HistoryMiami becomes Museum of Miami in shift toward county-wide outreach

The new Museum of Miami, formerly the HistoryMiami Museum. (Photo courtesy of Museum of Miami

The institution known for almost two decades as HistoryMiami Museum is changing its name to the Museum of Miami to reflect a countywide “museum without walls” mission.

The name change is only a small part of a deeper transformation for one of the oldest cultural institutions continuously operating in South Florida, and housed inside the Miami-Dade Cultural Center area downtown on West Flagler Street.

“It’s more than a name change. That’s just the visible part,” says Natalia Crujeiras, chief executive officer of Museum of Miami. “It’s really about a deeper shift about how we think a museum can really, truly serve a city like ours.”

The shift follows three years of research and listening sessions in neighborhoods across Miami-Dade — from Homestead to Overtown and Liberty City to Miami Beach, according to Crujeiras. The recurring message was that HistoryMiami Museum “made a lot of people feel like they didn’t belong here, or our content was not for them.”

A “Wish Wall” will invite Miamians to imagine the future of their city and their country. (Rendering courtesy of Museum of Miami)

For some, the word “history” was the stop gap.

“The word history felt sometimes distant or like a school assignment,” she explains. “Or for many people that come from other places, there was a deeper connection for the places of their home countries or the places they relocated from.”

While she maintains that the museum will still serve as a repository of the area’s history, it will broaden its accessibility.

“In many ways it’s kind of we’re expanding our scope, rather than limiting it to one tool or one discipline,” she says. “History is a core component of what the museum does, but we also care about culture and art and community; all of the things that make Miami, Miami.”

Natalia Crujeiras, Museum of Miami’s CEO and Executive Director. (Photo  Museum of Miami)

The rebrand, says Crujeiras, is rooted in a bigger question: What does it mean to be a Miamian, and how do people feel they belong here?

“Miami is one of the fastest growing and most dynamic cities in the world, and that diversity makes us exciting and dynamic, but it also comes with a cost. Neighborhoods change quickly. Community shifts. New residents arrive, and many are not connected to Miami. For many it’s hard to answer a question like, ‘What is a Miamian? How do I fit in this place?’”

One of the most concrete shifts is how the Museum of Miami will show up for residents. She says that there shouldn’t be an expectation that people will make their way downtown to visit the museum.

“We realized that we can’t continue to wait for people to come to us only,” Crujeiras says. “What we heard is that Miamians want us to come to them as well.”

The museum will keep its West Flagler Street home as “a hub, a place where you can access our collections and see our extraordinary artifacts” — but the new strategy is to get out into the community.

“We want to have programs, experiences, exhibitions across the entire county.”

The “museum without walls” model was well underway before the name change was announced.

“We just had a program in Miami Dade College’s Homestead campus, connected to our current exhibition, but we brought the program to that community, and it’s really leaning into that, in making sure that every place in Miami can be a vehicle to take our stories. We want to be wherever people live, learn and gather.”

Even as it moves forward, the Museum of Miami maintains its deep roots.

The courtyard of the HistoryMiamiMuseum, now the Museum of Miami. (Courtesy of Museum of Miami)

Originally formed as the Historical Association of Southern Florida and founded in 1940, it moved through several homes and evolutions before becoming HistoryMiami Museum and, now, Museum of Miami. The original name was the Historical Association of Southern Florida.

“We began with collecting little things in a storage cabinet at the University of Miami,” says Crujeiras. Over time, it became a collecting institution and in the 1980s, Miami-Dade County built the Cultural Plaza to house the main library and what was then the Center for Fine Arts and the then Historical Association of Southern Florida.

Its name was changed to the Historical Museum of Southern Florida in 1962 and then HistoryMiamiMuseum in 2010.

The museum holds what Crujeiras calls “the largest leading archive about Miami.”

“We have the first photos, the glass negatives, the first images that were taken of Miami in the late 1800s; letters of exchange between Henry Flagler and Julia Tuttle to convince him to build the railroad. We have over two million photographs and more than 40,000 artifacts.”

A letter from the late 1890s from Henry Flagler to Julia Tuttle, as part of their correspondence for Flagler to extend his railway to Miami is in Museum of Miami (formerly the HistoryMiami Museum’s) archives. (Photo courtesy of Museum of Miami)

There are also emotional tales reflected in installations. “We have rafts used by Cuban refugees and Haitian refugees. That shows really the trauma and the risk and the hope and opportunity for so many of our community members that had to have been forced to relocate seeking freedom.”

And one of the most popular attractions is the electric trolley from the 1920s.

“It was the main vehicle for public transportation in the 1920s, which happened to be segregated. We can have a conversation about that part of our history in an artifact where you can actually get in and sit down. It is very personal and very emotional to try to put yourself in the experience of people that came before us.”

As part of its new chapter, the Museum of Miami will host a rare traveling exhibition from the National Archives.

As the museum reaches beyond its walls, it’s also rethinking how people experience its stories. (Photo rendering of Wish for America wall courtesy of Museum of Miami)

The Smithsonian affiliate is one of only eight sites in the country that the National Archives has chosen to show “the original documents that forged our nation,” Crujeiras says. “For the Fourth of July, starting on Saturday, June 20 and through Sunday, July 5, we will have the Oath of Allegiance signed by Washington and Hamilton and Burr. We’re going to have the Treaty of Paris. We’re going to have the first annotated version of the Bill of Rights. These are the original documents of our country.”

The exhibit will be paired with an interactive mural inviting Miamians to imagine the future of their city and country.

“We’re inviting Miamians to dream up what is the country and the city they want to build for the future and asking based on what Miami is today, ‘What is it you want to see in the future?”

As the museum reaches beyond its walls, it’s also rethinking how people experience its stories.

“We need to understand that, especially young audiences, consume content in a different way, and they want to have interactivity and digital stuff, and they want to lead what they experience. We’re making efforts to digitize more things from our collection, to make it accessible.

She says she hopes the rebrand will awaken old memories and power forward a new momentum.

“I think this institution holds important memories of our community, and we want to turn that memory into motion and to think, ‘Okay, what is it that Miami wants to become, and how we can use this place as a vehicle to build that understanding?’ ”

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

Across Centuries and Cultures: ‘The Light of the World’ Traces Images of Christ in Art

Olga M. and Carlos A. Saladrigas Gallery at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School presents “The Light of the World,” curated by Carol Damian and Adriana Herrera, on view through Wednesday, May 6. (Photo by Phillip Karp, courtesy of Ignacio Font)

At the Olga M. and Carlos A. Saladrigas Gallery at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, “The Light of the World” bridges historical reverence with contemporary relevance. Curated by Carol Damian, a longtime Miami art historian and former director of FIU’s Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, and Adriana Herrera, an independent curator and writer focused on Latin American art, the exhibition traces artistic interpretations of Jesus Christ across centuries, cultures and media.

Rather than presenting devotion as fixed, the exhibition reveals it as something shaped by culture, memory, and lived experience. Moving through the gallery, viewers encounter a dialogue between past and present—one that reflects both continuity and transformation.

A 17th-century Cuzco School painting of “St. Joseph with the Christ Child” introduces this dialogue with quiet intimacy. The composition is tender and grounded: Joseph cradles the child, both figures haloed and framed by delicate floral motifs. The work carries the visual language of colonial Latin American religious painting, yet its emotional accessibility feels immediate. It sets the tone for the exhibition’s central premise—that sacred imagery, while rooted in tradition, is always evolving in its expression.

A Belen Jesuit student views Brazilian artist Vik Muniz’s “The Crucifixion, after Thomas Eakins” (2011), collage, in “The Light of the World,” curated by Carol Damian and Adriana Herrera, on view through Wednesday, May 6. (Photo by Suzzane Sardina and Ignacio Font, courtesy of Saladrigas Gallery at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School)

That evolution becomes strikingly apparent in contemporary works that reinterpret canonical imagery through new materials and perspectives. Brazilian artist Vik Muniz’s “The Crucifixion,” after Thomas Eakins (2011), transforms a familiar scene into a densely layered composition constructed from fragments of printed media. From a distance, the crucified figure is clearly legible. Up close, however, it dissolves into a chaotic accumulation of images—faces, textures, and visual debris—suggesting a world overwhelmed by information. In Muniz’s hands, the crucifixion becomes not only a symbol of sacrifice but also a reflection of contemporary visual culture, where meaning is both constructed and obscured.

Material experimentation continues in Stella Bernal de Parra’s “Mi Cristiano” (1973), a suspended textile that evokes the human body through woven wool and elongated strands. The work resists direct representation, instead suggesting presence through form and gravity. Hanging in space, it reads as both garment and relic, its tactile surface emphasizing labor and devotion. The piece invites viewers to consider faith not as an abstract concept, but as something embodied—stitched, woven, and carried over time.

Narrative returns powerfully in Darío Ortiz’s “The Last Supper” (2026), where the biblical scene is relocated to a contemporary environment marked by subtle signs of instability. The figures surrounding Christ wear modern clothing, their gestures subdued and contemplative. Rather than dramatizing the moment, Ortiz renders it as a quiet gathering, emphasizing the story’s human dimension. The work suggests that the sacred does not exist outside of history, but continues to unfold within it.

ilvia Dorfsman, local art dealer and appraiser, views Karim Borjas’ “Ecce Homo” (2006), a photographic installation featuring red strings, while Olga Garcia-Mayoral, curator and writer, reflects on Erik Ravelo’s “Señor, Dame Luz” (2009), a C-print in “The Light of the World”  at the Olga M. and Carlos A. Saladrigas Gallery at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School. (Photo by Teresa Martinez, courtesy of Ignacio Font)

The exhibition also foregrounds artists who engage sacred imagery through inherited craft traditions. In Jesús Tax’s “Sustained Investigation” (2022), Christ’s face emerges through an intricate network of threads stretched across nails. The technique, rooted in textile, practices passed down through generations, transforms the act of making into a devotional gesture. The tension of the threads creates a dynamic surface, where image and structure are inseparable, reflecting both fragility and resilience.

Elsewhere, Pablo Cano’s “Westinghouse Basilica” (1979) reimagines the icon through found objects. A vintage refrigerator becomes a devotional structure, its doors opening to reveal painted religious imagery. The work carries a subtle humor and a deeper resonance: it collapses the boundary between the sacred and the everyday, suggesting that spirituality can inhabit even the most ordinary spaces.

Drawing plays a quieter yet equally significant role in the exhibition. In works by Fernanda Frangetto, including her “Via Crucis series” and “The Risen Jesus”, the figure of Christ dissolves into fields of color. Rendered in soft charcoal and pastel tones, the images feel ephemeral, as if emerging from light itself. Rather than defining the body, Frangetto allows it to disperse, emphasizing sensation over structure. These works offer a moment of stillness within the exhibition, inviting contemplation through their subtlety.

Throughout the gallery, the curatorial vision becomes increasingly clear: this is not simply an exhibition about representation, but about interpretation. Each artist approaches the figure of Christ from a distinct perspective, shaped by geography, material, and personal experience. Together, the works form a constellation of voices that expand the meaning of sacred art beyond any single tradition.

Installation view of “The Light of the World,” curated by Carol Damian and Adriana Herrera, at the Olga M. and Carlos A. Saladrigas Gallery at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, on view through Wednesday, May 6. (Photo by Phillip Karp, courtesy of Ignacio Font)

What makes “The Light of the World” particularly compelling is its ability to bridge historical reverence with contemporary relevance. The exhibition does not attempt to resolve the tension between past and present; instead, it allows that tension to remain visible. In doing so, it reflects the ongoing role of art in shaping our understanding of spirituality, identity, and community.

In a cultural moment often defined by fragmentation, the exhibition offers something quieter yet enduring: a space for reflection. Through painting, textile, drawing, and assemblage, these artists remind us that the sacred is not static. It is something continually reimagined—held, questioned, and brought into the present through acts of creation.

WHAT: The Light of the World

WHERE: Olga M. and Carlos Saladrigas Art Gallery, Ignatian Center for the Arts, Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, 500 SW 127 Ave., Miami

WHEN: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday or by appointment. Through Wednesday, May 6. Closing reception from 7 to 9 p.m., Wednesday, May 6.

 COST: Free

INFORMATION: (786) 621-4170 or ifont@belenjesuit.org

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

‘Anchors of Light’ Reframes 30 Years of MOCA North Miami

Luis Gispert, “Untitled (Living Room)” 2003 is part of “Anchors of Light” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, and features many artists from the museum’s history. The show is on display through Sunday, Oct. 4. (Photo courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami)

As the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami celebrates its 30th anniversary, a new exhibition is as much about looking back as it is about moving forward.

Focusing on works from the museum’s collection, “Anchors of Light,” which opened on Wednesday, April 15, features many artists from the museum’s history. Nearly 50 artists are represented in a presentation that spans historical artists (Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenberg), past retrospective subjects (Maryan S. Maryan, Edouard Duval-Carrie), and beloved locals (Purvis Young, Pepe Mar).

Alfredo Jaar, “A Logo for America,” 1995. (Photo courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami)

But it’s also a platform for ambitious new voices. The museum invited Catherine Camargo, a Miami native and founder of the ultracontemporary Queue Gallery, to curate the show. Camargo is known for consciously programming art that runs against the usual perceptions of Miami’s scene, and her predilection towards dark and muted colors and unconventional materials shines through. A perfect example comes in the Will Boone painting that gives the show a bold opening statement. “Widowmaker” features horizontal gray and black stripes underneath a thin, pink circular outline that can be taken for a solar form, an apt visual metaphor for Miami as a place where sunny weather often provides a thin façade for moral shades of gray.

“The guest curator program at MOCA overall has a goal of providing a platform for different voices and perspectives,” says Chana Sheldon, the museum’s executive director, “and bringing in someone like Catherine to have a fresh look at works that our team and some of our visitors know always brings about really exciting results.”

One interesting segment comes in the form of a “video corridor,” in which a group of six flat-screen TVs protrude from the walls, allowing visitors to watch video artworks as they walk through. Camargo says the idea came from space constraints: she wanted to show multiple video works but didn’t want to build multiple separate screening rooms, such as the one reserved for the Ragnar Kjartansson installation “God.”

The museum invited Catherine Camargo, a Miami native and founder of the ultracontemporary Queue Gallery, to curate the show. (Photo by Zachary Balber)

“I knew I couldn’t have a room for each piece,” she says. “They have a lot of amazing films in the collection, and I was getting to the point where my list of works to be shown felt never ending. And I was worried about space. So I came up with the idea of having a video corridor so that I could arrange these videos in a way where people can still interact with it.”

That ingenuity also came in handy when confronted with another critical issue, the size of the collection and the works that are no longer there. Although MOCA’s collection of some 600 artworks is smaller than other local institutions – the Pérez Art Museum Miami claims almost 3,000 pieces, while the privately-owned Rubell Museum owns over 7,700 – its age reflects the museum’s pioneer status within the local art scene. The collection is as old as the museum building itself, which opened in 1996 as an evolution of the former Center for Contemporary Art under Bonnie Clearwater, now director and chief curator at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale.

The “Miami School” section focuses on works from artists that made their careers in South Florida, such as Cano, Robert Chambers, and Purvis Young. (Photo by Zachary Balber)

“The idea was to create a program and a collection that would resonate with the South Florida art audiences, and also…that it would be an international museum located in North Miami,” Clearwater says. “We were a hybrid between a community center and an international museum of contemporary art, and we basically were able to maintain that vision all the way through and bring some of the best works to Miami, as well as bringing attention to the incredible, dynamic artist scene that was developing at that time.”

Under Clearwater’s leadership, MOCA quickly made a name for itself exhibiting major contemporary artists, giving retrospectives to starry names such as Keith Haring and Roy Lichtenstein as well as platforming locals such as Pablo Cano and Teresita Fernandez. Few other local institutions were seriously collecting at the time, and some hadn’t even been founded yet in the pre-Art Basel period.

After she left in 2013, a bitter dispute ensued between the City of North Miami, which owns the museum, and the board, which included collectors such as Irma Braman and Ray Ellen Yarkin. Both the city and the patrons made ownership claims on the museum’s collection, and a settlement resulted in MOCA retaining the majority but losing a portion of key objects as the board defected to form the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.

Since then, MOCA has continued to platform major contemporary artists, but in a way that centers North Miami’s diverse population. Recent years have seen shows from Haitian heritage artists like Manuel Mathieu and Didier William as well as art world stars like Cecilia Vicuña and Lonnie Holley, and the museum is one of the few in the United States that provides artwork information in Haitian Creole.

Pat Steir, “From the Sea, Wave After Courbet,” 1984. (Photo courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami)

Still, Camargo found she had less to work with than she expected. The ICA ended up taking pieces by big name artists including James Turrell, Ed Ruscha, Dan Flavin and Raymond Pettibon. “The ICA split definitely did alter what was left in the collection and kind of changed a lot of the story I was able to tell,” she says. “It forced me to focus on what remained, and there were still so many gems that I was able to pull out, and that was exciting. But that was definitely something that presented itself as a challenge.”

So, how does a curator tell a comprehensive story when so many of the pieces that form MOCA’s history are unavailable? Certainly, a few big names are still present, including a video installation from Ragnar Kjartansson and works on paper from Pat Steir and Jose Bedia.

Beyond that, it came down to celebrating Miami and its artists. The “Miami School” section focuses on works from artists that made their careers in South Florida, such as Cano, Robert Chambers, and Purvis Young. Connections are made to a show curated by Clearwater, “Defining the ‘90s,” that was one of the first attempts at placing Miami on the same level as New York and Los Angeles as a major contemporary art scene.

Works throughout “Anchors of Light” reflect the themes that animate the artistic discourse that takes place in South Florida. (Photo by Zachary Balber)

Works throughout the show reflect the themes that animate the artistic discourse that takes place in South Florida. Artworks in “The Body” reflect the city’s obsession with the material world, from Tom Wesselman and Alex Katz’s pop-centric odes to skin contact to Luis Gispert’s photo of his own Cuban family’s living room, decorated floor to ceiling with faux-baroque kitsch.

Alfredo Jaar’s “A Logo for America” famously recenters the broader Latin conception of the bi-continental landmass, arguing against U.S. exceptionalism – appropriate for a city that considers itself the capital of Latin America.

Much has changed in Miami in the 30 years since MOCA’s founding, but as many moments in “Anchors of Light” attest to, just as much has remained the same.

 WHAT: “Anchors of Light”

 WHEN: Through Sunday, Oct. 4.

 WHERE: Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, 770 NE 125 St., North Miami

 COST: $10 for general admission; $5 for seniors, students with ID, youth ages 12 to 17, and visitors identifying as disabled; free for children under 12, North Miami residents, city employees, veterans, and caregivers of disabled visitors.

 INFORMATION: 305-893-6211 or mocanomi.org

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

‘Get in the Game’ at PAMM Puts Sports and Art on a level playing field

Hank Willis Thomas’ 2016 work “Guernica,” a mixed-media work that recreates Pablo Picasso’s famous antiwar image with NBA jerseys instead of human figures is featured in “Get in the Games: Sports, Art, Culture,” at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) through Sunday, Aug. 23. (Photo courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York) 

Pick a side: the clamor of the stadium or the calm of the museum. Are you Team Sports or Team Arts? At the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture” challenges the age-old divide to bridge the cultural gap between the two.

The exhibition aims to reconcile the athlete’s arena and the artist’s studio and serves as a reminder that whether someone wears a jersey or a museum wristband, the quest for excellence remains the same.

On display through Sunday, Aug. 23, “Get in the Game” features more than 100 works by artists from around the world and showcases sports memorabilia, including vintage sneakers, racing equipment, and Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Men’s and Women’s World Cup soccer balls from 1930 to 2023.

Emma Amos’s “Hurdlers I” (1983) blends painting and textile, depicting women athletes in mid-leap while incorporating handwoven elements that reference African kente cloth. (Photo by Lazaro Llanes, courtesy of Pérez Art Miami Museum)

Organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and presented in Miami with locally focused additions, the exhibition arrives in the wake of events like the Miami Open and as the Magic City continues to host global spectacles such as Formula 1 in May while preparing for the FIFA World Cup 2026 at Hard Rock Stadium in July.

Franklin Sirmans, PAMM’s director and organizer of the museum’s presentation, believes the timing adds to its significance. “I think sports and arts deserve deeper exploration in museum exhibitions,” he says. “This show is at PAMM in a year of unprecedented presentations of sport on the national and world stage.”

He sees the exhibition not just in terms of what spectators witness on the field, court, or track, but also in how those events resonate in memory and imagination. “The exhibition pauses and creates space for conversations and reflections on how these events impact us,” Sirmans explains.

Ernie Barnes’s “Fumble in the Line” (1990), where football players are depicted in exaggerated, almost sculptural forms. (Photo by Lazaro Llanes, courtesy of Pérez Art Miami Museum)

Fabiana A. Sotillo, a curatorial assistant and co-curator of PAMM’s show, says her outsider perspective on sports shaped how the exhibition was recontextualized for local audiences. “When I started working on the presentation of ‘Get in the Game’ at PAMM with Franklin, I was aware that this show would be a challenge for me due to the fact that I am not as knowledgeable about sports as Franklin is,” she shares. “However, what I thought would be a disadvantage for us ended up being a very valuable aspect of our presentation in Miami.”

As the curator and writer of the exhibition’s materials, Sotillo explains that her unfamiliarity allowed her to consider visitors who might feel intimidated by sports, as well as those who might feel they would be out of place in a contemporary art museum. “My lack of sports knowledge ended up being an advantage, since I really catered the exhibition materials to those who may be intimidated by the idea of sports, but also considered the other side of the coin: those who might be intimidated by art,” she says. “We were able to build a presentation that truly caters to every type of visitor: sports fans, art admirers, young visitors, etc.”

“I think sports and the arts are worthy of much deeper exploration in museum exhibitions,” says Franklin Sirmans, director of Pérez Art Museum Miami and organizer of the museum’s presentation of “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture.” (Photo by Lazaro Llanes, courtesy of Pérez Art Museum Miami)

As a result, the exhibition is divided into six thematic sections: Fandom, Winning and Losing, Breaking Records and Rules, Count Me In, Field of Play, and Mind and Body. Sotillo emphasizes the goal is not to dictate a story but to create a space where viewers can connect with both fields without needing any prior expertise.

“Sports, arts, culture—these are all community builders,” Sotillo says. “Both athletes and fans experience such intense emotions during competitions, and art is all about capturing emotions and expressing ideas.”

This focus on emotion appears in works like Ernie Barnes’s “Fumble in the Line” (1990), which depicts football players in exaggerated, almost sculptural forms. Their bodies collide in a chaotic struggle that reflects both the brutality and beauty of the game. Barnes, a former professional football player, is known for translating his personal experiences into art that highlights movement, tension, and rhythm.

Featuring more than 100 works by artists from around the world—including highlights from PAMM’s collection—”Get in the Game” demonstrates how sport has inspired both personal expression and shared cultural memory. On display at PAMM through Sunday, Aug. 23. (Photo by Lazaro Llanes, courtesy of Pérez Art Museum Miami)

Emma Amos’s “Hurdlers I” (1983) blends painting with textiles, showing women athletes mid-leap while incorporating handwoven elements that reference African kente cloth. The piece links physical endurance with cultural identity, considering the show’s broader themes of how sports intersect with race, gender, and history.

One of the most striking pieces is Hank Willis Thomas’ 2016 work “Guernica,” a mixed-media work that recreates Pablo Picasso’s famous antiwar image with NBA jerseys instead of human figures. According to art curator Jason Jenn, this piece prompts the viewer to reflect on how themes of war and sacrifice in the original piece relate to the struggles faced by professional athletes and the challenges they overcome to entertain fans.

Nearby, Holly Bass’ “NWBA (Jordan)” (2012) captures the artist mid-air, her silhouette transformed with basketballs in a photo that is playful, athletic, glamorous, and critical.

Holly Bass’ “NWBA (jordan)” 2012 freezes the artist in midair, her silhouette transformed through the incorporation of basketballs in a photograph. (Photo by Lazaro Llanes, courtesy of Perez Art Miami Museum)

Bass says the image was inspired by Michael Jordan’s iconic “Jump Man” logo, which itself has roots in dance. “It was originally inspired by a photo of Jordan imitating a ballet dancer doing a grand jeté,” she says. “So it’s kind of like art imitating sports imitating art.” She emphasizes that the work’s athleticism is real, not simulated. “This isn’t Photoshop or some kind of wire suspending me in the air. I’m a trained dancer.”

The exhibition frequently revisits the theme of bodies under pressure, whether in triumph, strain, spectacle, or change. Jake Troyli, a professional artist who lives in Brooklyn and whose work is included in “Get in the Game,” played Division I basketball at Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C. He says his background in sports has shaped his views on performance and spectatorship. “As I started to gain some distance between myself and my time playing in the NCAA, I began to turn a critical eye toward the dynamic of the spectator/spectacle relationship,” he says. “What does it mean to perform? What does it mean to perform for a hungry audience? What does it mean for so much of a person’s self or self-worth to be tied up in the results of the performance?”

Jake Troyli, a professional artist who once played Division I basketball in college said his experience as an athlete led him to think more critically about performance and spectatorship. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

These questions extend beyond sports; they also relate to the conditions many artists face, particularly in public forums where creation and judgment feel immediate. This parallel resonates with artist Cheryl Pope, who is both a visual artist and a boxer. Pope, who won the Chicago Golden Gloves in 2014, considers boxing fundamental to her understanding of art. “My experience of boxing has been critical to my understanding of being an artist,” she says. Training and competition taught her discipline, positive thinking, and how to manage risk, which later informed her studio practice.

The exhibition’s educational programming is also designed to show how sports can connect visitors to museums. Marie Vickles, PAMM’s senior director of education, says the show offers “a really exciting and accessible entry point for visitors of all ages and backgrounds to engage with art via an avenue that everyone is familiar with—sports.” Her team has organized tours, workshops, public talks, screenings, and hands-on activities aimed at youth, educators, adults, and families.

Work by Cheryl Pope. Top: variety jacket from the series I’VE BEEN HEARD, 2016. Below, customized sneakers. (Photo by Lazaro Llanes, courtesy of Perez Art Miami Museum)

“The universal themes of teamwork, discipline, resilience and perseverance across sports and arts have provided us with ways to craft experiences that make folks feel welcome in a museum,” Vickles says. During the opening week, PAMM hosted the first session of “GAME TIME,” a two-day conference bringing together artists, athletes, poets, curators, journalists, and performers. Sirmans described the gathering as an added layer of interpretation, with a second session planned for Friday, June 26.

Lee Moriarty, a professional wrestler and visual artist who took part in “GAME TIME,” sees a connection that already exists in his own life. “I think both wrestling and art have always been connected and have influenced each other so it’s great to see it being explored deeper,” he says. For Moriarty, wrestling naturally combines sport and art, blending athletic skill with theater, imagery, storytelling, and performance.

Lee Moriarty’s “Summer Garden Selfie,” 2024. (Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Adam Abdalla)

The exhibition also ensures its global perspective reflects Miami. Sirmans noted that the museum included works and references that resonate locally, such as sketches by LeRoy Neiman of Muhammad Ali in Miami Beach and a podcast made with the young girls of Little Haiti Football Club.

These additions help tie the show’s broader themes to local experiences.

Especially visible in the display are World Cup soccer balls produced by Adidas, stretching from the early leather era to highly engineered contemporary designs. (Photo by Jonel Juste)

By the time visitors leave PAMM, Sirmans hopes they will no longer view sports and art as separate worlds. “Sports and arts are metaphors for our lives and there’s room for all and inspiration to be found in a consideration of games in our lives.”

WHAT: “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture”

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.

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.

INFORMATION: (305) 375-3000 or pamm.org

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.

A Circle of Cuban Art at Westchester Regional Library

Installation view of “Circular Reflections” at the Westchester Regional Library. The exhibition, featuring work by more than 80 Cuban artists, will be on view through June. (Photo courtesy of Miguel Rodez)

The latest exhibition at the Westchester Regional Library brings together more than 80 contemporary Cuban artists, each working within a shared constraint: a 21-inch circular format that reveals a wide range of approaches, styles and generations.

Organized in collaboration with the Miami-Dade Public Library System, the exhibition, which opened on Friday, April 3 and continues through Thursday, June 25, unfolds as a traveling, evolving project that resists a single narrative. Rather than grouping artists around a theme, curator Miguel Rodez invited each participant to work within the circular format while maintaining their own visual language.

The result is a wide-ranging presentation that reflects the diversity of Cuban artistic production across generations and geographies.

Curator Miguel Rodez with works from “Circular Reflections,” a project he developed over nearly a decade to document the breadth of contemporary Cuban art. (Photo by Oscar Fuentes, courtesy of Miguel Rodez)

Rodez, a Miami-based artist and independent curator, began developing the exhibition nearly a decade ago. Over time, the initiative expanded beyond its initial scope, evolving into what he describes as both a traveling show and an ongoing record of Cuban visual culture.

“ ‘Circular Reflections’ is a growing, traveling, large-scale contemporary art exhibition and living documentation of Cuban visual creativity,” Rodez said.

The defining gesture of the exhibition, the circle, operates as both formal constraint and conceptual device.

“The project shuns the traditional rectangle format, which boxes in a narrative, in favor of a round portal that transports the audience wherever the artist’s imagination leads,” he said.

For artists accustomed to rectangular composition, that shift required adjustment and opened new ways of organizing space.

Ismael Gómez Peralta, a Cuban-born artist based in Miami whose work often explores architecture and memory, says the circular format posed an initial challenge but ultimately aligned with his existing practice.

Ismael Gómez Peralta at his studio, where he builds layered compositions rooted in memory, architecture and lived experience. (Photo by Miguel Rodez)

“Normally we all work in a rectangular format. It’s the traditional structure,” he said. “Here, the challenge was to rethink that space without losing what I do.”

Rather than adopting a radial or mandala-like composition, Gómez Peralta maintained the architectural logic that defines his work, grounded in structure, weight and spatial tension.

“I kept my sense of gravity, my structures in space,” he said. “I didn’t want to lose that.”

His process begins with an abstract foundation.

“I start by releasing paint across the entire surface, building a kind of base,” he said. “I familiarize myself with the space. I ‘heal’ it, in a way.”

From there, the composition emerges through a balance of intuition and memory.

“I don’t rely on cold reasoning,” he said. “I let instinct guide me, what I’m feeling at that moment.”

The imagery in his piece draws from two long-standing bodies of work: his series on the ruins of Havana and another focusing on cathedral-like structures, developed after the death of his mother.

“I wanted those two elements to come together,” he said. “The ruin and the cathedral, destruction and something more elevated.”

That duality reflects a broader meditation shaped by distance from Cuba, where he lived through the economic crisis of the 1990s before relocating to the United States in 2002.

“Living outside Cuba gives you perspective,” he said. “When you’re inside, you’re too close, almost like a victim of the situation. From a distance, you can process memory differently.”

Work by Ismael Gómez Peralta featured in “Circular Reflections,” combining architectural structures and emotional memory into a composition that reflects both loss and resilience. (Photo by Miguel Rodez)

His work often holds that tension: decay and endurance, loss and continuity.

“There is beauty in Cuba,” he said. “Even within destruction, there is hope.”

While Gómez Peralta approached the format as a structural problem, painter Luisa Mesa, a Miami-based artist known for her intuitive abstract compositions, encountered it differently.

“I’ve worked in circles for years. I love them,” Mesa said. “So for me, nothing really changed. It was a natural space to work in.”

Her process begins not with an image but with color.

“I start with the background. I build the surface first,” she said. “Then I draw into it.”

From there, the work develops organically.

Luisa Mesa at work in her studio, where her compositions develop through an intuitive process guided by color and form. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

“I work very intuitively,” she said. “I always say the piece knows what it wants. If I don’t interfere too much, it guides me.”

Mesa’s compositions often evoke biological or cosmic systems, forms that suggest cells, constellations or microscopic activity, though she resists assigning fixed meaning.

“I never decide in advance what I want to communicate,” she said. “People bring their own interpretation.”

Over time, she has observed how viewers project their own experiences onto the work.

“People with a scientific background often see something under a microscope,” she said. “Others see something cosmic or even playful.”

That openness is intentional.

“A work of art is a mirror,” she said. “Each person sees something different in it.”

The absence of a prescribed theme across the exhibition reinforces that multiplicity.

“I’m a strong believer in freedom of expression,” Rodez said. “This show is about what’s in the soul of the artists.”

By allowing participants to work without conceptual restriction, he aimed to foreground the breadth of Cuban artistic production, from the figurative to the abstract, from the intimate to the monumental.

“The objective is to challenge preconceived notions of what Cuban art is,” he said. “It cannot be easily categorized.”

That diversity becomes especially visible within the shared constraint of the circle, where each artist negotiates the same boundary in distinct ways.

The exhibition includes work by more than 80 artists across generations, among them Ramón Alejandro, Alejandro Arrechea, Pablo Cano, Ana Albertina Delgado, Ivonne Ferrer, Baruj Salinas and Violeta Roque de Arana, among many others.

Installed within the Westchester Regional Library, a Brutalist structure defined by raw concrete and geometric weight, the exhibition also shifts the context in which the work is encountered.

Part of “Circular Reflections,” this work by Luisa Mesa unfolds through layered surfaces and organic forms that invite open interpretation shaped by the viewer’s own perspective. (Photo by Miguel Rodez)

“I wanted to bring art to people where they don’t necessarily expect it,” Rodez said.

Rather than a traditional museum setting, the library offers a more open environment, where viewers may come across the work outside the conventions of gallery behavior.

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of short texts written by Rodez in response to each piece, reflections that range from brief lines to more narrative passages.

“The idea is not to impose meaning,” he said. “It’s to get the viewer thinking, to start a dialogue.”

Ultimately, “Circular Reflections” does not attempt to define Cuban art through a single lens. Instead, it presents a field of individual practices shaped by different histories, geographies and sensibilities.

For Gómez Peralta, that openness reflects the way art itself functions.

“If you are honest in what you do,” he said, “there will always be someone who connects with it.”

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

Trashroom Gallery, Cargo Space: Rethinking Alternative Art Spaces

Trashroom Gallery: Juan Pablo Garza and Christian Vinck (Romero Henriquez) “Icacos Patafisicos” from December 2025. (Photo courtesy of Trashroom Gallery)

Exhibitions are a core function of any professional visual artist’s work; they are the primary medium by which art lives in a public space and connects to the world. Highbrow, conventional exhibitions in today’s landscape feed into a kind of art world machine. For those at the top of the food chain, work goes to galleries, where it must be sellable for the gallery to survive. It is then sold to collectors, who in turn feed into the museums where they serve on boards of, or into private (but public-facing) collections.

Ana Vergara standing in front of “On Belonging.” (Photo courtesy of Cargo Space)

This entire process requires access, connections, and, most importantly, money. But what happens to those who live outside that inner circle? And what happens when you factor in rising rents, limited real estate, and the fact that local organizations making exhibitions outside this system—such as Tunnel Studios, Laundromat, Edge Zones, and Rice Hotels—can only accommodate a certain number of artists each year?

Now more than ever, members of the local art community have developed a strong undercurrent of conceptually forward-thinking and varied artists—more than the current ecosystem of exhibition spaces can accommodate. As in other decades and parts of the world, this climate has prompted artists to think outside the white cube, expanding where and how exhibitions can take place.

Trashroom Gallery and Cargo Art Space are two examples of this reimagining of space. Both further democratize exhibition participation while breaking with conventions of what is necessary to put art into the world.

A resident throws out trash beneath Markus Haugg’s “Prefer Not To See,” August 2025. (Photo by Alfredo Travieso, courtesy of Trashroom Gallery)

Trashroom Gallery was started by local conceptual assemblagist Alfredo Travieso in 2025, when he realized the trash chute room in his building had enough space to accommodate a small exhibition of his own work. Travieso describes it as a “clandestine project,” not only because neither his landlords nor the building are aware the space has been turned into a gallery, but also because its location is hidden from the public.

With a few exceptions, most artists drop off their work and Travieso installs the shows himself. Only his neighbors see these exhibitions in person; they live publicly through Instagram.

“I usually don’t let the artists into the space. They drop off the works, I put up the show, I document, and then I give them the works. There’s a practice of community… a kind of relational aesthetic. It’s become a very symbiotic relationship with the artist.”

In creating Trashroom, Travieso works through layers of irony and opposition. The project plays with elevation and debasement at once. It gives new life to artworks by exhibiting them, yet that life takes place in the same location where people discard their garbage.

From left, works by Amanda Cantin, John Dominic Colón, Iris Alejandra, Liang Lansi, Pablo Matute and Richard Moreno in Cargo Space’s “On Belonging.” (Photo courtesy of Cargo Space)

Trashroom also flips several tenets of traditional exhibition-making. There is no budget, no sales incentive (to date, only one piece has sold, with proceeds going to the artist), and no opening receptions or programming. Some may argue these are not “real” exhibitions. Yet in their focus on simply giving artists space to bring work into a public sphere, they do so in a purer, more idealistic way than the traditional white cube.

Cargo Art Space, founded by Ana Vergara through Florida International University’s Ratcliffe Art + Design Incubator, takes a different approach. It hosts exhibitions inside a cargo van—typically a U-Haul—retrofitted with walls and lighting for installations.

The idea itself is not entirely new. Cargo cites inspiration from the Miami-Dade Public Library’s Artmobile program from the 1970s to the 1990s, and it recalls more recent projects like the U-Haul Gallery. But novelty is not the goal—access, community, and mobility are.

“It’s so expensive to rent a conventional space, and a U-Haul is $29.95 a day flat rate. That price becomes unbeatable if you want to put on exhibitions wherever and whenever you want,” Vergara explains.

Cargo exhibitions exist in a similarly ephemeral way to Trashroom. Sometimes all within the same day, Vergara rents the van, installs the walls and lighting, hangs the show, exhibits it, and takes it down. Viewers find the location online and attend what is effectively both the opening and closing. After that, the exhibition lives on primarily through documentation.

Install image of Gonzalo Hernandez’s “Nothing is a Mistake.” January 2025. (Photo by Alfredo Travieso, courtesy of Trashroom Gallery)

For both Trashroom and Cargo, social media and online platforms act as critical repositories for visibility and permanence. While all exhibitions rely on online sharing, here these platforms function as a primary viewing space rather than just promotion.

This shift raises questions. Are exhibitions meant to be experienced in person, or online? And if part of the intrigue of these spaces is their transience and opacity, is that diminished by digital visibility?

Part of the answer may lie in who shows up. Vergara recalls an older woman from a nearby church and a local business owner stopping by—people she would not typically encounter in a conventional art space.

“That’s the beauty of Cargo,” she says. “There’s no hierarchy. I treat everyone equally.”

WHAT: Trashroom Gallery
WHERE: Location not disclosed
COST: Free
INFORMATION: @trashroom_gallery on Instagram, or contact Alfredo Travieso at televisor@gmail.com

WHAT: Cargo Space
WHERE: Space is  announced within a month of opening, flexible based on location of van.
WHEN: Last exhibition was 4:30 p.m. Saturday, March 14, next opening will be announced online.
COST: Free
INFORMATION: www.cargo-space.net or @cargo__space on Instagram

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

Long-time Critic Elisa Turner And The Untold Story of ‘Miami’s Art Boom ‘

Robert Huff’s “East West” (2003) at the Palmetto Metrorail Station, part of the collection of the Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places program, is featured in Elisa Turner’s book “Miami’s Art Boom: From Local Vision to International Presence” published by University Press of Florida. (Photo by Robin Hill, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, Art in Public Places Trust) 

When Miami visual arts critic and journalist Elisa Turner began seeing national coverage as Art Basel Miami Beach was getting ready to mark its two decades in 2022, the narrative caught her attention.

“The national press was saying, ‘Who ever thought Miami could have something like this?’ referencing the beginnings of Art Basel Miami Beach in 2002. ‘There had been nothing in Miami before,’ Turner recalls outsiders concluding.

“I thought, ‘this is not right,’ ” she says. For someone who covered Miami’s art scene as a freelance critic for the Miami Herald from 1986 to 2007, she felt that she knew the real art history of Miami.

Elisa Turner’s “Miami’s Art Boom” was selected as a Gold medal winner in the 2025 Florida Book Awards Visual Arts category. (Book cover artwork by Carlos Betancourt, courtesy of University Press of Florida)

Turner began going back through archives of her writing. “I found stories that indicated how the art community was active, and how the community was doing things to put itself on the map, and it had been recognized internationally,” she says, and years before Art Basel Miami Beach put down stakes in South Florida.

The result of wanting to set the record straight and of digging through profiles and reviews resulted in “Miami’s Art Boom: From Local Vision to International Presence,” published Oct. 28, 2025, by University Press of Florida.

This month, Turner was notified that the book was selected as a Gold medal winner in the 2025 Florida Book Awards Visual Arts category. Established in 2006, The Florida Book Awards (FBA) celebrates the best works published each year by Florida authors or about the state.

Along with the award and other recognition, “Miami’s Art Boom” will be placed in Florida State University’s permanent collection.

“You spend so much time on something, and you don’t really know how it is going to be received, but I have had so much of a positive reaction.”

The writer says it was a three-year, more-than-full-time endeavor. For one thing, the Miami Herald owned the rights to the work, since publications retain ownership of what is written for them. Getting access to the articles she wanted to include required persistence and legal help.

“I had a lawyer, a really dear friend, and he helped me,” Turner says. “He wrote several letters to the publisher at the time and the executive editor… And so finally, I was given permission to go down to the old Herald building and download everything on my flash drive. It was kind of a surreal experience, because I found things that I had forgotten.”

Elisa Turner is the author of “Miami’s Art Boom: From Local Vision to International Presence” published by the University Press of Florida. (Photo courtesy of Elisa Turner)

The book gathers more than 100 of Turner’s writings spanning the years before and after the first Art Basel Miami Beach. Her introduction begins with what she refers to as “an astounding sensation” that was brought to Miami. In 1983, New York City-based artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, known for creating massive, temporary environmental installations around the world,  wrapped 11 islands in Biscayne Bay in bright pink fabric and called it “Surrounded Islands.”

Today, the project’s archive—drawings, photographs, and materials—is housed at the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale.

In the introduction, Turner writes that three years later, she began writing for the Miami Herald in what would be “pivotal years in Miami’s evolution . . . foreshadowed by the daring vision of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.”

The book’s structure, she explains, was carefully considered. Turner didn’t want just a greatest-hits compilation. “I wanted there to be a narrative, progressing, moving forward and sometimes faltering, as I have said, you know, it wasn’t like a constant rise forward,” she says. “I wanted to pick articles that really showed that there was this special thing happening here, outside of the fun and fun image that Miami had.”

The process was emotionally demanding. Turner, who is a contributor to ArtburstMiami, notes that creating the book “took a lot” out of her, particularly as she confronted the passage of time. One of the most poignant elements is a recurring feature she added at the end of each section. “It’s an in-memoriam, which I have the dates of people who have passed,” she says. “I wanted to recognize them so that even though they’re not here anymore, their contributions are visible. “

The book also covers communities whose contributions, Turner believes, have too often been overlooked. She points to the conclusion of “Miami’s Art Boom.” “I wanted this to move forward. I didn’t want it to be stuck in the past.”

Elisa Turner’s enchantment with Haitian art and culture long predates the book. She mentions Haitin-born artist Asser Saint-Val whose 2019 work MSLITHP NGODA, is featured. (Photo courtesy of the artist, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, Art in Public Places Trust)

A key part of that, she explains, is tracing the influence of Miami’s immigrant communities. “Miami has the country’s largest Haitian immigrant population. Our arts community has been really enhanced by the immigrant population from all over, but especially from the Caribbean and Latin America. And I’m really proud of the fact that my book could show how the Afro Caribbean and Black Heritage artists — Black artists have shaped our community.”

Her enchantment with Haitian art and culture long predates the book. “I was always fascinated by Haitian art and culture,” Turner says.

Looking back, she recognizes that the daily pressure of newspaper deadlines once kept her from seeing the bigger picture her work was creating. “I was just trying to keep up with covering as much as I could,” she says.

Only later, as she revisited decades of coverage, did the pattern emerge: “When you step back, people were working hard to make this art community more proactive,” Turner says. “And that’s when I realized the pattern. When I started looking at these articles, they were saying, ‘Well, why don’t the museums pay more attention to us?’ And then finally, that started to happen.”

Gene Tinnie’s “A Gathering of Spirits,” (1996) at the West Little River Fire Station. (Image, Yusimy Lara, courtesy of Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, Art in Public Places Trust)

The book reads like a Who’s Who of Miami’s visual arts culture. Turner points out that the years that are covered in the book – “(those) recounted here, national and international recognition – came to art bearing a Miami postmark.” In 1987, the painting Exiliados by Arturo Rodriguez was presented to Pope John Paull II on the occasion of his visit to Florida International University. Art by Maria Brito traveled to Seoul, South Korea. In the 1990s, the National Conference of Artists, a national organization of visual artists of African descent, included art by Charles Humes Jr. and Dinizulu Gene Tinnie . . . ” She mentions a 1987 review included in the book about Miami painter Robert Huff, “who played a widely respected role in Miami’s art community” and a mentor to many.

Looking back at decades of coverage, Turner sees the threads connecting it all—the artists, the neighborhoods, gallerists, curators, collectors, and projects pushing Miami’s art scene forward.

“I feel that all of this is important art history and it shouldn’t be swept under the rug. It should not be forgotten,” Turner says. “And while it wasn’t a constant rise forward, what the articles I selected for ‘Miami’s Art Boom’ were substantial and stand the test of time.”

Find out more information about “Miami’s Art Boom” from University Press of Florida.

ArtburstMiami.com , 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

Gustavo Matamoros Transforms a Miami Transit Walkway Into a Sound Experience

Sound artist Gustavo Matamoros conceived “Quail Roost Sanctuary” now a permanent installation of Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places at a transit station in Cutler Bay. (Photo courtesy of Gustavo Matamoros and Claudia Ariano)

A monumental public art installation in south Miami-Dade County, conceived by Caracas-born, Miami-based artist Gustavo Matamoros, invites passersby to slow their pace and tune in to the subtle, often overlooked sounds of their surroundings — transforming an ordinary walk to the bus stop into a calming meditation on the physical and natural world, a world so often ignored.

Matamoros has been at the pioneering forefront of sound art since the 1980s. His latest project may be his most ambitious yet — a unique walkway sound experience for a new housing development, Quail Roost Station in Cutler Bay.

The 320-foot covered connector between the housing complex and Miami-Dade County’s South Dade TransitWay Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor weaves together amplified resonances from the structure itself, with field recordings from nearby ecosystems, including the Everglades, Deering Estate and Biscayne Bay National Park. The result is a site-specific soundscape, the “Quail Roost Sanctuary,” an immersive acoustic public-art experience that invites residents to connect to their environment and their sense of well-being, as well as with the destination.

Gustavo Matamoros inspects his work, a unique walkway sound experience for a new housing development, Quail Roost Station in Cutler Bay. (Photo by Anne Tschida)

Unlike a typical outdoor public art piece — think sculptures or murals — this project is entirely audio. Through his decades-long exploration of sound, Matamoros has worked with how sound can inspire, elicit emotion, and pique curiosity. “Everything has a sound to it,” says Matamoros, “and it is unique to that thing.”

The unveiling of “Quail Roost Sanctuary” was a featured event of Subtropics 2025 in September of 2025, a festival of experimental music and sound art founded in the 1980s by Matamoros. The work is now part of the permanent collection of Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places.

This incredibly intricate soundtrack will become part of everyday life for some Miamians, “underscoring the capacity of sound to transform and animate architectural spaces,” says Matamoros.

Under Gustavo Matamoros’ sound canopy, “harmonic clouds” emerge and shift with the pace of foot traffic, fading in and out along the corridor. (Photo courtesy of Gustavo Matamoros and Claudia Ariano)

But how can sound, which is invisible, be accessed? That’s where his detailed, dedicated exploration of the sound of architecture comes into play.

At Quail Roost, Matamoros first got to work activating — or “exciting” — the sounds of the architecture itself, recording its resonances and amplifying them. This is something he has been experimenting with for most of his life, and goes to the heart of his work: because every structure is alive with sound, it can be heard in some way.

As Matamoros helped explain, imagine the sounds of walking in a cathedral, the sound of steps echoing off the towering walls and ceilings, which can create a sense of awe, a mystical connection to the enormity of the space. He says sound art can stimulate the senses in a way that is “a little magical” – we can’t see it, but we feel it.

(LISTEN: Excerpt of Quail Roost Sanctuary)

Matamoros recorded the sounds of the lengthy Quail Roost walkway canopy and found an astounding 800 distinct tones — far too many “notes” for his musical score. So, he picked out 80 tones that he liked and created a site-specific tone row, musical notes pulled from the building itself. And he designed his composition to excite the architecture at specific points, using 32 custom-designed, multi-channel speakers in an array divided into four distinct acoustic zones.

Finding and selecting these particular sounds involves a bit of chance, but “my motivation is the experimental process.” The sound artist has to curate his new compositions from the tones he selects for each project. He sums it up this way: the building or structure is the instrument, “an instrument you don’t play but that plays around you.”

Because the project is called a “Quail Roost Sanctuary,” the architecture’s underlying abstract “music” is overlaid with recordings Matamoros meticulously gathered from South Florida’s lush parks and landscapes—bird calls from quails and cranes, the sounds of native fauna and insects, and even faint traces of human activity.

Under Matamoros’ sound canopy, “harmonic clouds” emerge and shift with the pace of foot traffic, fading in and out along the corridor.

The 320-foot covered connector between the housing complex and Miami-Dade County’s South Dade TransitWay Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor weaves together amplified resonances from the structure itself, with field recordings from nearby ecosystems, (Photo courtesy of Gustavo Matamoros and Claudia Ariano)

The artist hopes the unexpected aural immersion, this amble through an audio garden, will be calming and reflective, revealing hidden details of the neighborhood as well as a sense of wonderment — an intriguing rather than stressful walk to the station. “I’d like to create an evolving experience,” he says, “an environment that is something special, a sanctuary.”

Though created for residents, the installation is accessible to transit riders and visitors stepping off the electric bus line. By weaving together art, infrastructure and South Florida’s natural soundscape, “Quail Roost Sanctuary” transforms a routine commute into an encounter with the region’s landscape. It’s a reminder that public art isn’t always seen, but heard and felt.

WHAT: Quail Roost Sanctuary

WHERE: In the breezeway between the Quail Roost Drive parking lot and adjacent Miami-Dade Transit station. Quail Roost Station, 18505 Homestead Ave, Cutler Bay. On-site parking or use the South Dade TransitWay System to BRT station SW 184 St from Dadeland South Station or Florida City SW 344 St.

COST: Free.

INFORMATION: gustavomatamoros.subtropics.org

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.

Local Artists Given the Spotlight in Latest Museum of Sex Exhibit

More than 30 local artists are exhibiting erotic art now open at the Miami Museum of Sex in Allapattah. (Photo by Mateo SeZa/SeZa Studios)

It’s been known for decades that Miami is a city with sex on the brain. Now a new exhibition is showing how a few talented locals have turned that obsession into art.

More than 30 local artists are exhibiting erotic art in “F*ck Art: Nature & Artifice,” now open at the Museum of Sex in Allapattah. The show is the third in a series of shows staged by the museum sourcing work from nearby communities; the first two were staged at the museum’s original branch in New York, making this the format’s debut at the Miami location which opened in 2024.

Tam Gryn, managing director at Miami’s Museum of Sex, says the show attempts to transmit the highly sexualized nature of life in the city.

A diversity in mediums may be a defining aspect of the show, ranging across the spectrum from physical to digital and interactive art. (Photo by Mateo SeZa)

“Everything in Miami is sexualized,” she says. “So I really wanted to show this wild side of Miami, which is not just a beautiful touristy beach (city), but this wild swamp that is uncontainable and uncontrollable, no matter what is happening in this country or in the world.”

A longtime presence in the local art scene, Gryn previously curated the Erotica Biennale in Miami Beach, a citywide festival dedicated to erotic and sexual art last held in 2024. She says that when she heard about the Museum of Sex opening in Miami she quickly sprang into action.

“I literally pursued them,” she says. “I was like, ‘I want to work here, I want to do shows here, I have 700 ideas. Listen to me, listen to me.” Until they did.”

That same energy went into recruiting artists for the exhibition. Though plenty responded enthusiastically to an open call put out by the museum, others required some convincing.

A sculpture by Moises Sanabria, “Taste the Algorithm,” shown in the Museum of Sex’s exhibition “F*ck Art.” (Photo by Mateo SeZa/SeZa Studios)

“I definitely pushed some artists that I knew that were leaning towards speaking about these subjects, or that had work that could be interpreted in this or that way or that,” says Gryn.

“I know they had the potential to speak on these subjects through their work, and I like in any show that I curate to push the artist one way or another, whether it’s to create work that is more immersive, more participatory, not just visual, or to talk about subjects that are more sensitive, or just to give them an opportunity to work in a different medium, maybe that they haven’t worked before. And there’s a lot of that in this show.”

A diversity in mediums may be a defining aspect of the show, ranging across the spectrum from physical to digital and interactive art (Gryn did not directly conform or deny whether any artworks were AI generated but said some of the included artists “use AI in their process”). Painting, fabric, ceramic works, photography and video are just a few of the options. One artist even crafted a sculpture out of chocolate depicting a woman’s bottom half.

An installation focusing on strip club culture in the exhibition “F*ck Art” at the Museum of Sex. (Photo by Mateo SeZa/SeZa Studios)

A few artists found inspiration in Miami’s sex industries, such as its famous strip clubs. Fabric artist Cheryl Pope crafted a diptych of wool and cashmere tapestries depicting a group of pole dancers against a vibrant checkerboard-patterned backdrop. Pope, who applied for the open call, says the artworks came out of thinking about strip clubs as places that celebrate the human body in all shapes and forms.

“I feel like these strip clubs become kind of temples for the body,” she says. “We’re celebrating the body. We’re celebrating beauty. All different kinds of bodies, all different kinds of women, all different shapes, all different sizes.”

The Chicago-born artist, who divides her time between Chicago and Miami, also noted that these types of establishments are far more commonplace in Miami than in cities across the northern United States.

Fabric artworks by Cheryl Pope depict Miami’s strippers. (Mateo SeZa/SeZa Studios)

“I think one of the liberating things about being in Miami is that there wasn’t shame around it as an industry. I met friends who are like, ‘Oh I’m friends with this stripper, let’s go down to this club tonight and hang out.’”

Sarah Ferrer, meanwhile, commented on another facet of the sex industry that has found a haven in Miami, pornography. Recent years have seen the city become a headquarters for newer forms of porn content – Miami boasts the highest number of OnlyFans content creators per capita – as well as old, with Playboy announcing in 2025 it would move its headquarters to Miami Beach.

Ferrer’s piece “The Bang Bus,” meanwhile, focuses on a more idiosyncratic porn typology associated with the city, the eponymous web series published by Miami-based studio Bang Bros which features sex scenes shot in a moving vehicle. The piece is a ceramic replica of the “Bang Bus” complete with moveable parts and accessories such as a camera and a pair of chickens.

“I first heard about the Bang Bus in middle school, and I feel like that’s probably most people’s experience,” says Ferrer. “And I think about how present and prevalent sex culture is in Miami, and how it’s almost inevitable to be aware of it, even, and to grow up around it. So I wanted to make a piece that kind of talked about that.”

An interactive installation in the Museum of Sex’s “F*ck Art.” (Photo by Mateo SeZa/SeZa Studios)

Ferrer also responded to the open call, hoping to use the show as a chance to represent the city. She had visited the museum’s previous exhibition on the history of sexuality and was inspired to make a Miami-specific object that could be included.

“I was thinking of what I can make that can represent an artifact of Miami,” says Ferrer. “And as an artist, I grew up here, and I want to be able to talk about it.”

WHAT: “F*ck Art: Nature & Artifice”

 WHERE: Museum of Sex, 2200 NW 24th Ave., Miami

 WHEN: 1 to 10 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday and Monday; 1 to midnight Friday and Saturday; closed Tuesday. Through May 2026.

 COST: $29 

 INFORMATION: 786-206-9210 and museumofsex.com

 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.

‘No Seasoning’ Brings Afro-Cuban Outsider Art Into Focus in North Miami

Gloria de la Caridad García reworks discarded ICAIC film posters, layering pen drawings and cut fragments over damaged prints. The work is featured in “No Seasoning” at the Copperbridge Foundation in North Miami. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

Work by seven Afro-descendant Cuban artists whose practices developed far from academic training, commercial markets and the frameworks that typically shape how Cuban art circulates abroad are at the center of “No Seasoning” at the Copperbridge Foundation in North Miami.

Curated by Elvia Rosa Castro, the exhibition, which opens on Friday, Feb. 27, draws entirely from the NAEMI Collection (National Art Exhibitions of the Mentally Ill), a Miami-based body of work by artists living with psychiatric, neurological or cognitive disabilities.

An early sculptural work by Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, created before his international visibility as a dissident. Otero Alcántara is currently imprisoned in Cuba. (Photo courtesy of the NAEMI Collection)

Outsider art generally refers to work created beyond formal art institutions and market systems, often by self-taught artists operating outside academic training or commercial expectations.

Castro, a Cuban art historian and curator with more than 30 years of experience organizing exhibitions in Cuba, Europe and the United States, has long engaged artists working at the margins of visibility. For her, “No Seasoning” is less about classification than about presence — and about questioning how value is assigned in art.

Rather than foregrounding diagnosis, she frames the exhibition through what she describes as an excess of honesty.

“There are no rituals. No poses. No gloss,” says Castro. “The work emerges without mediation.”

That directness takes a distinct form in each artist’s practice.

That’s the case of Misleidys Castillo, 40, an artist who was born with neurological and hearing disabilities, and on the autism spectrum. According to her mother, María Teresa Pedroso, 60, she has also been diagnosed with psychiatric and cerebral conditions. Castillo is deaf and does not speak. Communication is facilitated largely through her mother and brother.

For much of her life, her world has been contained within domestic space. Yet within that space, her work expands to monumental scale.

Her drawings — often reaching two or three meters (about 6.5 to 10 feet) — depict exaggerated, muscular bodies rendered in pencil and watercolor, then cut, colored and reassembled on the wall. Some figures raise their arms in poses that suggest bodybuilders or mythic heroes. Others wear tiny undergarments marked with a letter inside a heart. The repetition is deliberate. The scale is insistent.

Work on paper and tape by Cuban artist Misleidys Castillo, featured in “No Seasoning.”.(Photo courtesy of the NAEMI Collection)

Pedroso said her daughter has drawn such figures since she was 6 or 7 years old.

“She decides when to start and when to finish,” says Pedroso. “We can’t intervene. If you tell her something is wrong, she gets frustrated. So we let her do what she wants.”

When a drawing is complete, Castillo signals it in her own way. She steps back. She looks. She smiles. She touches the surface. Sometimes she kisses it.

Then the work must be mounted. If it is removed, Pedroso says, her daughter will return to the wall and restore it.

The intensity of that relationship was visible during a Havana exhibition several years ago. According to her mother, when Castillo entered the gallery and saw one of her large figures installed, she ran toward it and grabbed the painted hand.

“She recognized it immediately,” according to Pedroso. “She knew it was hers.”

In 2021, Pedroso and her daughter left Havana and relocated to Spain. The transition has been difficult. Castillo had lived for decades in the same home, facing the sea. The change in environment disrupted routines that are essential to her.

“She hasn’t adapted,” says Pedroso. “For someone with autism, change is very hard.”

While Castillo’s work expands from within the constraints of domestic space, another artist in the exhibition relies on fragments of public imagery.

Gloria de la Caridad García, “Untitled” (from the ICAIC poster series). Working with discarded Cuban film posters, García constructs intricate, image-saturated compositions. (Photo courtesy of the NAEMI Collection)

Gloria de la Caridad García intervenes discarded posters produced by the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC). She scavenges what she can find — often damaged, sometimes stained — and draws over them in ballpoint pen and colored ink. Stars, faces and small figures accumulate across the printed surface. Later, she adds cut fragments that echo or disrupt the original composition.

“When I have the posters, I look at everything — the images, the color, the memory they carry,” García says via telephone from Cuba. “Then I work over them. I add my drawings, little things that fit. The colors make people feel something.”

Materials are not always easy to obtain in Cuba. García says she cannot afford to buy posters regularly. Sometimes friends help. Sometimes she works with whatever paper is available.

She also structures her work around the more immediate demands of daily life.

In another message, García described caring for a 90-year-old adult at home while navigating electricity outages and financial strain.

“I have to ‘invent’ money for food,” she says. “I have to cook. I have to give medicine. There are days when there is no electricity.”

She also spoke openly about living through a period of depression in which she even attempted to end her own life.

“This work came to me later in life,” says García. “It has helped me understand life differently. When I feel overwhelmed, I go back to the drawings. I keep going.”

The emotional weight of that testimony resonates with the curator’s framing of the exhibition.

“For these artists, creation is not primarily aesthetic,” explains Castro. “It’s vital. It’s how they manage their relationship with the world.”

Curator Elvia Rosa Castro, left, and NAEMI founder Juan Martin review works for “No Seasoning”, drawn from the NAEMI Collection (National Art Exhibitions of the Mentally Ill), which opens Saturday Feb. 27 and continues through May 23 at North Miami’s Copperbridge Foundation. (Photo courtesy of Elvia Rosa Castro)

The show also includes early sculptural works by Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the Cuban artist and activist currently imprisoned in Cuba. Unlike several of the other artists on view, his confinement is the result of political repression rather than mental illness. Arrested in July 2021, he is serving a five-year sentence in a maximum-security prison on charges including “contempt,” “public disorder” and “insult to national symbols” — accusations that international human rights organizations have criticized as arbitrary. The pieces presented here predate his international visibility as a dissident.

“This is earlier work,” says Castro. “Before everything became politicized. It reminds us that he is, first and always, an artist.”

The remaining artists — Pedro Pablo Bacallao, Isaac Crespo, Daldo Marte and Martha Iris Pérez — work across drawing, collage, sculpture and installation. Some repeat motifs obsessively. Others build dense visual fields from everyday materials. The common thread is not style but circumstance.

All of the works in “No Seasoning” come from NAEMI, founded in 1988 by Juan Martin while he was working in community mental health in Miami. The archive began after Martin encouraged one of the people in his care to paint.

“I realized there were probably many people in psychiatric institutions doing extraordinary work,” says Martin. “And no one was paying attention.”

Misleidys Castillo has drawn monumental, muscular figures since she was 6 or 7 years old. “She decides when to start and when to finish,” her mother says. (Photo courtesy of the artist.)

Over time, the archive expanded to include artists from Cuba, Latin America, Europe and the United States. Some works are purchased directly from artists or their families. Others are donated. What remains consistent, Martin said, is the refusal to impose outside expectations.

“The moment you start telling someone how to be an artist — what material to use, what will sell — you risk losing what made the work necessary,” he says.

Over its three-month run, “No Seasoning” will be accompanied by public programs and performances. But at its core, the exhibition is quieter than its title suggests.

It asks viewers to stand before work that was not made for an art market, not shaped by trend and not softened for easy consumption.

“This art doesn’t ask to be explained. It asks to be seen,” says Castro.

WHAT: “No Seasoning”
WHERE: Copperbridge Foundation, 12500 NE 4th Ave., North Miami.
WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.  Monday through Friday. Through Saturday, May 23.
COST: Free. Groups by appointment.
INFORMATION: (305) 891-8293 or Copperbridge.org

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.

Belkis Ayón and Carlos Alfonzo Unite in ‘Odyssey’ at Freedom Tower

The Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) at Miami Dade College brings together Cuban artists Carlos Alfonzo and Belkis Ayón for the first time in “Odyssey” now on exhibit at Miami’s Freedom Tower. (Photo by Oriol Tarridas, courtesy of MOAD)

 Two of the most significant artists of 20^th-century Cuba are being brought together for the first time at Freedom Tower.

Carlos Alfonzo and Belkis Ayón, who each gained art world acclaim outside of Cuba before dying young, are the dual subject of the latest exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) at Miami Dade College, which is headquartered in the downtown landmark.

The exhibition, titled “Belkis Ayón and Carlos Alfonzo: Odyssey,” pairs expressive abstract paintings on canvas and paper by Alfonzo with Ayón’s signature collagraph prints featuring imagery and iconography sourced from the Afro-Cuban Abakuá fraternal religious order.

A painting by Alfonzo,”Thirst,” next to a print by Ayón depicting a woman removing a mask. Alfonzo’s painting exemplifies his darker later work from the time before he died of complications from AIDS. (Photo by Oriol Tarridas, courtesy of MOAD)

Both Alfonzo and Ayón have seen reappraisal in recent years: Alfonzo received retrospectives at the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2016 and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami in 2022, while Ayón’s art world reputation has soared ever since a traveling exhibition in 2016. LnS Gallery and David Castillo, two local galleries that represent the estates of Alfonzo and Ayón, respectively, have also mounted solo shows for the two artists.

Those familiar with both artists and their sharp stylistic differences may find themselves confused by such a pairing. At first glance, Ayón’s moody figurations and dark, muted colors feel a world away from Alfonzo’s energetic and bold abstract scenes.

“Odyssey” is MOAD’s second presentation at Freedom Tower since the building debuted a sleek renovation. (Photo by Oriol Tarridas, courtesy of MOAD)

But Amy Galpin, the museum’s executive director and chief curator, explains that the two have more in common than one might expect. The curator points to a mutual interest in mythology, both of the Western Greco-Roman tradition and of Afro-Cuban origins, as well as influences from European and Cuban art shared among the two artists.

“I thought it would be interesting to pair them together and maybe surprise people a bit,” says Galpin. “I hope that when people come to the show, if they’re skeptical, they might be surprised by the connections that they see in their work.”

The show is the museum’s second presentation at Freedom Tower since the building debuted a sleek renovation. The historic landmark now hosts new interactive galleries highlighting its onetime role as the Cuban Refugee Center, as well as a soccer-themed exhibition presented by the FIFA Museum ahead of the 2026 World Cup. While those exhibitions are fixed, the MOAD gallery features changing exhibitions.

Three collography works by Belkis Ayón. The artist lived in Havana until her death in 1999. (Photo by Oriol Tarridas, courtesy of MOAD)

MOAD’s programming thus far has tied into the historical overtones of its home, with an initial group show focusing on migration. “Odyssey” likewise ties into the national origin of its subjects and their journeys outside of Cuba. Alfonzo exiled himself to the U.S. during the Mariel Boatlift in 1980, while Ayón traveled out of the country for residencies and exhibitions while maintaining residency on the island.

“The title of the show is Odyssey, and (it) was chosen because both artists were aware of Greek myth, and very complex storytelling is at the core of both of their works,” says Galpin. “But this notion of journeys too, I think is really a big part of our exhibits…(and) that is a bit of a connection here, this notion of movement, of journeys. I think also resiliency, both artists experienced challenges in their lives and in their work and being committed to what they wanted to make and getting recognition for that.”

Two works on paper by Carlos Alfonzo, each titled “Self Portrait.” The artist migrated to Miami during the Mariel boatlift in 1980. (Photo by Oriol Tarridas, courtesy of MOAD)

Alfonzo’s work in particular reflects those struggles. After leaving Cuba during the Mariel Boatlift, Alfonzo settled in Miami and began developing his career and practice. He earned public art commissions, including murals at the Santa Clara Metrorail Station and at Florida International University that are still on view. His work became darker as he struggled with AIDS, eventually passing away in 1991 shortly before appearing in the Whitney Biennial.

Two works in the show from this era speak to the artist’s state of mind at the time. “Circolo #1” (1990) features geometric shapes and circular lines in white and grey against a black backdrop, with a composition recalling a hurricane spiral and, alternately, a human skull. “Thirst” (1986), a more chaotic earlier canvas in which a swirl of abstracted bodies attack each other with knives and arrows, meditates on the human propensity towards violence.

Carlos Alfonzo (1950–1991), “Circolo #1.” Oil on canvas, 1990, 60 x 60 inches. Collection of Craig Robins. (Photo by Oriol Tarridas, courtesy of MOAD)

Both works come from the collection of Craig Robins, the property developer and arts patron most famous for revitalizing the Miami Design District. The two were friends during the artist’s lifetime, and Robins speaks fondly of their relationship.

“I was thrilled to be able to help him have a studio space during his first years in Miami,” Robins says. “That was a special time in Miami Beach, and my friendship with Carlos was an exciting component of it all. I would visit him in his studio almost daily, and we spent hours there talking about art and life. He helped forge my sensibility towards art and artists – I am forever indebted to him.”

WHAT: “Belkis Ayón and Carlos Alfonzo: Odyssey”

 WHERE: Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College, Freedom Tower, 600 Biscayne Blvd., Miami.

 WHEN: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Through May 10, 2026.

COST: $18 for general admission; $14 for seniors; $12 for students with ID and children ages 7-18; free for MDC students and employees with ID, children 6 and under, active U.S. military and veterans, and disabled visitors and caregivers.

 INFORMATION: 305-237-7700 and moadmdc.org

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