Robert Sindelir, a Miami visual arts pioneer and ‘raconteur extraordinaire,’ has died
Robert Sindelir was born on a farm about 100 miles west of Minneapolis, rode a motorcycle to Miami at age 16 to study law at the University of Miami, and wound up one of the most important art mavens Miami produced.
Among Sindelir’s achievements, he opened one of the first commercial art galleries in MiamiDade in 1960. Sindelir started the art gallery at Miami Dade College on its Kendall campus and ran the school’s Wolfson campus gallery. He also headed Miami-Dade County’s Art in Public Places venture as its first director after it was established in 1973.
He was a “pioneer in the Miami visual arts world,” according to Beth Dunlop, a writer and former architectural critic for the Miami Herald.
The number of artists Sindelir championed is legion. Among them, Robert Huff, Claire Jeanine Satin, Emilio Sanchez, Cèsar Trasobares, Duane Michals, Ron Fondaw and, the woman who became his wife, Jill Cannady.
“When Bob retired, he had a card that said ‘Robert Sindelir Bricoleur.’ It is a wonderful and apt description,” said arts historian and exhibition curator Barbara Young. Bricoleur, Young reminds us, is French for handyman, or more specifically in Sindelir’s fashion, “one who creates using whatever materials are available,” she said.
“I add raconteur extraordinaire. He was generous and a patient source for so much information. And great stories. I used him extensively for the MiamiDade Public Library System’s Art History Timeline 1940 to 1990. So often, when [late Miami Herald art critic] Helen Kohen and I were working on the Vasari Project materials and would run into questions or dead ends, we would say, ‘call Bob Sindelir.’ He was a great historian,” Young said.
Sindelir died Oct. 15 at his home in DeLand, the Florida spot he retired to with Cannady in 1998, she said. Sindelir was 89.
Of course, Sindelir didn’t really retire. He was unofficially involved with the Museum of Art-DeLand “and as always was a good friend to artists,” his wife said.
“Robert J. Sindelir had a curious mind,” Cannady said. “He was fascinated by cultures from around the world, especially their visual art, which he loved. He respected, admired and promoted visual art and artists.”
THE EARLY GALLERIES
One of Sindelir’s many legendary legacies in South Florida’s arts community was his annual “Bob” parties with fellow Bobs that included Robert
Chambers, Robert Thiele and Robert Huff, said writer and former Miami Herald art critic Elisa Turner.
“He was a steadfast pioneer in our art community,” Turner said. “Insatiably curious about Miami art and culture. Abundantly generous with his abundant knowledge and an ardent advocate for artists, particularly through his directorship of the campus art gallery at Miami Dade College’s Kendall campus.”
Miami was much different when he opened his 19 Arcade Gallery in Coconut Grove in 1960 and painted street banners for the first Coconut Grove Arts Festival.
“I remember when 27th Avenue was a two-lane road,” Sindelir told the Herald in 2002.
ESTABLISHING A COLLEGE GALLERY
By 1963, he opened Sindelir Gallery in Coral Gables and in 1970 started working at the then-named Miami Dade Community College South Campus in January 1970.
He was hired to teach humanities at that Kendall campus. But in conversations with Young and Huff in 2013, Sindelir said it was really in his plan “to subversively create an art gallery.”
On his first day on campus he acquired the first piece for the college’s permanent art collection.
As he told it to Young and Huff, “I was walking up to the art building, Roten (Ferdinand Roten Galleries, out of Baltimore, Maryland) was selling prints on the campus as they then did at many colleges and universities. They did not pay for the privilege in any way. I told the seller in charge that I would expect Miami-Dade to receive prints for the then non-existent MDCC Permanent Collection equal to 10% of their gross sales that day. The first print I chose was the large flocked serigraph on metal foil by artist printmaker William Weege, a girl on a motorcycle.”
By 1976, he was director at Miami’s Gallery at 24, where artists like Huff, Satin, Sanchez and Sam Gilliam showcased their work.
REMEMBERING ANDY SWEET
Another artist shown at The Gallery at 24: photographer Andy Sweet. Sindelir was Sweet’s art dealer.
“Andy was destined for success,” Sindelir told the Herald after Sweet was found murdered in his South Beach apartment in 1982. Sweet was the subject of directors Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch’s 2019 film, “The Last Resort.”
“He was young and aggressive. He knew how to speak up and how to go about getting support. He already had a substantial number of accomplishments to his record,” Sindelir said of Sweet. Sweet photographed and captured the magic of Art Deco before anyone else was paying attention, Sindelir said.
Ruth Shack, a MiamiDade commissioner first elected in 1976 and now retired president and CEO of the Dade Community Foundation, was paying attention.
“Bob Sindelir introduced us to a lot of wonderful people working here in Miami, and that gave us the courage to move on to other artists,” Shack said in 1996 during an oral history interview for the Smithsonian Latino Center preserved at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
SURVIVORS, SERVICES
Sindelir is survived by his wife, who said a celebration of his life will be held at a later date.
Howard Cohen: 305-376-3619, @HowardCohen