Miami Beach’s The Bass adds new leadership role as Museum expands

The Bass is reshaping its leadership structure as the Miami Beach museum adds a new position aimed at strengthening its artistic direction and exhibition program.

Philippe Vergne, the former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Dia Art Foundation in New York, has been named to the newly created position of Artistic Director and Chief Curator and will work alongside Executive Director Silvia Karman Cubiña.

“I’ve been at this museum for 18 years,” said Cubiña. “It’s time to bring in some fresh, breezy, new vision and conversations. That’s really important. It’s a responsible thing to do.”

In his new role, Vergne will serve as her “thought partner,” said Cubiña, with responsibility for the museum’s curatorial vision as it adds 2,500 square feet of exhibition spaces to the current 15,519.

After Curator James Voorhies left the museum in December to return to his home in New York, Cubiña reached out to Vergne, a long-time colleague who is currently director of the Serralves Contemporary Art Museum in Porto, Portugal. The conversation was unexpected, he said.

“But when I talked to Silvia, when I met some of the members of her board, I was very impressed by the ambition that her constituency has for the institution. I was impressed by the way the board of the museum has supported the museum… I was very excited by what I was hearing.”

And the timing was right. He had been in his current job since 2019. The Bass’s planned expansion was also enticing. “This is a very specific moment, to expand in a city which is itself expanding,” he said.

He will begin his new role Oct. 1.

The museum is working with the city to permit the expansion designed by Los Angeles-based architects Johnston Marklee and supported by a $20.1 million allocation from a 2022 public bond. The addition will solidify The Bass’s vision of a 2.9-acre campus of public art works and sheltered garden space anchored by the museum’s original 1930s façade designed by Miami architect Russell Pancoast. It will be museum’s third expansion since 2000.

Earlier this year, The Bass opened the renovated Rotunda in Collins Park, with an inviting glass entry and almost 2,000 square feet of exhibition space. Since then, attendance has grown by 33.8%, said Cubiña.

The new outdoor space is intended to broaden free access to art and better serve a mixed-income community of time-pressed young professionals and families with free programming that includes the museum’s Third Thursdays activations and access to the Rotunda.

Exhibitions and public programming will be part of Vergne’s portfolio. He will also work with global artists to expand The Bass’s ongoing program of commissions. In past years, those have included installations by marquee artists such as Mickalene Thomas, Rachel Feinstein and Tavaras Strachan.

“I’ve been very privileged to work in different communities in the United States and in Europe, so I have a network of artists,” said Vergne. “But not only artists; I have a network in the art community that will make available to the institution. It’s work that goes beyond pure curating.”

French-born Vergne began his museum leadership career as director of the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Marseille from 1994 to 1997 before moving to the United States. He later served as chief curator and deputy director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, director of the Dia Art Foundation in New York and director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2006, he co-curated the Whitney Biennial with Chrissie Iles. He left LA MOCA in 2019 following a tumultuous year marked by internal and external dissent and was named director of Portugal’s Serralves Contemporary Art Museum a few months later.

Vergne’s experience running art institutions make him a strong fit for the role, said Cubiña. “He will be a great thought partner, but also a very practical thought partner, which is very important. He knows what it is to run an institution. He knows what it is to build an institution, and he understands timing.”

Those skills along with Vergne’s art world connections will help free Cubiña to focus on the other aspects of her job, she said. “I need to fundraise. I need to do my job right, and my job is dealing with the future, both the immediate and the long-term future of this museum. I get to do it full time now.”

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