Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami

This year’s programming at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami takes visitors on a multigenerational journey, starting with exploring three decades of conceptual art by Charles Gaines that combines politics and social commentary with numerical systems and language. Sasha Gordon’s first solo museum exhibition showcases her hyperreal portraiture against a backdrop of anthropomorphic landscapes, conjuring fantasy and evoking vulnerability. They join works by Surrealist painter, poet, and critic Ahmed Morsi; a site-responsive wallpaper by Anne Collier comprising imagery appropriated from 1950s and 1960s posters, records, and comic strips; and ancestral totems created by Tau Lewis, the 2023 recipient of the Ezratti Family Prize for Sculpture.

The Bass Museum of Art

As The Bass Museum celebrates its 60th anniversary, it welcomes four exhibitions: Korean American visual artist Nam June Paik’s ‘The Miami Years’, a look at the artist’s history with Miami and his pioneering efforts in the rise of technology as an artistic medium; Etel Adnan’s ‘Painting into Space’, which looks at the relationship between painting, architecture, and a sense of place; Hernan Bas’ ‘The Conceptualists’, a pensive and queer-centric collection of creative scenes that challenge the notion of conformity and convention; and Anne Duk Hee Jordan’s multisensory narrative on climate change, ‘I Will Always Weather You’, told through videos, installations, sound, and kinetic objects.

Pérez Art Museum Miami

Pérez Art Museum Miami’s robust programming covers a gamut of creative realms. ‘Joan Didion: What She Means’ follows the life and work of the celebrated author. ‘Yayoi Kusama: Love Is Calling’ highlights the largest and the most immersive and kaleidoscopic of the artist’s ‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’ through inflatable, illuminated forms adorned in Kusama’s signature polka dots. ‘Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich: Too Bright to See (Part I)’ sheds light, through cinematic scenes, on the under-told story of writer, Surrealist thinker, and activist Suzanne Roussi-Césaire and her husband, Aimé Césaire, as well as their impact on the Négritude movement of the 20th century. ‘Marcela Cantuária: The South American Dream’ celebrates the tenacity, trials, and triumphs of South American activists and environmentalists such as Chico Mendes, Dorothy Stang, and Juana Azurduy de Padilla through colorful paintings. ‘Jason Seife: Coming to Fruition’ will have onlookers doing a double take at the artist’s intricately detailed paintings that emulate Persian carpets and traditional Islamic art as an ode to his Middle Eastern heritage, with additional nods to his Cuban ancestry. And ‘Gary Simmons: Public Enemy’ chronicles 30 years of works by the multidisciplinary artist in the areas of race, class, and gender identity.

Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami

Afrofuturism and Black mythologies come to life in ‘Jamea Richmond-Edwards: Ancient Future’, a solo exhibition at MOCA North Miami depicting the artist’s Detroit roots and her connections to Black American culture through interdisciplinary paintings, films, and immersive installations. Throughout Miami Art Week, a performance by in-person majorettes and a drumline will take over the museum, echoing the procession by a dance team in a video work that comprises part of Richmond-Edwards’ site-specific installation. In other social commentary: The late Cuban artist Juan Francisco Elso created sculptures that explored contemporary Cuban, Caribbean, and Latin American identities through a lens of Indigenous traditions, Afro-Caribbean beliefs, and the impact of colonial oppression. ‘Juan Francisco Elso: Por América’ pays tribute by taking a look at some of his pioneering works juxtaposed with those of multigenerational artists including Belkis Ayón, José Bedia, Tania Bruguera, and María Magdalena Campos-Pons.

The Wolfsonian – Florida International University

To commemorate the centennial milestone of the Harlem Renaissance era, The Wolfsonian – FIU presents the digital exhibition ‘The Harlem Renaissance: Origins, Influences, and Currents.’ The program celebrates the artistic, cultural, and activist contributions of notable names in Black history – from rare first editions of books by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston to portraits of significant figures such as poet Countee Cullen. Also on view, ‘Harry Clarke and the Geneva Window’ brings Harry Clarke’s stained-glass Geneva Window to The Wolfsonian – his 1926 commission by the Irish Free State intended to be a gift to the League of Nations in Geneva; however, it was rejected at the time for being considered too provocative. Now a part of this installation that explores cultural censorship, the work is considered to be the artist’s most important and controversial.

Guests can also check out ‘Bridge Deconstruction Site’, a yearlong culmination of study helmed by artist misael soto and the Department of Reflection (DoR). The Wolfsonian – FIU’s Bridge Tender House, an Art Deco architectural structure, inspired the DoR to take a deep dive into infrastructure and bridges, and this exhibit reflects community and student works that resulted from that investigation. They both join unconventional landscape works from the museum’s collection in ‘The Big World: Alternative Landscapes in the Modern Era’.

Loewe Art Museum – University of Miami

The Lowe Art Museum – the oldest art museum in South Florida – houses more than 19,500 works across 5,000 years and, during Miami Art Week, will present two solo exhibitions that reflect that range. ‘Iris Eichenberg: Where Words Fail’ offers a comprehensive survey of the artist’s career exploring a multitude of social impact and identity topics through metal, glass, porcelain, silver, clay, and wool. ‘Order Up! The Pop Art of John Miller’ takes a sweet-tooth turn featuring 35 oversize glass sculptures of food, drinks, and condiments nodding to 1950s diners and inspired by 1960s Pop art. Fans of Claes Oldenburg will feel a twinge of nostalgia.

Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum – Florida International University

‘Art Basel season represents the pinnacle of international significance for Miami as a vibrant art center. This year, the Frost Art Museum’s headline exhibitions reflect Miami’s globalism,’ says Dr. Jordana Pomeroy, the museum’s director. ‘Our program showcases two exhibitions that express diverse cultural influences – ‘Embellish Me: Works from the Collection of Norma Canelas Roth and William Roth’ and ‘To Recognize a Pattern’. We’re featuring works ranging from the 1970s to today that integrate arts from different cultures rooted in ancient traditions.’ The Frost Art Museum also presents ‘Addie Herder: Machines for Living’ and ‘Together/Apart: Modern and Contemporary Art in the United States’, the latter in conjunction with the Wolfsonian – FIU.

NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale

Brightly fanned peacock feathers. Jewel-toned parrots and feminine figures. Pink flamingos prancing across a canvas. Walasse Ting’s neon depictions of flora, fauna, and ethereal female forms are on view at the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale in ‘Walasse Ting: Parrot Jungle’. Rendered mostly in acrylic and Chinese ink on rice paper, these paintings evoke elements from ancient Chinese traditions, European avant-garde, and American Pop art. The exhibit joins abstract works by Frank Bowling, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, and more in ‘Glory of the World: Color Field Painting (1950s to 1983)’; a collection of ceramics in ‘Pablo Picasso: Dust You Are, To Dust You Return’; a selection of Haitian works from the 1950s to 2000s in ‘Cosmic Mirrors: Haitian Art Highlights from the Collection’; familial works portraying William J. Glackens and his wife, son, and daughter in ‘House of Glackens’; and paintings, photographs, prints, and sketches in ‘By the Sea, By the Sea: Waterscapes and Beach Scenes By William J. Glackens and the Ashcan School’.

Norton Museum of Art

Just an hour-long train ride north of Miami, the Norton Museum of Art is exhibiting important European paintings, sculptures, and works on paper dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries by the likes of Paul Cézanne, Edouard Manet, and Edgar Degas from the personal collection of the late Henry Pearlman in ‘Artists in Motion: Impressionist and Modern Masterpieces from the Pearlman Collection’; a collection of photographs by artists such as Richard Avedon, Irving Bennett Ellis, and Dorothea Lange in ‘Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder’; and four hanging scrolls exploring Chinese social and cultural history for the exhibit ‘Symbolic Messages in Chinese Animal Paintings’.

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This article was originally published in the Art Basel Miami Beach magazine 2023.

Published on November 21, 2023.

Captions for full-bleed images, from top to bottom: 1. Nam June Paik in Miami, 1990. Photograph by Brian Smith. 2. Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Shirt with Lace Heart (detail), 2018. Courtesy of the Rubell Museum, Miami and Washington D.C. Photograph by Chi Lam. 3. Walasse Ting, Untitled (detail), late 1970s or early 1980s. Courtesy of the Estate of Walasse Ting. Photograph by Jeffrey Sturges.