Haute Top 5: Best Art Galleries in Miami 2017

If you’re looking to veer away from the conventional art gallery scene, visit the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), which overlooks Biscayne Bay. Walking through the 200,000-square-foot museum, visitors experience curated nature through PAMM’s remarkable hanging gardens. The thousands of plants stemming from the outdoor ceiling transports museum-goers into a jungle-like world. Providing a venue for artistic understanding, PAMM displays diverse, contemporary exhibitions focusing on international art in the 20th and 21st centuries. The PAMM experience is topped off with fine dining at Verde Restaurant, along with a dazzling view of the Bay.

Resting on 250,000-square-feet, the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science has four buildings--the Aquarium, the Frost Planetarium and the North and West Wings--which allow visitors’ curiosity to roam endlessly. After funding delays, the museum finally opened on May 8, proving to be the nature lover’s dream. If you possess an appreciation for science and the outdoors, the Frost Museum of Science will allow you to immerse yourself in nature, exploring ecosystems as diverse as the swampy Everglades and the South Florida beaches, along with places much different from our Florida landscape including outer space and the human cell. The campus-like museum is unique in that in the urban hubbub of Downtown Miami it is a haven for the natural world.

A former Drug Enforcement Agency warehouse, the Rubell Family Collection located in Wynwood proves to be anything but conventional. Spanning 40,000-square-feet, the museum tailors the whole first floor as the “New Shamans” exhibit, which features the work of artists who hail from South America. While the downstairs transports you into an enriching world that addresses environmental, social and political concerns, the museum’s “High Anxiety: New Acquisitions” is more therapeutic: the exhibit uses art to channel and understand everyday nerves and stresses. If you’re an art book junkie, visit the museum’s modern art bookstore as well as the research library filled with over 40,000 volumes. Currently located in Wynwood, the Rubell Family Collection in 2018 will move from its reformed DEA location to a 100,000-square-foot location on a 2.5-acre space in Miami’s Allapattah District, enhancing its status as a contemporary art powerhouse.

Recognizing Miami as the crossroads for Latin American culture in the United States, Gary Nader, who moved from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. in 1981, opened the Gary Nader Art Centre located in Wynwood. Whether you appreciate historical or contemporary pieces, you will find both categories at the gallery. You can discover the beauty of the continent’s art by viewing the prestigious Gary Nader Private Collection, examining the Exhibition Gallery and walking through the haute Sculpture Park. From Botero to Carrington, the gallery exhibits Latin American excellence sure to offer museum-goers with a culturally poignant visit.

Arrive at the de la Cruz Collection ready to learn and explore the expanses of the visual arts. The museum, owned by Cuba natives Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz, is rife with thought-provoking exhibits like the current “Progressive Praxis,” which delves into the implications of technology on contemporary art. The de la Cruz Collection is pleasing to both visitors’ artistic curiosities and their wallets--admission is completely free of charge! Providing free admission to lectures, gallery events and educational programs, the de la Cruz family primarily uses the museum as a place for learning and appreciation of art.