Museums, private collections offer Art Basel experiences

Art Basel Miami Beach has partnered with South Florida’s most prominent art museums and private collections that will give visitors an expanded arts experience.

Local art institutions, galleries and organizations are set to host a wide range of outstanding events, exhibitions, and special projects beyond the fair throughout Art Basel week.

The Bass Museum of Art at 2100 Collins Ave. in Miami Beach currently has “Carola Bravo’s Between Absence and Presence,” on display. The artist is the third cycle winner of the museum’s New Monuments open artist call, a project supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation through the museum’s Knight Art Commissions Program. Installed in Collins Park, Bravo’s temporary, site-specific monument will be on view through January 2024.

Miami-based, Venezuelan artist Carola Bravo’s work includes architectural public art and immersive site-specific video and art installations.

Through her practice she explores the geometry of spaces and how they intersect with history, memory and time.

“The Bass conceived of New Monuments as a way to elevate artistic voices in Miami,” said Silvia Karman Cubiñá, the executive director and chief curator of The Bass. “In its third year, we’re excited to continue to provide a forum where local artists engage in the national conversation redefining monuments and who or what they honor and represent.”

This year, de la Cruz Collection at 23 NE 41st St. is exhibiting “New Perspectives: House in Motion,” which represents the collection’s history, bringing together paintings, sculptures and site-specific installations from the private collection. The works are installed to offer new perspectives and interpretations, emphasizing the fluid nature of contemporary art.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami at 61 NE 41st St., will present “Ahmed Morsi in New York: Elegy of the Sea.” Opening Dec. 5, the exhibit brings the major figure in Egyptian modernism and the contemporary art canon, the painter, poet, and critic Ahmed Morsi. The art installation features a number of paintings from 1983 to 2012 that the artist made in New York, where he continues to live.

A new survey of acclaimed artist Charles Gaines is now on display at ICA, Miami. The exhibition brings together for the first time 60 works from 1992 to the present, including two monumental works, one of which the artist is recreating for the first time in nearly two decades.

Tau Lewis’ new sculpture “The Cure” evokes a mythic world of her own creation. The artist works in an array of techniques including hand-sewing, appliqué, carving, and assemblage. She honors the materials and creative modalities intrinsic to communities of the African diaspora.

On. Dec. 5, Locust Projects at 297 NE 67th St. presents “Cornelius Tulloch: Poetics of Place.” which is an architectural installation that will create a communal space for cultural exchange, storytelling and creative expression. Set in the ruins of a Miami home’s porch space, the installation shadows the dystopian future we face due to current climate gentrification in our city.

“Waterbirds: Migratory Sound Flow” by Mexican artist Tania Candiani will also be on display at Locust. Interested in language, sound and the afterlife of obsolete technologies, the artist has created devices that translate images, shapes and words into sounds and music by repurposing looms, keyboards, typewriters and other old mechanical devices.

Margulies Collection at the Warehouse at 591 NW 27th St. has 176 photographs on exhibition from photographer Helen Levitt. On view are works from her New York street scenes, first proofs, graffiti and subway portrait series she made with Walker Evans in 1938.

This season, Margulies Collection is presenting several new and noteworthy exhibitions, including “MOTHERWELL SEGAL, STELLA,” featuring seminal works by three of the most outstanding American artists of the second half of the twentieth century. The paintings on view are by Robert Motherwell, a leading member of the New York School of Abstract Expressionist art, George Segal, who became prominent during the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, and Frank Stella, featuring a rare look at an early 1961 shaped canvas from his Copper series using industrial paint.

Mimmo Paladino returns to the Margulies Collection with a solo exhibition of nine paintings and bronze sculptures ranging from 1990 to 2022. This prominent contemporary Italian artist’s career dates to the avant-garde movements of the 1960s and 1970s. His works layer figurative, non-figurative, decorative, and symbolic images steeped in the rich cultural heritage of his Italian homeland.

The Pérez Art Museum Miami at 1103 Biscayne Blvd. is set to exhibit starting Dec. 5 “Gary Simmons: Public Enemy,” which is the first comprehensive career survey of the work of the multidisciplinary artist and his most in-depth presentation of work to date. The exhibition covers 30 years of Simmons’ career, including about 70 works.

“Yayoi Kusama: Love is Calling” has interwoven ideas of Pop art, Minimalism, and psychedelia throughout the artist’s paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, designs and architectural interventions.

“Joan Didion: What She Means” is an exhibition as portrait, an examination of the life of the great American artist, Joan Didion, by curator Hilton Als.

The Rubell Museum Miami at 1100 NW 23rd St. is participating with its ongoing exhibition since 2019 “Collection Highlights.” Artists include Jean-Michel Basquiat, George Condo and Martha Jungwirth.