Artistically Social

On Display at Avant Gallery

Amy Rosenberg is an attorney and arts advocate who founded the Overtown Music Project and the Arsht Center’s young patrons group. She is the co-founder of the environmental non-profit Dream in Green. Amy is a member of Art Basel’s Junior Host Committee and sits on the Board of the Funding Arts Network. She also serves on the New World Symphony’s Friends Committee as well as The Wolfsonian-FIU’s Visionaries Committee.

New York magazine once called it “A store dedicated to pop, kitsch and T&A, in semi-gloss, soft-, and hardcover book form.” Well, pat yourselves on the back, Miami: we now have our very own Taschen Store. We’ve made it. Miami joins German art publisher Taschen’s outposts in Paris, Berlin and New York.

The opening on Lincoln Road, in the Herzog & de Meuron -designed space, was cause for celebration for the literate set in Miami and those who believe that design flaws can be mitigated by enormous coffee table books (I am one of those people). Guests were treated to the beats of DJ Faux Real, drinks and the beautiful commissioned floor that was hand-poured by British artist Toby Ziegler. (The stones used are all indigenous to Florida.)

Ceal Floyer’s first solo museum opening in the United States took place at MoCA and showcased her multi-media works from the late 1990s to the present. Floyer once described her own work as “manifesting uncertainty in art.” Her works, all about perception, are playful and sparse. Bonnie Clearwater who curated the exhibition, generously pointed out the humor of several of the pieces to attendees.

So rarely do Miami residents get to hear opera in the open air surrounded by palm trees. Unfortunately, a bout of rain and nasty weather prevented Bal Harbour Shops from presenting “Opera on the Green” outside, as they had originally intended. However, over 100 appreciative opera fans made it to One Bal Harbour to the hear the talented FIU Opera Theater under the direction of Robert B. Dundas, Associate Professor of Voice. The event was a part of the Village of Bal Harbour’s weekly cultural arts series. Students wowed the audience with popular selections from operas, operettas, Broadway, and classical Cuban and Neapolitan songs. The event was warm, fun and a delight to all the senses.

The provocatively titled, Orgasm, Inc. screened at The Wolfsonian-FIU this month and included a director’s talk and reception at the World Erotic Art Museum. Following the screening of her documentary, filmmaker Liz Canner led a discussion on the search for the female Viagra drug and the medicalization of female sexuality. The film offered a provocative look at how pharmaceutical companies are willing to risk women’s health and happiness for billions in profits to treat the newest disease.

The Wolfsonian-FIU also hosted a lecture entitled “Collector’s Talk” in conjunction with the upcoming exhibition +5: Recent Acquisitions from The Wolfsonian Collection and the museum’s fifteenth anniversary. The series kicked off with William Helfand, a renowned collector and scholar of medically themed visual materials who donated hundreds of pieces of ephemeral materials to the library, several of which are on view in the museum’s installation Advertising for Health. The lecture series continued with a discussion between museum founder Mitchell Wolfson, Jr., Wolfsonian director Cathy Leff, and Wolfsonian curator Sarah Schleuning. The three discussed Wolfson’s lifelong pursuit of the rare and overlooked objects that are the foundation of the museum’s collection.

This month, I proudly took the pledge to stop using the R-word as part of Best Buddies challenge at Britto Central. Best Buddies, Special Olympics and supporters from across the world united in support of a grass roots movement challenging the use of the R-word, recognized for its hurtful impact on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Best Buddies and Special Olympics hosted the event. Limited edition official R-word shirts designed by Britto were offered for sale.

Annie Wharton, a Los Angeles-based painter, video artist, and writer, who has shown her work in museum and gallery exhibitions internationally (and used to live here in Miami before she left us for the left coast), was the curator of “Chained to a Creature of a Different Kingdom” at David Castillo Gallery. The show featured works by Skip Arnold, aaron GM, Susan Lee-Chun, Marilyn Minter, Ali Prosch and Pipilotti Rist. The works of 15 video artists who use their bodies and actions as their main subject matter were assembled.

The show’s ingenious title was taken from the words of Marcel Proust: “It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body.”

For those of us not interested in waving our glow sticks to and fro during Winter Music Conference, a kinder, gentler but no less magical experience took place at Max Pierre’s Ae District. Max featured special DJ sets by Maseo of De La Soul and Questlove from the Grammy Award winning band, The Roots. The event had the feeling of an intimate, exclusive party but was actually free and open to the public with complimentary liquor from Ciroc.

Until next time…