It’s strange, but it’s true: The best time to see art in Miami is after Art Basel. Miami Art Week has come and gone, and while the art fairs have all packed up and left, so have the tourists and traffic.
In light of this, New Times has put together a roundup of the best art exhibits still around after the Art Week dust has settled. Some are open for months, others until the end of the year. All spaces mentioned are open to the public unless noted otherwise.
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Installation view of “Juan Francisco Elso: Pór America” at the Phoenix Art Museum
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami photo
Art Museums
Miami’s museums have attacked Art Week with typical enthusiasm. The Bass has been especially busy, with shows on local boy made good Hernan Bas (through May 5), Lebanese abstract painter Etel Adnan (through March 17), and installation artist Anne Duk Hee Jordan (through June 23), in addition to its Nam June Paik show that opened in October (through August 16). Pérez Art Museum Miami opened a major retrospective of Gary Simmons (through April 28) with site-specific variations on works that weren’t included in the show’s original staging at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami opened two new shows from Egyptian painter Ahmed Morsi (through April 28) and rising art world star Sasha Gordon (through March 10).
In North Miami, the Museum of Contemporary Art has shows on influential Cuban artist Juan Francisco Elso and Afrofuturist painter Jamea Richmond-Edwards (through March 17). Further north, in Fort Lauderdale, the NSU Art Museum’s major show of color field painting features work from Alma Thomas, Larry Poons, Sam Gilliam, and other important painters (through June 30), while another presentation spotlights little-known Chinese-American artist Walasse Ting (through March 10). There’s also a neat display of ceramics by Pablo Picasso coinciding with his death anniversary (through January 22).
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Antonia Wright and Ruben Millares’ mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow, a site-specific installation in Miami’s Design District
Making Miami 2023 photo
Nonprofit Art Spaces
Miami is known for its nonprofit art spaces, and several are getting a spotlight in a show called Making Miami. Organized by law firm Jayaram and happening in the Design District, the presentation catalogues the decade or so before the neighborhood was a luxury shopping mall, when art spaces like Locust Projects and Bas Fisher Invitational turned it into an arts destination (through December 26). Speaking of Locust, the art space’s recently opened location in Little Haiti has installations from local Cornelius Tulloch and Mexican artist Tania Candiani (through February 10). Tulloch, who New Times named an artist to watch, is also curating a show at Tunnel, a small artist-run space in Little Havana (by appointment), while a group of artists at Topcoat Studios in Little River have opened their first group show, “Que Te Vaya Bonito” (by appointment). On the Beach, Oolite Arts’ latest group show, “Bounce,” features a variety of works from diverse perspectives (through January 21).
Cultural Exhibitions
If you missed Trina at the Hip Hop Museum Tour’s stop in Wynwood this past weekend, there’s still some culture to be found in the neighborhood courtesy of the Museum of Graffiti. Its “Art of Hip-Hop” exhibit charts the genre’s evolution over the past 50 years. Meanwhile, the Historic Hampton House is celebrating the past and future of Black excellence with the launch of its visual arts program. The former Green Book hotel, where Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr., and other cultural icons stayed during the Jim Crow era of segregation, opened its first art exhibit, “Gimme Shelter,” featuring a slew of iconic contemporary artists, including Mark Bradford, Henry Taylor, Nick Cave, Rashid Johnson, Howardena Pindell, and Carrie Mae Weems. There’s also a monumental sculpture from local artist Reginald O’Neal on display. (through January 22).
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Basil Kincaid, Courtship of Fireflies
Rubell Museum photo
Private Collections
Miami’s privately owned collections always offer something interesting thanks to the largesse of their wealthy, art-collecting owners. Probably the best from this season has been Allapattah’s El Espacio 23, owned by billionaire developer Jorge Pérez. The show “To Weave The Sky: Textile Abstractions From the Jorge M. Pérez Collection” pairs fabric-based work with huge, impressive abstract paintings and installations. Artists featured include Lee Krasner, Frank Stella, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Daniela Libertad, Hellen Frankenthaler, and Sanford Biggers (through late 2024, appointment preferred).
In Wynwood, the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse has refreshed the art on display, anchored by a show pairing works by Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella, and George Sega (through April 27). Solo presentations for Italian artist Mimmo Paladino and photographers Helen Levitt and Danny Lyon are also on display (through April 27), and the collection has also retained its massive Anselm Kiefer installations. The Rubell Museum has changed things up significantly, with its most expansive gallery refresh in years. The museum’s hangar-sized Gallery 23 has been taken over by artists-in-residence Basil Kincaid, known for textiles, and Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, whose massive neo-fauvist paintings are a must-see. A wild, museum-wide show on Los Angeles-based artists has also been added and works from El Anatsui, Thomas Houseago, and others join favorites from Basquiat, Keith Haring, Yayoi Kusama, Kehinde Wiley, and others (through late 2024).
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Reginald O’Neal’s Flower in the Window, 2023
Spinello Projects photo
Art Galleries
If Miami’s gallery scene seems bigger than ever, you’re not far off. A wave of local and international galleries have opened up in Allapattah with plenty of interesting shows on view. Local gallery KDR inaugurated its new space with a show from Alejandro Piñeiro Bello coinciding with his Rubell Museum display (through January 13, by appointment), while Mindy Solomon is staging a group show, “In Spiritual Light,” headlined by Gavin Perry’s impressive resin abstractions (through January 6). Ukrainian expat Voloshyn Gallery has a group show, “Further Than Light and Language,” with impressively dark themes (through January 9, by appointment), while important Colombian gallery La Cometa opened its Miami location down the street from the Rubell museum with three shows from Miguel Ángel Rojas, Camilo Restrepo, and Ricardo Cárdenas (through February 10).
Spinello Projects opened “Gay Era,” a series of shows dedicated to queer artists at sites across Miami, including at Art Basel Miami Beach. Four of the shows are still open, one at Swampspace in the Design District, featuring fotonovela-inspired paintings by the late Adolfo Rene Sanchez (through January 13), and the other three at Spinello’s Allapattah main space (through January 13, by appointment). They’re sharing space with a typically sublime show by Reginald O’Neal featuring paintings of flowers and souvenir figurines (through January 13, by appointment).
Beyond Allapattah, Ascaso Gallery in Omni has a great show on Jesús Rafael Soto (through February 29; open to the public), while Jupiter Contemporary in Normandy Isles is displaying paintings by George Clinton — yes, that George Clinton, the legendary founder of Parliament-Funkadelic (through December 31, open to the public).