviting the public to help create—and bring to life— “The Fruit We Bear.” (Photo by Ben Thacker, courtesy of Vizcaya Museum & Gardens)
For nearly a decade, Vizcaya Museum & Gardens has invited Miamians to do something unusual each summer: come together to create art.
This year, participants are building giant papier-mâché fruit lanterns as part of “The Fruit We Bear,” the latest edition of Studio Vizcaya. Led by artist Shawna Moulton, the free weekend workshops will culminate Saturday, July 25 with an illuminated twilight procession through Vizcaya’s waterfront gardens, where more than 1,000 participants are expected to carry their creations through the historic estate.
Layers of white, orange and yellow paper begin to take shape as workshop participants learn the techniques behind this summer’s fruit-inspired lanterns. (Photo by Mateo SeZa, courtesy of Vizcaya Museum & Gardens)
The event also marks a return to one of the program’s earliest traditions. After suspending the event in 2020 due to the pandemic, Vizcaya is bringing back its illuminated procession for the first time since 2019.
“The feedback we’ve been getting is that people want to come back to Vizcaya and be part of this immersive experience again,” says Gabriella Roman, Vizcaya’s community programs manager. “So, this year we’re returning to some of the program’s early roots.”
Participation is designed to be as welcoming as possible.
“We’re intentionally trying to create a third space where adults can engage their creative side,” Roman says. “Maybe it’s an experience you normally would have had at summer camp or art camp, but now you get to experience it later in life.”
Participants working on lanterns for a former workshop at Vizcaya Museum & Gardens. This year’s “The Fruit We Bear” marks the return of the museum’s signature illuminated procession for the first time since 2019. (Photo courtesy of Vizcaya Museum & Gardens)
Participants range from families with children to people arriving alone, looking for a chance to unplug and connect with others through artmaking. Nearly half are first-time visitors, while others return every year. One couple even met while participating in a previous edition and now comes back each summer as a tradition.
Keeping the program free is part of that philosophy.
“We want to make the program as accessible as possible and remove any barriers someone might have to participating,” Roman says. “The final artwork is supposed to reflect many different voices, stories and backgrounds, so it was essential to keep it free and not limit participation with a paywall.”
Gabriella Roman, community programs manager at Vizcaya Museum & Gardens, works with young participants during a Studio Vizcaya workshop. (Photo by Manuela Delgado/Beyond Creative Productions, courtesy of Vizcaya Museum & Gardens)
Some people commit to multiple weekends, while others stop by for a single afternoon. All materials are provided, and no artistic experience is required.
Roman says the approach shifted after the pandemic, when smaller groups created opportunities for deeper interaction.
“We wanted the experience to be more intentional,” she says. “We built in more time for talking, more time for people to get to know their neighbors and more opportunities to exchange ideas.”
For Moulton, the project began with a walk through Vizcaya.
Born in the Bahamas and raised in Jamaica, Moulton lives in Plantation, in Broward County, and maintains her art practice and studio in Miami. She studied sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. While visiting Vizcaya with a group from the Norton Museum of Art, she was drawn to one of the four herms —sculptural figures—that flank the entrance to The Barge, the estate’s monumental stone breakwater overlooking Biscayne Bay. The figure carries a basket of fruit on its head, immediately transporting her back to childhood memories in Jamaica.
Lead artist Shawna Moulton reviews participants’ work during a Studio Vizcaya workshop at Vizcaya Museum & Gardens. Her project, “The Fruit We Bear,” uses fruit-inspired lanterns to spark conversations about shared values and community. (Photo by Manuela Delgado/Beyond Creative Productions, courtesy of Vizcaya Museum & Gardens)
“Fruit immediately made me think about community,” Moulton says. “In Jamaica, if you came to my house during the summer, you weren’t going to be hungry. My family was going to feed you mangoes, bananas and whatever had grown nearby. We all have a story of somebody giving us a piece of fruit, and that felt like a beautiful place to start.”
Florida’s landscape offered another layer of inspiration.
“One of my favorite things about South Florida is that it reminds me of Jamaica,” she says. “There are mango trees, papayas and all kinds of fruit growing here, so I was also inspired by the land itself and what a fruitful place Florida can be.”
The lanterns are tied to values such as joy, kindness, peace and patience. Throughout the summer, participants are encouraged to talk about those ideas and what they mean in their own lives.
“I didn’t want the sculptures to simply be fruits,” Moulton says. “I wanted them to be connected to something we could have conversations about.”
Gathering around food, Moulton says, has always been one of the simplest ways to bring people together.
Families gather at Vizcaya Village carrying handmade lanterns before the start of the 2018 “Float” procession. (Photo by Ben Thacker, courtesy of Vizcaya Museum & Gardens)
“My philosophy is that you can never be angry when food is being served,” she says.
She has already watched new relationships emerge.
“There were a group of women who had never met before, and by the end of the afternoon they were like best friends,” she says. “They came up with a design together, executed it together and were proud to share it with everybody else.”
Others have described the experience as a form of wellness.
“People have told me this feels like healing,” Moulton says. “They’re grateful for having a space like this.”
Those interactions, Roman says, have become part of the estate’s identity.
“Vizcaya is a museum and a historic estate, but we also think of it as a home for the community,” she says. “Over the past decade, Studio Vizcaya has become one of those places people now associate with the summer art experiences they return to year after year.”
That sense of belonging often spreads quickly.
During a recent gathering, Moulton recalls a retired teacher who was having such a good time that she called her daughter and asked her to come join.
“An hour later, her daughter was there,” Moulton says.
Community members parade illuminated lanterns through Vizcaya’s Upper East Terrace during the finale of “Whirl,” the museum’s first illuminated procession in 2016. This summer’s finale revives one Studio Vizcaya’s lantern building community tradition. (Photo courtesy of Vizcaya Museum & Gardens)
On July 25, participants will gather at Vizcaya Village before crossing South Miami Avenue at twilight and entering the gardens, where nine large-scale lanterns will be illuminated. Five will be fruit-shaped sculptures, while four will be collage-inspired lanterns created throughout the summer.
Roman hopes participants leave with something deeper than a finished artwork.
“I hope people feel excitement, wonder and a connection to everyone around them,” she says. “That procession across South Miami Avenue is such an important part of the program, and I hope participants understand the role they play in making the experience possible.”
WHAT: Studio Vizcaya: The Fruit We Bear
WHEN AND WHERE: Free workshops: 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, July 11, Miami Beach Regional Library, 227 22nd St., Miami Beach. 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sunday, July 12, Vizcaya Village, 3250 S. Miami Ave., Miami. Finale performance: 7 to 9:30 p.m., Saturday, July 25, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, 3251 S. Miami Ave., Miami.
COST: Workshops: Free with online registration. Finale: $15, $10 for children, 6 to 12, free admission for children under 5.
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story atwww.artburstmiami.com.
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” at the Frost Art Museum expands on a landmark 1944 MoMA exhibition with additional works, photographs, and archival material.
A new exhibition at Pérez Art Museum Miami didn’t begin with the idea of a collector lending paintings to a museum. It began with a realization.
Megan Kincaid, curator of the Kenneth C. Griffin Collection, recalled that shortly after joining the team, she was looking at the collection with its owner when she saw more than a remarkable group of paintings. Something stood out.
“You have a Basquiat show on your hands. This is ready to go. This is museum quality.”
That realization became “Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols,” which opened Thursday, June 25, and will be on view for nearly a year through Sunday, June 6, 2027.
The exhibition brings together 10 works by Jean-Michel Basquiat from the Kenneth C. Griffin Collection in the first public exhibition drawn from the collection. Spanning works created between 1982 and 1985, Kincaid said the exhibition functions as “a kind of retrospective” of Basquiat’s most significant period.
For both the collector and the curator, there was never any doubt where that exhibition belonged.
Collector Kenneth C. Griffin, right, and Pérez Art Museum Miami Director Franklin Sirmans stand in front of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Untitled” (1982), one of the centerpiece works in “Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols,” the first public exhibition drom the Kenneth C. Griffin Collection now at PAMM. (Photo by World Red Eye)
“Without question, it was always going to happen for Ken at the Pérez,” said Kincaid, who is co-curator of “Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols.” “It was the right venue, and Miami was where he wanted to stage an exhibition of this kind. It’s important to remember that this is the first time Ken’s ever presenting a section of his collection as a show with his name on it, and it was decisive and important that the show take place in Miami.”
The Right Place at the Right Time
The decision reflected more than geography. It reflected a relationship that had been taking shape since Griffin moved Citadel’s headquarters from Chicago to Miami in 2022. The move returned the Florida native—born in Daytona Beach and raised in Boca Raton—to his home state. Two years later, his $10 million gift to PAMM established the Kenneth C. Griffin Gallery, which now hosts the first public exhibition drawn from his collection.
“Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols” represents a watershed moment for Miami’s cultural landscape. It is the first public exhibition drawn from one of the world’s premier private Basquiat collections, presented at a museum whose director, Franklin Sirmans, has spent more than three decades studying the artist, and it arrives as Miami continues to establish itself as an international art destination.
For Sirmans, PAMM’s director and co-curator of the exhibition, the moment is about more than one collector or one museum. It’s another chapter in Miami’s cultural evolution.
“We’re incredibly fortunate,” Sirmans said. “This is a really fascinating moment to think about how the landscape is being enriched by new people coming in.”
Franklin Sirmans, director of Pérez Art Museum Miami and co-curator of “Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols,” has spent more than three decades studying Jean-Michel Basquiat. (Photo by Lazaro Llanes, courtesy of Pérez Art Museum Miami)
There was another draw that made PAMM the perfect fit. Sirmans has spent more than three decades studying Basquiat, beginning with his undergraduate thesis while at Wesleyan University and continuing through major exhibitions that have shaped scholarship on the artist, including co-curating the 2005 landmark show “Basquiat” at the Brooklyn Museum, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
“If you could pick a museum director in the country to curate a Basquiat show, it would be Franklin,” Kincaid remarked.
Why Basquiat Endures
Sirmans said there are many reasons why more than three decades after his untimely death from a drug overdose in 1988 at the age of 27, Basquiat remains one of the defining artists of the late 20th century.
“The work at its core is about humanity,” Sirmans said. “It’s about people and times and eras of human beings.”
Born in Brooklyn to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat drew on a wide range of cultural references that shaped both his life and his work. For Sirmans, those influences give the exhibition a particular resonance in Miami.
“We have three different languages in the gallery alone… Creole, Spanish and English… there aren’t that many American cities where you think about language in the same way that you do here.”
While the artist’s work resonates with audiences around the world, Miami’s deep Caribbean and Latin American cultures, central to the city’s identity, may allow many visitors to connect in a deeper way.
“I think it can sound trite sometimes when you say, ‘Yes, he is a Black person, his father was from Haiti, his mother was from Puerto Rico.’ All those aspects are part of it. They’re not the end-all and be-all, but I think they are something that makes the presence of not only the artist, but the work speak to that kind of heritage, that kind of upbringing,” Sirmans explained.
One notable omission among the works is “Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump,” considered one of the crown jewels of Griffin’s collection. Kincaid calls the 1982 work a tour de force of the collection, and of Basquiat’s entire career. “The only reason it is not in the show here is because it is in another exhibition that Ken has supported at the Hirshhorn Museum (in Washington, D.C.).” The private sale made headlines when Griffin acquired the painting for more than $100 million in 2020, making it one of the most valuable Basquiat works in any private collection.
Megan Kincaid, curator of the Kenneth C. Griffin Collection and co-curator of “Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols,” while looking at the collection with its owner said, “You have a Basquiat show on your hands.” (Photo courtesy of Megan Kincaid)
But rather than keeping it tucked away, Kincaid said this reinforces Griffin’s philosophy of making the collection accessible.
“I’m very lucky to work for a collector who has the vision to share his collection with the public,” she said. “There was the exhibition in terms of content, and there was this vision to make this work accessible. There’s the vision as a collector and the vision as one of civic responsibility.”
That same philosophy shaped the exhibition itself.
“It was absolutely a decision to present as much as we could, and we want people to feel empowered to make their own personal choice about what they like best,” Kincaid said. “To over-curate the exhibition would have been a bit of a disservice.”
Looking Closely
Along with the nine works, the exhibition includes a sculpture known as “Untitled (Box)” — though Kincaid noted that “crate” is probably a more accurate term. The piece revealed a surprise when it was brought to PAMM.
“This was one work we acquired with this show in mind when we were offered it and it came to our attention, and it’s centered in the gallery,” Kincaid said, noting that it highlights another aspect of Basquiat’s artistic practice through his use of found and assemblage materials. “We were able to open it for the first time here.”
“Untitled (Box),” 1985, is in the center of the gallery, and was acquired with the PAMM exhibition in mind. Shown on the wall behind the crate is “Untitled (“Skull”), painted in 1982 and regarded as Basquait’s breakthrough year. (Photo by Lazaro Llanes, courtesy of Pérez Art Museum Miami)
The work first debuted publicly in 1985 in a highly unusual setting: the legendary Area nightclub in New York City, where a famous photograph captured Basquiat himself sitting atop the crate.
In a previous life, the wooden crate had been used by artist Robert Rauschenberg, widely regarded as the father of assemblage art in the United States, to house and transport his paintings before Basquiat incorporated it into his own work.
“It is an art historical object where Basquiat is commenting on his own lineage and place within the canon of American art,” Kincaid said. “It is a super special object in that it has so many layers of meaning and significance.”
Sirmans said it is that kind of layering that will be eye-opening for visitors when they are face to face with the works.
“It’s the awe of standing in front of great paintings and I think that is what’s going to be revelatory for a lot of people who only know (Basquiat) from reproductions. What it is to be standing in real time and be among others in the space of the gallery who are all contemplating the work for a moment in time. These paintings demand that kind of slow experience.”
WHAT: “Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols” from the Kenneth C. Griffin Collection
WHEN: Opens Thursday, June 25 through Sunday, June 6, 2027. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday.
WHERE: Pérez Art Museum Miami, 1103 Biscayne Blvd., Miami.
COST: $18, $14 for seniors 62 and older, students, and children 7 to 18; children under 6, free admission. Other free admission for military, healthcare, first responders, Florida educators, and disabled visitors and an accompanying caregiver. Admission is free from 5 to 9 p.m. every Thursday.
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story atwww.artburstmiami.com.
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York Revisited” at the Frost Art Museum expands on a landmark 1944 MoMA exhibition with additional works, photographs, and archival material.
Recent Comments