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South Florida’s museums are ready for Miami Art Week. Here’s what you’ll find

By INDULGE Magazine

Updated February 7, 2019 4:37 AM

Judy Chicago, Heaven is for White Men Only, 1973. Sprayed acrylic on canvas. Courtesy the artist.

South Florida’s art institutions put their best exhibits on display during Miami Art Week. These are nine of the best.

1. PÉREZ ART MUSEUM MIAMI

Thirty-five years ago, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude surrounded 11 uninhabited Biscayne Bay islands in 6.5 million square feet of fabric. The neon material floated there for two weeks, as if the bits of land had been outlined with a pink highlighter, to symbolize a harmony with nature. Using archival materials and pieces from the work, PAMM created Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980-83 | A Documentary Exhibition. It includes a large-scale model of the islands and hundreds of photos and documents, all meant to show how Surrounded Islands helped stimulate Miami’s local art scene. pamm.org.

2. INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, MIAMI

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Likely you know Judy Chicago’s work from the groundbreaking piece The Dinner Party, a triangle-shaped banquet table set for 39 women from history. Take in more of what made the artist a pioneering feminist in Judy Chicago: A Reckoning at ICA, Miami. The show includes works that Chicago produced over four decades, everything from sketches to the test plates she experimented on while creating The Dinner Party. icamiami.org.

3. MUSEUM OF ART AND DESIGN

Three Danish artists founded Superflex in 1993 and have since gained international fame for taking on weighty subjects like the distribution of wealth and migration. The MOAD show SUPERFLEX: We Are All in the Same Boat revolves around the premise that we’re all riding a rough sea of life together. The Corrupt Show, for instance, tempts visitors into taking a lollipop bribe, a trap of sorts meant to draw attention to how corruption dominates world politics. mdcmoad.org.

4. NSU ART MUSEUM FORT LAUDERDALE

NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale dedicated its entire 28,000 square feet of gallery space to an expansive show of its permanent collection. Titled Remember to React: 60 Years of Collecting, the exhibition includes pieces by artists of the avant-garde Cobra movement and from the Mexican Revolution, including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. The museum will also reveal a major installation by contemporary Johannesburg-based artist Serge Alain Nitegeka. nsuartmuseum.org.

5. MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART NORTH MIAMI

The new executive director of MOCA, Chana Budgazad Sheldon, adopted a mission to reflect more cultural diversity through art, and that’s evident in the sweeping show on display now. AfriCOBRA: Messages to the People is a retrospective of the African-American artists who came together in Chicago in 1968 to create works that often depicted strong dark-skinned figures circulating in a world of raw, bright and emotional imagery. mocanomi.org.

6. THE BASS

On December 2, Los Angeles-based designers The Haas Brothers will discuss their first solo museum exhibition, Ferngully, which takes The Bass viewers into a utopian world where nature has been reimagined. Three nights later, the museum hosts the opening reception of the exhibit. While there, also catch Aaron Curry’s sculpture-meets-collage exhibit, Tune Yer Head, and Paola Pivi’s Art with a view, which features feather-covered polar bears, fish taking flight on a passenger jet, and other enigmas meant to pose philosophical questions. thebass.org.

7. THE WOLFSONIAN-FIU

Historical images from the museum’s collection will be animated across the facade of The Wolfsonian as part of the installation This is Not a Temple, created in partnership with Paris-based multimedia studio H5. Inside, Deco: Luxury to Mass Market explores how designers in the ’20s and ’30s created a new art form in everything from architecture to appliances. And explore modernist carpets and tapestries with striking designs in the show Made in Italy: MITA Textile Design 1926–1976. wolfsonian.org.

8. PATRICIA & PHILLIP FROST ART MUSEUM

In Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, the Frost Art Museum, part of Florida International University, challenges the notion that the Caribbean is a fragmented set of separate cultures. Instead, the paintings, photos, sculptures and videos are meant to show how the islands connect through their people. frost.fiu.edu.

9. JEWISH MUSEUM OF FLORIDA

Punk-inspired geometric designs on clothing and textiles become pieces of art that could be worn in Daniel Chimowitz: Walking Canvases at the Jewish Museum of Florida. Meanwhile, delve into the history of lithography, from prints using stones to computer-to-plate printing in The Art of the Lithograph. And an exhibit including portraits, nudes and seemingly candid family moments takes in the work of the late artist in Edna Glaubman: Retrospective. jmof.fiu.edu.

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This story was originally published November 26, 2018 at 7:11 AM.