Carol Damian
2020 Art Circuits’ Critic’s Choice art writer

Carol Damian, Ph.D. is an Art Historian and Independent Curator specializing in the Art of Latin America and the Caribbean.  She is the former chairperson of the Art and Art History Department and former Director and Chief Curator of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University.

ART CIRCUITS CRITIC’S CHOICE SEPTEMBER 2020

Welcome back: September begins the season.  Yes, it is unusual, but we can still have fun and enjoy art.  How time flies – 6 months of inactivity (compared to our usual Miami frenetic art pace) make every opening special.  We do the best we can, and creativity will remain our comfort and even virtually, we need the Arts!  A few of the museums plan to open, as do galleries, so check artcircuits.com for updates.  One-stop with accurate information. The virtual world gets better and better every day so think of what we can see now without the traffic!  Here are some ideas, real and virtual.


MUSEUMS:

CORAL GABLES MUSEUM

September 15 - January 7, 2021. The museum is open.

PURSEonality: A Stylish Handbag History

Highlights from the personal collection of Ilene Hochberg Wood. Ranging in style from folk art, to contemporary designer, her collection numbers into the thousands, making it the largest in the U.S., if not the world. Visitors will have the opportunity to explore a timeline of the handbag, representing the trends of each decade.

 



BOCA RATON MUSEUM OF ART

Mar 24, 2020 - Sep 20, 2020. Museum open with limited hours.

Eye to I

Eye to I is especially appropriate in the age of the “selfie.” Organized and drawn from the collection of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, this exhibition explores how American artists have portrayed themselves through painting, drawing, photography, and video since the beginning of the 20th century. Artists in the exhibition approach self-representation from realist renderings to alter-egos that can reveal or obfuscate their inner lives.

Alice Neel Self-Portrait, 1980, Oil on canvas. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Welcome to our newest member – all the way from Washington, DC., The Art Museum of the Americas is looking to Miami to expand its audience, with this exhibit that features Cuban artist Geandy Pavon.

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ART MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAS | OAS - WASHINGTON, DC

Online Exhibition: September 3, 2020

Geandy Pavón: Quarantine: 40 Days and 40 Nights: Photographic Exploration of life under quarantine.

Curator: Lynette M.F. Bosch

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Geandy+Pavon

Geandy Pavón Quarantine: 40 Days and 40 Nights, is a timely and imaginative photographic exploration of life under quarantine.  A weekend visit to his partner Imara López in early March turned into an indefinite lockdown in Buffalo, NY that would dramatically change the course of plans for Pavón and López.  These photographs from quarantine chronicle a journey into topics such as the reinterpretations of known works of art, to religious themes, to Classical mythology. Unfolding historical moments have also threaded their way through the narrative

Geandy Pavón. Danaë y la lluvia de oro, day 27, 2020. Archival pigment print, Hahnemüle Baryta, 16 x 20 in., edition series.
©2020 Geandy Pavón

MDC SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, CUBAN LEGACY GALLERY

Fall 2020 (Opening date to be announced as part of the Phase 2 reopening of Miami Dade College). The exhibition runs through February 28, 2021.

Transformed: Josefina Tarafa, Photographs of the 1970s

A member of a Cuban family prominent in politics and economics, Josefina Tarafa (1907–82) developed an interest in the photographic and audio documentation of Afro-Cuban cultures and in various forms of Cuban popular culture. Exiled in Miami, she witnessed the transformation of the city. During the 1970s, she became a documentarian recording the Cuban traces engraved on Miami, creating one of the most meaningful bodies of images made that picture the transformation of the city during those years.

Lydia Cabrera (behind the car) and Josefina Tarafa (standing in front of the car), ca. 1957. Courtesy Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami

GALLERIES

LOCUST PROJECTS

Dates: September 12 – October 17, 2020. Open by appointment only

The gallery will showcase 3 exhibitions:

Juana Valdes: Rest Ashore

A new installation of multi-channel video and large-scale sculpture by LatinX, Miami-based artist Juana Valdes, reexamines the Cuban migration experience over the past sixty years and how it relates to the current global refugee crisis.

Juana Valdes Film Still from Rest Ashore 2020 dress

Raúl Romero: Onomonopoetics of a Puerto Rican Landscape

Explores how people in Miami connect back to their homeland, and for the artist, Puerto Rico. Romero uses his field recordings of the coqui, a small iconic frog native to Puerto Rico to create an acoustic ecology to evoke memories and a sense of place.

Raul Romero in his studio. Courtesy the artist

PROJECT ROOM: Joelle Dietrick and Owen Mundy: Tally Saves the Internet

Designed and created by North Carolina-based artists Joelle Dietrick and Owen Mundy, Tally Saves the Internet is a new, interactive, participatory digital and electronic work that explores Surveillance Capitalism - the recording and monetizing of a user’s online interest and activity - through a web-based game.

Tally diagram with trackers by Sneakaway Studio

THE MARGULIES COLLECTION AT THE WAREHOUSE

September 30, 2020 – May 1, 2021

New exhibitions feature Masters of Contemporary Art as well as the new generation of Emerging Artists.  Their ongoing collection of masterworks, photography from the archives, and other remarkable installations never disappoint.

The Margulies Collection will also support a Pop-Up Gallery: Fifty Artworks of photography and painting for sale to benefit Lotus Village Shelter for Homeless Women and Children. 100% of proceeds will go directly to the Shelter.

John Armleder, Untitled Table Painting, 1999, eight kitchen tables, Fluorescent tube,
100 x 137 x 29 in. Collection Martin Z. Margulies

Diana Lowenstein Gallery

September 12th - November 15th, 2020. Gallery open

DANIEL DOMIG: WHERE HOPES INFEST

A solo exhibition of Canadian-born and Vienna-based artist Daniel Domig. curated by Ombretta Agró Andruff, combines his large scale paintings and an architectural installation.

Daniel Doming, Blood ties and dries, 2018. Oil on Mixed Fibers, 66 7/8 x 59 in.

 


Mindy Solomon Gallery

September 12 – October 17, 2020. Gallery open

GROUP EXHIBITION

This is Where a Line BeginsDonte Hayes, Osamu Kobayashi, and Alina Maria Birkner.

Alina Birkner, Untitled, First Sunrise / Inner Sun.