Miami Art Museum
For the first time in Miami Art Museum’s 13-year history, the museum is dedicating its largest exhibition space to its permanent collection with BETWEEN HERE and THERE: Modern and Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection. Unlike most other public museum collections in the U.S., MAM’s collection consists almost exclusively of 20th and 21st century art, a reflection of Miami’s youth as a city and the collecting patterns of its residents. While collectors in other major cities have been acquiring art since the 1800’s, Miami’s art collecting past really began in the second half of the 20th century as its population grew and residents accumulated wealth, setting MAM apart among public art museums.
Visitors to the exhibition will notice a decidedly international tilt, mirroring Miami’s place as a cultural melting pot and strong ties to Latin America and Europe. A scan of the collection’s makeup speaks volumes: American painters of the 20th and 21st century replace old world masters; works by modern-day Latin American artists take the place of antiquities; and large-scale installations by contemporary sculptors supplant renaissance altarpieces. Young, fresh, global, and unpredictable, MAM’s collection embodies Miami. According to press materials, the show includes works from dozens of top-flight 20th and 21st century artists, including Tomás Saraceno, Chuck Close, Frank Stella, Kehinde Wiley, Gerhard Richter, Alexander Calder, Jose Bedia, Robert Rauschenberg, Marcel Duchamp, Sol LeWItt, and Wifredo Lam, among others.
Additionally, MAM is months away from breaking ground on its new Herzog & de Meuron-designed building in Downtown Miami’s Museum Park. In anticipation of that move (scheduled for 2013), MAM curators are using the museum’s current space as a massive laboratory for testing how different works interact with each other and how the public will experience the collection once it settles in at MAM’s new home. BETWEEN HERE and THERE affords patrons a rare opportunity to watch a museum exhibition evolve; a visitor’s experience at the show this month may be very different from their visit next month. The show began on February 28 and runs indefinitely.
101 West Flagler St., Miami; (305) 375-3000
