Dr. Donette Francis
2021 Art Circuits’ Critic’s Choice art writer
Donette Francis is an Associate Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Miami, where she is a founding member of the Hemispheric Caribbean Studies Collective. She is the author of Fictions of Feminine Citizenship: Sexuality and the Nation in Contemporary Caribbean Literature.
ART CIRCUITS
CRITIC'S CHOICE OCTOBER 2021
From Betye Saar to Mexican Modernists, this month provides South Floridians a rare opportunity to see transformative masters alongside emerging artists who have and are changing the conceptual landscape of contemporary art.
MUSEUMS
ICA
Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight
Curated by Stephanie Seidel
October 28, 2021- April 17, 2022
Betye Saar’s 1970s’ research trips to Haiti, Mexico, and Nigeria produced immersive works exploring communal rituals of spirituality, mourning and death amongst African-descended peoples.On view are these 1980-1998 site-specific installations from this iconic American master.
Norton Museum
Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection.
October 23, 2021 - February 6, 2022
After a period in hiding, the Mexican Modernist collection of Jacques and Natasha Gelman is on view.Featuring paintings, works on paper and photographs of over 150 works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, Miguel Covarrubias, Gunther Gerzso, María Izquierdo, Carlos Mérida, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Juan Soriano, Rufino Tamayo, Lucienne Bloch, Imogen Cunningham, Juan Guzmán, Graciela Iturbide, Nikolas Murray, Edward Weston, and Guillermo Kahlo—Frida’s father.
Galleries
FAU Galleries/The South Florida Cultural Consortium
Under The Florida Sun: South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual and Media Artists Fellowship Exhibition
Curated by Mikhaile Solomon
On View through October 30, 2021
This group show features 12 artists from Broward, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Palm Beach Counties who have won grants from the South Florida consortium. Through the eyes of the selected artists, the exhibition offers intimate understandings of the vast cultures, perspectives, and landscapes of those of us who call South Florida our home. Artists include: Harumi Abe, Sally Binard, Yanira Collado, Zoraye Cyrus, Mark Fleuridor, Carla Forte, Juan Pablo Garza, Catalina Jaramillo, Franciso Masó, Jared McGriff, Sofia Valiente, and Sasha Wortzel.
HistoryMiami Museum
Anastasia Samoylova: FloodZone
October 15, 2021 - April 17, 2022
Anastasia Samoylova’s ongoing photographic series, FloodZone, opens this month at the HistoryMiami Museum. Centering the realities of climate change, sea level rise, and urban sprawl in South Florida, the timely exhibition, an installation of 46 images taken from 2016 to the present, explores geographies of both paradise and disaster. The museum will also feature an exhibition of related images of local storms and floods in an adjacent gallery.
