AN EXPLOSION IN BLACK ART
Miami’s black art scene is bubbling; here’s where to learn and see more
Works by black artists are fetching impressive prices nowadays, and the offerings available in local museums and galleries reflect the growing interest in them.
Works by black artists have hit record prices in recent years, with art by Kerry Marshall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mark Bradford and Glenn Ligon bringing millions of dollars at auction. But most practioners resolutely pursue their missions all year long, as they have for decades.
Nearly all major local museums, public and private, include works by black artists. Pérez Art Museum Miami has a fund dedicated to collecting works by African American artists; the “Polyphonic” exhibition — including works by Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold and Juana Valdes — is on display through Aug. 9. Allapattah’s Rubell Museum’s holdings include an impressive — and massive — early work by Kehinde Wiley. The 20th anniversary show at the Margulies Warehouse includes work by Shinique Smith.
Here are some other South Florida sources for exploring black artworks year ‘round.
PERMANENT SPACES
COPPER DOOR B&B: This 18-room Overtown hotel sheltered black musicians who performed on Miami Beach during the 1940s through the ’60s but couldn’t stay there. Exhibitions represent artists and/ or subjects from the diaspora and include artist/ curatorial talks. Bunny Yeager’s rarely seen glamour photos of black models are on view.
439 NW Fourth Ave., Miami; www.copperdoorbnb.com; 305-454-9065
DUNNS JOSEPHINE HOTEL: This stylish new hotel in Overtown’s historic district is filled with striking sculptural works by the Jacksonville-based and single-named Walden, who started his career creating costumes for artists including Jimi Hendrix and Billie Holliday. The hotel recalls the Harlem Renaissance, features black-andwhite photographs of famous black musicians and arranges talks about jazz and culture.
1028 NW Third Ave., Miami; dunns-josephinehotel.com; 877-571-9311.
GRIOTS GALLERY: Retired physician Dr. Michael Butler’s initial collecting mandate was to focus on masters working in abstraction, but his family collection also displays current figurative civil rights protest images by Najee Dorsey and Frank Frazier. He’s determined that the African-American community recognize its heritage. “You build a scaffolding that they can ascend,” he said. Through Griots Gallery exhibitions, catalog publishing and monthly lectures, he’s building that scaffolding. Lectures are scheduled the second Saturday of every month.
8260 NE Second Ave., Miami; www.griotsgallery .com; (305) 420-6545.
HAITIAN HERITAGE MUSEUM: To commemorate Haiti’s bicentennial, Eveline Pierre and Serge Rodriguez founded the Haitian Heritage Museum in 2004, initiating a public educational component that combines visual arts, food and music. Rodriguez noted that the shameful “boat people” epithet has lifted, and he sees eagerness among Haitian youth to proudly share their heritage. Exhibited works range from traditional paintings of Haitian village life to Asser Saint-Val’s extravagant, surrealistic explorations of human biology, racism and spirituality. The current haunting documentation of slavery and revolution, “Road to Freedom,” amplifies Eddie Arroyo’s lyrically painted record of Little Haiti’s gentrification, shown in 2017. HHM’s annual Haitian Heritage Month exhibition opens in May.
4141 NE Second Ave. # 105C, Miami; www.haitian heritagemuseum.org; 305371-5988.
HISTORIC WARD ROOMING HOUSE: Christopher Norwood is treasurer of the National Hampton Alumni Association, member of the Editorial Board of the International Review for African American Art and founder of Hampton Art Lovers, whose home base is the
Historic Ward Rooming House. HAL is a museumgallery hybrid, committed to Overtown’s redevelopment as a cultural, residential and entertainment destination. Combining CRA funding with private social entrepreneurship, HAL offers free admission and shares promotion under the “Art of Black Miami” initiative. HAL also hosted the first pop-up exhibit of MoCAAD Miami (Miami Museum of Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora.) Norwood regularly accesses Hampton University’s acclaimed African-American art collection — among others. His own “Ebony Broadsides” collection of 70 signed exhibition posters is currently showing at Fort Lauderdale’s African-American Library and Research Center, with work by the African-American arts pantheon. HAL exhibitions also showcase independent artists; through April 10, the historically rooted mixed media work of Leroy Campbell alongside Krystal Hart’s paintings of calamity and healing. “Through the eyes of African Americans, you can see what America truly is — for good and bad,” said Norwood.
249 NW Ninth St., Miami; www.hamptonartlovers .com; 917-721-9656.
IPC ArtSpace: Veteran Miami Herald photographer Carl-Philippe Juste’s Iris Photo Collective has developed scores of exhibition, documentary, publication, and public art projects. In 2019, with Knight Foundation and Oolite funding, he opened IPC PhotoSpace, adjacent to frequent partners Little Haiti Cultural Complex and Haitian Cultural Alliance. The ArtSpace mission is to create enduring bridges among Miami’s diverse communities, principally through photojournalism programming, including education, exhibitions, talks and residencies. Local dentistsculptor-photographercollector Jeff Glasser’s exhibit, “Reflections,” opens April 4.
Juste seeks to engage scholars, collectors as well as school children. “I want to create an entry point for intellect and heart,” he says.
225 NE 59th St., Miami; www.irisphoto collective.com
/artspace
LITTLE
HAITI CUL
TURAL
COM
PLEX:
The Miami-operated
Little Haiti
Cultural
Complex combines gallery, classroom, and performance spaces. Marie Vickles is chief curator, arranging exhibitions showcasing South Floridian, Caribbean and global diaspora artists. Thanks to a relationship forged by Haitian Cultural
Arts Alliance’s founder and frequent curatorial partner Edouard Duval-Carrie, LHCC is an official satellite of Art Basel Miami Beach. Some exhibitions, like “Visionary Aponte” (organized by a team including Duval-Carrie), originate at the Center, then travel. Vickles also imports shows, ranging from contemporary crafts to scathing social recrimination. Now open is “Dust Specks on the Sea,” primarily featuring sculpture by contemporary French Caribbean artists. “It’s really exciting,” says Vickles, “to see artists who got their first break at LHCC growing and gaining more exposure.”
212-260 NE 59th
Terrace, Miami; www. littlehaiticulturalcenter .com; 305-960-2969
MIAMI URBAN CONTEMPORARY EXPERIENCE: Established as a non-profit in 2015, MUCE currently is showing a tribute to the Harlem Renaissance that precedes a March-April “Nanny Series,” addressing domestic workers’ social issues. May celebrates Haitian Heritage Month. Curated by the organization’s founders, Ashlee Thomas and Bart Mervil, MUCE provides emerging artists exposure alongside established colleagues. Sustained by grants, corporate events, pop-ups and municipal arts festivals, MUCE hosts drum circles, book clubs, photog
raphy workshops, art camp and African heritage entertainment. Knight Arts Challenge winners, MUCE offers residencies in their indoor/outdoor former auto repair shop campus.
246 NW 54th St., Miami; www.muce305.org
N’NAMDI CONTEMPORARY: Scion of pioneering Detroit gallerist George N’Namdi, Jumaane N’Namdi embraced young artist Rashid Johnson in the ’90s, encouraging him to experiment freely. For the past several years, Jumaane has run the N’Namdi Contemporary gallery, which recently moved from Wynwood to Little River. He cautions younger artists, “Don’t get caught up in this [commercial system], because you’ve got a job to do, which is document and preserve our culture, whether painting or sculpture or whatever you’re doing — by telling the real.” Exhibitions rotate among established names Robert Colescott, Al Loving and Ed Clark, and “discoveries,” like HaitianAmerican Stephen Arboite, currently on view.
6506 NE Second Ave., Miami; www.nnamdi contemporary.com; 786 332-4736
NOIRE ARTS LOUNGE: Photographerfilmmaker Robert Young has arranged an evolving program of exhibitions, performance, conversation and culinary culture at this latest Little Haiti venue. Just launched is Noire’s weekly reggae music and Jamaican food event, accompanying Young’s Sierra Leone photography exhibit. Through similarities of physiognomy and environment, he explains, “Caribbean people see themselves and their personal experience connecting to the African continent.”
5930 NE Second Ave., Miami; noireartslounge .com; 786-464-0661
ART WEEK EVENTS
ART AFRICA: Miami Beach architect Neil Hall built on his African contacts and design gallery experience to co-found the Art Africa fair in 2011 with Kuumba colleagues. It now runs annually during December’s Miami Art Week. From its beginning in a 5,000-square-foot tent, Art Africa in 2019 encompassed three blocks of strong and well-attended exhibitions and performances in Overtown, where Hall seeks a permanent venue. www.art africamiami fair.com PRIZM ART FAIR: Independent curator Mikhaile Solomon founded PRIZM art fair, also during Miami Art Week, in 2013 to champion under-recognized talents. Sharing curatorial responsibilities with colleagues, she regularly partners with Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation. In 2020, PRIZM will again reside in the elegant duPont Build
ing at 169 E. Flagler
St. downtown. PRIZM exhibitions include withering protest, but Solomon also seeks to create “an apothecary, where you can see how creativity can be a healing salve.”
www.prizmartfair.com; 954-372-6241
OTHER SOURCES
AHCAC: County-run African Heritage Cultural Arts Center in Liberty City — which nurtured the career of Oscar-winning screenwriter and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney — presents a variety of performing and visual arts programs.
6161 NW 22nd Ave., Miami; www.ahcacmiami .org; 305-638-6771
ARTSERVE: Ludlow Bailey is visiting curator at Fort Lauderdale’s multipurpose ArtServe. Jamaican-born, the independent curator and collection advisor plans African diaspora-related visual arts, music, film and dance programming.
1350 E. Sunrise Blvd.,
Fort Lauderdale; www. artserve.org; 954-462-8190
DIASPORA VIBE: Jamaican-born former microbiologist and veteran cultural activist Rosie GordonWallace founded Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator in 1996 to promote talents from the Caribbean and Latin diaspora, developing international exchanges and exhibitions. “Purposefully nomadic,” DVCAI regularly partners with The Fountainhead Residency, Betsy Hotel and Laundromat Art Space for cultural dialogue, work space, outreach, exhibition and personal-growth opportunities. Her co-curated “Inter | Sectionality: Diaspora Art from the Creole City” boldly fills the prestigious Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C. with DVCAI-nurtured artists.
www.dvcai.org; 305-7572018
KUUMBA COLLECTIVE: Dinzulu Gene Tinnie, a co-founder of the Kuumba Artist Collective and earlier Miami Black Arts Workshop, has been staging exhibitions since the 1970s and ’80s. He remains active with African-American heritage programs.
www.bit.ly/Kuumba Collective
MIAMI MOCAAD: Attorney, author and collector Marilyn Holifield cofounded Miami MoCAAD (Museum of Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora) in 2013. Currently the museum focuses on pop-up events including exhibitions and talks. Its long-term mission is to create a tech-savvy venue “to inspire appreciation for the creative genius of the global African Diaspora through collecting, researching and preserving contemporary art of the Diaspora.” MoCAAD has commissioned feasibility studies and visioning workshops and is fundraising for a transition from vision to fulfillment. Its next event is a Youth Museum Hackathon. www.miamimocaad.net OLCDC: Gallery space at the Opa-locka Community Development Corporation is currently undergoing renovation. When that is finished, it will resume ongoing visual arts programming.
490 Opa-locka Blvd.; Opa-locka; www.olcdc.org/ arts-culture; (305) 687-3545