2011

Since its opening in 1974, exhibitions featuring leading artists from around the world, as well as notable emerging artists, have graced the walls of ArtSpace Virginia Miller Galleries. From its location in Coral Gables, noted art curator and dealer, Virginia Miller, continues to host contemporary artists, often introducing them to art enthusiasts in the United States in some new and important way.

There’s very little that’s said in the first-person about Miami-based collective Viking Funeral. In a not-too-unfamiliar cryptic fashion, the two men who exist as Viking Funeral refuse to say precisely what they are about and what motivates them except for the pursuit, transmission and interpretation of information. They say, “Viking Funeral started in 2006 as a project without a real definition and … +

Collector’s can’t buy it, it is all for the public. The gigantic, eye-catching maze of artwork throughout Wynwood keeps expanding – on view are more than two dozen of works by graffiti artists from all over the world, big murals painted directly onto the warehouse buildings. The largest show of such pieces mounted in one location, the Walls add a sense of … +

Apart from the major institutions here in Miami (MAM, MOCA, Bass and the private collections), it’s rather difficult to get up close to works by internationally established artists, considered masters in their own country. In Wynwood, the Ascaso Gallery breaks that spell.

Miami’s Mad Cat Theatre Company is currently running its last show of the season, So My Grandmother Died, Blah Blah Blah, and it’s a real crowd-pleaser. Daringly blending a motley assortment of off-the-wall characters with a script that’s both emotionally deep and gut-wrenchingly funny, writer-director Paul Tei has yet again brought some new and wacky life to the city’s theater scene. If … +

There have been a lot of changes at the Bass Museum lately. The most notable of these might be the external arrival area, recently redesigned into a naturally flowing and attractive space by Oppenheim Architecture + Design. But there’s more going on, and one only needs to head just inside the museum’s doors to catch a glimpse of its further transformation. This … +

It’s an enormously dangerous task to try and meld fashion and fine art in Miami; a city that, in the global imagination, has its fashion credibility stapled in bikinis, barely-there shirts and dresses, and spangly Ed Hardy nonsense. Fashion illustration, on the other hand, is another matter. The raw, instinctive and fast-paced creations of past masters including Cecil Beaton, René Gruau and … +

Some say that the Opera is not for everyone; declared by most as an acquired taste, it is often an intimidating venture for those looking to break into the select aficionado club. Always advocates for the discovery of new, and old, passions in the Miami Art Scene, Opera – and the Miami Lyric Opera to be exact – will be no exception … +

The Betsy-South Beach has long been a purveyor of fine art. With their latest exhibition – a career retrospective of photographer Robert Zuckerman – they continue to showcase dynamic and innovative pieces; and these are particularly worth seeing. From the works that marked Zuckerman’s foray into photography during the 1970s to his current labor of love – a meditative amalgam of photos … +

With the arrival of Facebook in 2004, a new frontier for communications and interpersonal relationships was established. With many in favor – and no less against – the Social Network stands up today with more than 700 million registered users. As a result, Social Networks have become a standard in today’s world, and many leading industries already count on their own niche … +

The hipster in me takes credit for knowing hit songs before they are even written, discovering new bands before they form, hot spots before they’re hot, and artists before they emerge; the hipster in me has met a perfect match. PAX (Performing Arts Exchange) has one-upped me and thrown me back into the dreamy-eyed leagues of the awestruck local. Only a bit … +

Mitchell Kaplan took a look around in the early 1980s, disheartened by what looked back. His community was on the ropes. “If you remember Miami back then,” he said a while ago, “it was a pretty bleak time back in 1982. The Mariel boatlift had just happened a couple of years before. Even TIME magazine had a cover story entitled Miami: Paradise … +

Things have been busy for Constance Collins Margulies. For the past year, the president of the Lotus House Shelter has also been working on a project that, she hopes, will turn the Miami art world upside down. She is the ringmaster for the staggering array of art that from October 21st through 23rd will spill onto the streets of the Wynwood Art … +

The evolutionary process behind the Wynwood art district is a defining and ongoing one. Since the neighborhood formed, it has been an epicenter for Miami’s progressive, innovative artistic community, thanks, in large part, to the dynamic galleries that compose it. Of these, one of the most recent to emerge is Maor Gallery.

The city of Miami is no stranger to Cuban heritage – and that’s an understatement, to say the least – the home of The Freedom Tower in downtown Miami, the famous Calle Ocho and Viernes Culturales, and what Miamian doesn’t enjoy a cortadito after lunch? Yes, these are staples of the Cuban community of South Florida, but Choreographer and Artistic Director Pedro … +

It’s not often that the notion of a Medieval illuminated manuscript leaps off the page into the physical world. Less often does that richly decorated text reach into theatre and scientific observation at the same time. In extravagant, Caribbean-tinged color and painstakingly researched flora and fauna, Mark Messersmith initiates contemplation and foreshadows the sinister possibilities of nature’s steady erosion from human abuses. … +

There is an eternal glamour in traveling the world: sweeping panoramas of ancient ruins, heroic monuments, physical tinges of arts and cultures of the exotic, and above all, the romance of embarking on a journey towards whatever awaits on the “greener” side of the grass, so to speak. But how is that journey defined? Once that photo album-worthy snap is captured in … +

Although we have had to come to terms with the fact that tight skirts, platforms, and affliction t-shirts rule a large part of our local night scene, walking down Biscayne Boulevard on opera night is just the thing to reminds us of our strong, pioneering, and always inspiring art scene. Recently, as the Florida Grand Opera presented Cyrano, it was women in … +

The Wynwood Art District is no stranger to new tenants. There is an almost alarming regularity to the opening of new businesses – galleries, restaurants, cafes – that one might wonder whether or not the warehouse-laden landscape can sustain them all. And yet, it thrives. Not only that, it continues to evolve into a neighborhood that pushes the boundaries of art in … +

A portrait of the summer in Miami: The season begins at the multiplex, with all those movies suited for youngsters. Friends with means have skipped town, heading up to the cool of the Carolinas or Georgia. The rest of us get to bake under a blanket of humidity when we’re not dreaming of that next Mojito.

Late last year, the International Solidarity for Human Rights (ISHR), a non-profit organization dedicated to the education of human rights through the arts, launched a multi-media project called Route to Human Rights at Miami Dade’s InterAmerican Campus.