Miami Art Museum Presents New Work Miami
Exhibition Preview, Saturday, July 17, 2010, 6-9pm
MAM members free, non-members $20
MAM opens New Work Miami 2010, an exhibition of new and recent works by Miami-based artists. The opening festivities will feature a new performance by TM Sisters entitled “With Out You, Babe.” Also performing, Oscar Fuentes and the Gipsy Catz.
Wine for the event provided by Aveleda
(July 18 through October 17, 2010)

Exhibition Provides a Glimpse into Studios and Minds of Miami’s Art Community
With New and Never-Before-Seen Works by Miami-based Artists

June 10, 2010 – MIAMI – Miami Art Museum, a modern and contemporary art museum located in downtown Miami, FL, will provide a partial snapshot of the Miami art scene at this moment with New Work Miami, opening Sunday, July 18, 2010 and closing on Sunday, October 17, 2010. This Miami Art Museum-organized exhibition is conceived as an exuberant salute to Miami’s artistic community, which is bursting with dynamism and sophisticated artistic points of view.

Approximately 35 artists based in the Miami area will present new and recent artworks executed in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, video, environmental installation and performance. The bulk of the exhibition will be presented in Miami Art Museum’s recently unified 5,000 sq. ft. Plaza Level Gallery, with numerous performances, events and screenings to be presented throughout the exhibition’s run.

“The aim is to connect Miami Art Museum’s broad audience – which includes a full spectrum of Miami’s population, from avid art followers to the general public – with the exciting and innovative artistic developments unfolding right in our backyard,” said Peter Boswell, MAM assistant director for programs/senior curator. “Nearly every aspect of the production, from the gallery notes, to the title wall, to the sounds in the elevator, will be created by artists in an effort to activate the museum artistically as much as possible.”

Many of the artists are creating works for the exhibition that reach beyond the museum walls, including the Talking Head Transmitters, who will broadcast interviews with both scheduled guests and walk-in MAM visitors over live AM radio. On the lobby monitors, a video artwork by Tatiana Vahan, which depicts scenes from the artist’s childhood embodying a typical, middle-class American family, intermittently interrupted by real TV commercials. Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza will turn the exhibition’s gallery notes from a traditional museum brochure format to a tabloid newspaper that will be distributed at various public locations throughout the city. Other artworks will challenge visitors’ perceptions, such as Don Lambert’s Flatland, a large sculpture with rapidly spinning circles that create the illusion of a vortex-like dept, and an optical phenomenon of suggested color. Felecia Chizuko Carlisle will return regularly throughout the run of the show to continue transforming the installation of “Sketches” in space.

“More than ever the key to participating in global cultural conversations is to speak from within one’s local conditions,” says René Morales, MAM associate curator and co-organizer of the exhibition. “In Miami, we have a richly textured artistic community, one that is increasingly able to make strong and internationally relevant contributions.”

The exhibition will provide a glimpse into the studios and minds of the artists working in Miami. In addition, it will identify and clarify to Miami Art Museum’s audiences various broad patterns in local artistic production. For example, several of the artists in the exhibition focus on aspects of urban life that exist just below the surface of what we observe from day to day, while others focus on developing new approaches to traditional artistic conventions. Among the artists whose work is presented in the gallery space are Kevin Arrow, Felecia Chizuko Carlisle, Jim Drain, Lynne Golob Gelfman, Michael Genovese, Jacin Giordano, Guerra de la Paz, Adler Guerrier, Don Lambert, Gustavo Matamoros, Beatriz Monteavaro, Gean Moreno/Ernesto Oroza, Peggy Nolan, Fabian Peña, Christina Pettersson, Vickie Pierre, Manny Prieres, Christopher Stetser, Talking Head Transmitters, Robert Thiele, Mette Tommerup, Frances Trombly, Tatiana Vahan, Marcos Valella, Viking Funeral and Michelle Weinberg.

In line with Miami Art Museum’s commitment to community outreach and education, the exhibition will be supplemented with special performance events, artist talks and interactive programs throughout the course of the project. To receive event invitations and reminders, visit miamiartmuseum.org.

New Work Miami is organized by Miami Art Museum and is supported by donations to MAM’s Annual Exhibition Fund. It is curated by Peter Boswell, assistant director for programs/senior curator, and René Morales, associate curator.

Miami Art Museum serves one of the most diverse and fast-growing regions of the country, where a confluence of North and Latin American cultures adds vibrancy and texture to the civic landscape. MAM embraces its role as a cultural anchor and touchstone in a city that welcomes countless ethnic and age groups, lifestyles and ideas. MAM’s far-ranging vision is expressed in the breadth and depth of its exhibition program, and its ambitious education and public programs. The Museum continues to build its collection of holdings from the twentieth century through the present, as it embarks on a major new building and expansion project. The new MAM designed by Herzog & de Meuron will open in downtown Miami’s Museum Park in 2013.