Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) announced the inaugural exhibition lineup for its new building, opening in Museum Park in December 2013. The wide-ranging roster of exhibitions examines the interpretation and appropriation of cultural and political identities, economic structures, and commodities generated by Miami’s diverse population and its position as a cross-cultural hub. The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) will serve one of the most diverse populations in one of the fastest growing regions in the country, where a unique confluence of Caribbean, North and South American cultures adds vibrancy and texture to the civic landscape.
The city’s thriving community of artists, designers, and collectors and its avid and growing art-engaged public are driving Miami’s demand for a world-class museum and dynamic center of visual arts education PAMM will be an anchor of the 29-acre Museum Park overlooking Biscayne Bay and will include public gardens and sculpture installations. Museum Park, a vibrant mix of green space and cultural offerings, is Miami’s urban redesign vision for the area now known as Bicentennial Park. This vital downtown park, a catalyst for the transformation of the district, is central to efforts to strengthen Greater Miami’s momentum as an emerging global capital. In addition to the landmark new facilities for PAMM, Museum Park is the future site the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science. (View Museum Park’s progress here)
In January 2011 work began on a cutting-edge building with generous spaces to showcase its art holdings and attract more top caliber exhibitions. The new facility also includes a state-of-the-art educational complex that will be a resource for the entire community. In December 2011, Jorge M. Pérez, longtime trustee and leading collector of Latin American art, made a landmark leadership gift of $40 million to support the campaign for the new museum which will open in fall of 2013 as Pérez Art Museum Miami. A dramatic location on Biscayne Bay has been provided by the City of Miami, the voters of Miami-Dade County have approved $100 million in bond funding, and private donors have already committed more than $60 million in additional support for the building and institutional endowment. The new PAMM will transform Museum Park into a central destination on Miami’s cultural map, promote progressive arts education, build community cohesiveness, and contribute substantially to downtown revitalization. From focused exhibitions on the work of Cuban painter Amelia Peláez and Haitian-born, Miami-based artist Edouard Duval-Carrié to thematic presentations of the Museum’s permanent collection to major retrospectives on artists Ai Weiwei and Beatriz Milhazes and group exhibitions on the exchange of ideas between the Caribbean basin, Europe, and North Africa, PAMM’s upcoming projects serve as critical frames through which larger dialogues about recent history, migration, new cultural formations, and diverse ideologies can be structured.
The selection and presentation of artists, collections, and commissioned projects for PAMM is guided by the Museum’s mission to create dialogues across and through local, regional, and international contexts and to emphasize artists and projects that engage with traditions from the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The curatorial program is also particularly attuned to the work of local artists and designers.
AMERICANA
November 2013 – May 2015
The Museum’s permanent collection will be displayed thematically within six Overview Galleries that are positioned throughout the first two floors of the building. Collectively titled AMERICANA, these six galleries will present artwork produced by artists working in North, South, and Central America, and the Caribbean. The bi-lingual title of this presentation evokes North American vernacular collecting traditions, as well as a hemispheric perspective that looks across national and regional borders. This focus on the Americas serves to highlight the strengths of the collection, while at the same time reflecting the diverse audiences of the Museum―the majority of who have cultural ties to these areas of the world.
The six galleries that make up AMERICANA are arranged thematically, each space developed in the form of a short essay offering a focused view on a particular issue or set of preoccupations that have engaged artists from the Americas since the mid-20th century. Among the issues to be explored are relations between contemporary painting and craft traditions, legacies of constructivism and minimalism, and the connections between politics and violence. The spaces combine artworks produced at various historical moments over the last eight decades. The specific pieces and themes explored in AMERICANA will change over the course of 18 months, as these galleries are periodically re-configured. Special emphasis has been placed on the presentation of artworks by artists currently living in Miami, as a way of highlighting the growing position of this city as an important site of art production internationally. AMERICANA additionally augments PAMM´s young collection with artworks borrowed from outstanding local collections, an organizing strategy that seeks to recognize these collections as resources for the constituents of Miami and South Florida.
Special Exhibition Galleries
Ai Weiwei: According to What?
November 2013 – March 16, 2014
Ai Weiwei: According to What? is the first major international survey of this artist’s multifaceted artistic oeuvre. The exhibition reveals the interrogative nature of Ai’s practice, and its role as an ever-questioning dialogue with the social, political, and cultural positions of his native China and the world at large. Featuring work from the last 20 years, the exhibition includes his early photographic works—images taken when he was a young artist living in New York and traveling throughout the U.S.—and the large-scale sculptures for which he is best known. These sculptures, often made from modified found objects, suggest the irreverent style of Ai’s work and reconfigure materials in new and evocative ways.
With a broad formal range, Ai has continuously challenged possible meanings and modes of art making, most recently employing the Internet and its global reach as a platform for activism and expression. His provocative works are an exploration of the transformative potential of contemporary art, which he has said is “not a form but a philosophy of society.” PAMM’s presentation of this exhibition, originally organized by the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, will feature new work, including a large-scale, site-specific installation. The exhibition design was also specially conceived by the artist and Herzog & de Meuron to be in dialogue with the new building architecture.
Focus Gallery
Cowles Collection: 20th Century Photography
December 2013 – July 27, 2014
The museum will be organizing a thematic presentation of the Cowles Collection with works chosen from the more than one hundred photographs promised to PAMM by collector Charles Cowles. Installed in one of the museum’s Focus Galleries, the selection includes important and iconic works by 20th century photographers such as Eugene Atget, Bernice Abbott, Weegee, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, and Alfredo Jaar. Defined by Cowles’ unique and discerning eye, the collection reflects crucial trends and developments within the medium. The installation of these works will respond to their thematic and visual similarities as well as their relationships within art history to highlight the collection’s range of themes. This presentation of 20th century photography will allow viewers to make connections across the history of the medium.
Selections from Ruth & Marvin Sackner Collection
December 2013 – May 25, 2014
PAMM will present an extensive selection of works from the Miami-based collection of Ruth and Marvin Sackner. Founded in 1979, the Sackner collection, known as an “archive of archives,” initially focused on concrete and visual poetry—including rare manuscripts and published works by international luminaries such as Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, Öyvind Fahlström, and Eugen Gomringer. The collection subsequently grew to encompass a broader array of historic and contemporary works that synthesize word and image. Rooted in the early to mid-20th-century European avant-garde, the collection provides a unique lens through which to examine the foundational movements of modernism, including Italian Futurism, Russian Constructivism, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Dada, and Lettrisme, among others. The Sackners’ contemporary holdings are also expansive, with particular strengths in artists’ books and “assemblings” (limited-edition groupings of materials by numerous contributors), as well as various subgenres such as typewriter art, performance poetry, and micrography (abstract or representational designs comprised of minuscule lettering). The installation will open with a rare, 1897 publication of “Un Coup de des” (A Throw of the Dice), by Stéphane Mallarmé, which is considered one of the first true examples of concrete poetry, and include hundreds of objects spanning more than a century.
Amelia Peláez
December 2013 – February 23, 2014
PAMM will present a focused selection of works by Amelia Peláez del Casal (1896 – 1968), one of the most important Cuban painters of the modernist era. Alongside artists such as Carlos Enríquez, Wifredo Lam, Victor Manuel, and Fidelio Ponce de León, Peláez personifies the primera vanguardia—the first wave of Cuban artists who traveled to Europe before World War II, where they were exposed to Cubism, Surrealism, and other contemporaneous styles. When these artists subsequently returned to the island nation, they introduced the artistic innovations they had adopted abroad and then transformed them by incorporating aspects of their native cultural and national identities.
Peláez is best known for brightly colored, quasi-abstract compositions that feature decorative objects and ornamental architectural motifs, evoking the traditional domestic interiors of Havana. This exhibition will take a socio-historical approach and examine Peláez’s work in the context of early 20th century Havana’s changing material culture and urban landscape.
Christo –Surrounded Islands
August 14, 2014 – January 25, 2015
This Focus Gallery exhibition celebrates Surrounded Islands, Christo (b. 1935) and Jeanne-Claude’s (1935 –2009) epic project from 1980-83. Working closely with the local governments and a small army of volunteers, the artists encircled 11 islands in Biscayne Bay with a total of 6.5 million square feet of pink, woven, polypropylene fabric. The result was a luminous, floating artwork that harmonized the bright hue of the fabric with the complex colors of the uninhabited, verdant islands, the shallow waters of the bay, and the light of the Miami sky. The exhibition will feature documentation of the project as well as a selection of the large-scale drawings that the artists created to support this expansive undertaking.
Jasper Johns Prints
October 2, 2014 – February 2015
Best known for his radical take on painting beginning in the late-1950s, Jasper Johns (b. 1930) has consistently pursued printmaking alongside his painting practice. This exhibition will bring together a rich selection of works representing Johns’ print oeuvre. Exploring motifs that have reappeared throughout his career, Jasper Johns Prints offers insight into his ongoing investigations of seriality, repetition, and indexing as well as his formal sensibility.
Project Gallery
Hew Locke
December 2013 – May 25, 2014
For Those in Peril on the Sea, 2011, is an installation by Hew Locke (b. 1959), a British artist of Guyanese descent. It consists of dozens of scaled-down replicas of ships suspended from the ceiling, creating the impression of a massive exodus taking place throughout the architectural space above viewers’ heads. It features a broad range of vessel types, from cigarette boats, catamarans, and cruise liners to ragged fishing skiffs and timeworn cargo ships. In light of Miami’s history as the site for numerous waves of immigration—particularly from the Caribbean, and specifically by sea—For Those in Peril on the Sea will have a particular resonance for the Museum’s audiences. With its significant links to the South Florida community, this installation, part of PAMM’s permanent collection, promises a powerful initial experience for visitors to the new building.
Geoffrey Farmer
June 19, 2014 – January 18, 2015
PAMM is commissioning a new, large-scale installation by Vancouver-based artist, Geoffrey Farmer (b.1967). Farmer is best known for his work with collage and his references to the genre’s modernist traditions, such as those produced by Dada artists at the beginning of the 20th century. The artist has also created numerous theatrical installations involving odd combinations of found objects which he transforms into awkward, puppet-like figures. His recent sculptures and installations have included kinetic elements that are often choreographed with sound. These pieces become theater plays or small operas with uncanny objects as their main performers. Creating mysterious and, at times, sinister environments, the artist’s work responds dynamically to the architectural and cultural contexts in which it is produced.
Anchor Gallery
Monika Sosnowska
December 2013 – September 28, 2014
Born in Ryki, Poland, Monika Sosnowska (b. 1972) is one of the most celebrated Eastern European artists of her generation. Focusing on urban and architectural space, her work involves surreal, tableau-like installations as well as large objects made of industrial materials that engage the walls, floors, and ceilings of the exhibition space. This commissioned project will be located in PAMM’s double-height Anchor Gallery, one of four spaces in the new building that will be dedicated to installations by single artists. The artists selected for these galleries are each invited to make multiple trips to Miami to share their process with PAMM’s audiences through public lectures, workshops, and other special programs.
Yael Bartana
December 2013 – April 20, 2014
PAMM has commissioned artist Yael Bartana, born in Israel (b. 1970) and currently living and working in Tel-Aviv and Berlin, to create a new film or video work. Bartana’s early video work, both documentary and staged, explores social phenomena that illuminate the complexity and rituals of contemporary life, particularly within Israeli society. More recently, Bartana has embarked on a long-term, multi-platform work “…and Europe will be stunned”, a video trilogy and body of related works with which she represented Poland in the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). This critically acclaimed work has demonstrated Bartana’s acuity as both a filmmaker and as an artist deeply attuned to the most pressing political issues of our time.
Bouchra Khalili
December 2013 – February 23, 2014
Bouchra Khalili (b. 1975) was born in Casablanca and currently lives and works in Berlin. Her works, which take the form of single- and multi-channel videos and films as well as photographs, investigate identity, migration, and transience as modes of political engagement and resistance. Reflecting the nomadic and often transnational existence of many people throughout the world, Khalili illuminates the emotional, intellectual, and tangible realities of an increasingly mobilized world. Using language and an understated visual sensibility, Khalili’s videos offer a moving account of the personal experience within larger social and economic spheres. For her project at PAMM, Khalili is creating a new film or video work based on research and investigations undertaken in New York.
Edouard Duval-Carrié
March 13, 2014 – August 31, 2014
This exhibition will present works by Haitian born, Miami-based artist, Edouard Duval-Carrié (b. 1954). Inspired by the mythologies and folklore of Haiti and its rich artistic traditions, Duval- Carrié creates ornate sculptures, installations and paintings that address Haitian history, contemporary society, and politics. This exhibition for PAMM’s focus galleries will mix works from the museum’s permanent collection by the artist with new artworks specifically commissioned for this exhibition. Works from PAMM’s permanent collection include a series of ten bronze sculptures, titled The Vaudou Parthenum, 1996, as well as the large, multi-part, red acrylic installation The Apotheosis of Erzulie Dantor, 2005. These works will serve as the exhibition’s focal points, around which the new works will be placed to create a densely layered installation. Duval-Carrié’s work will also be included in the museum’s presentation of the large historical exhibition, Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, opening April 17, 2014.
Special Exhibition Galleries
Caribbean: Crossroads of the World
April 17, 2014 – August 17, 2014
Featuring over 400 objects, the exhibition examines the exchange of people, goods, ideas, and information between the Caribbean basin, Europe, and North America. Caribbean: Crossroads of the World will highlight over two centuries of rarely seen works—from paintings and sculptures to prints, books, photographs, films, videos, and historical artifacts—dating from the Haitian Revolution (c. 1804) to the present. The project employs an inter-disciplinary approach to advance our understanding of the Caribbean and its artistic heritage, and combines classic works by figures such as Paul Gauguin, Winslow Homer, Wifredo Lam, and Armando Reverón with works by contemporary artists including Allora & Calzadilla, Janine Antoni, José Bedia, Edouard Duval-Carrié, and Nari Ward, among many others. The exhibition was organized jointly by El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum of Art, and The Studio Museum in Harlem.
Adler Guerrier
June 19, 2014 – January 18, 2015
Miami-based artist Adler Guerrier (b. 1975) works in a variety of media, including sculpture, photography, prints, and collaged works on paper. Guerrier’s practice investigates of the mutability of text and image and the variability of meaning. He is as interested in politics as he is in poetics, and his work explores the rich territory between them. Often using Miami as a physical site and an embodiment of realized (and unrealized) moments in American political and social history, Guerrier examines, repurposes, and sometimes fictionalizes the city through his work. Guerrier’s oeuvre is expansive in its engagement with the urban environment, art history, and materials and this exhibition will bring together a selection of work from the last decade of his career alongside new work produced for this presentation.
Beatriz Milhazes
September 18, 2014 – January 11, 2015
The first major U.S. retrospective on Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes (b. 1960), the exhibition will feature the artist’s large-scale abstract paintings inspired by Brazilian and European Modernism, Baroque forms, popular culture, and the decorations of Carnival. During the early 1990s, the artist developed an unusual painting technique, in which she adhered separate images executed in acrylic paint—such as flowers, arabesques, lace patterns or peace-signs—onto canvases in a style that references collage, graffiti, and plastic decals. This practice results in richly textured surfaces that appear prematurely aged. The exhibition will include works produced over the last 25 years of the artist’s career and examine their evolution from softer, more decorative forms to harder-edged abstraction.