About Pérez Art Museum Miami
On December 4, 2013, the Miami Art Museum reopens as the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) in its new Herzog & de Meuron-designed facility in downtown Miami. The expanded space strengthens the Museum’s role as a vital cultural and educational resource commensurate with Miami’s thriving community of artists, designers, and collectors, its art-engaged public, and the location of some of the world’s most important art and design fairs. The Museum continues to serve one of the most diverse populations in one of the fastest growing regions in the country, where a confluence of Caribbean, North American, and South American cultures adds vibrancy and variety to civic activity. The new PAMM will support progressive arts education, build community cohesiveness, and catalyze the continued revitalization of downtown. With its opening, and that of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science in 2015, downtown Miami will be transformed into a central destination on Miami’s cultural map.
Pérez Art Museum Miami’s vision is expressed in its rapidly growing collection and exhibition program. The Museum began collecting in 1996 with a focus on art from the 20th and 21st centuries and the cultures of the Atlantic Rim (the Americas, Western Europe, and Africa). The collection is attuned to the globalization of the art world and reflects the transmission of ideas across continents, while still concentrating on those issues and themes that are most pertinent to Miami audiences. Another essential aspect of the collection is the acquisition of works by artists from South Florida. Together, these collecting goals create a dynamic interplay between local, regional, and global perspectives.
The Museum’s collection now numbers over 1,800 works. Through its capital campaign, momentum and enthusiasm for the continued expansion of the collection has steadily increased. In 2013, the Museum cumulatively acquired nearly 500 works from the collections of Dennis and Debra Scholl, Mimi and Bud Floback, and Craig Robins and Jackie Soffer, which range from painting and sculpture to video, photography, and installation by such artists as Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Olafur Eliasson, Dan Flavin, Liam Gillick, Konstantin Grcic, Jim Hodges, Byron Kim, Josephine Meckseper, Dennis Oppenheim, Pipilotti Rist, and Carolee Schneeman. As part of his gift to the Museum’s capital campaign in 2011, Jorge M. Pérez, for whom the new Museum is named, gifted a portion of his collection to its permanent collection. Among the 110 works are masterpieces by some of history’s most important Latin American artists, including José Bedia, Beatriz González, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta Echaurren, Diego Rivera, and Joaquín Torres-Garcia, among others. In fall 2013, Pérez and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation equally funded a $1 million grant for the purchase of contemporary works by African American artists for the Museum’s permanent collection. Additionally in 2012, the Museum commissioned works from renowned artists Yael Bartana (Israel), Bouchra Khalili (Morocco), and Monika Sosnowska (Poland) that will be exhibited at PAMM’s opening and possibly acquired for the Museum’s permanent collection.
Pérez Art Museum Miami’s exhibition program has included important single-artist surveys on the work of Cuban artist José Bedia (2012), Latin American artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (2010), and Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca (2009), as well successful group exhibitions such as the New Work Miami series (2010 and 2012), which explored the innovative work of local Miami artists, and an exploration of masterworks from the collection of Jorge Pérez (2013). Building on its robust exhibition history, PAMM’s inaugural lineup will include Ai Weiwei: According to What?, the first major international survey of this artist’s multifaceted artistic oeuvre; Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, an exhibition that examines the exchange of people, goods, ideas, and information between the Caribbean basin, Europe, and North America through 400 works; as well as smaller, focused presentations of the work of Cuban painter Amelia Peláez and Haitian born, Miami-based artist, Edouard Duval-Carrié.
Currently, the Museum’s school education program is the largest art education program in Miami- Dade County outside of the public school system. Altogether, the Museum’s educational programming reaches more than 35,000 people per year. With the transition to its new building, the Museum anticipates doubling its reach during year one. The facility’s expanded education spaces were developed to foster learning about and through art and art-making and include an auditorium, library, classrooms, and art and digital workshop spaces. From its Knight Foundation Program, which aims to improve literacy and problem-solving skills, to Brick x Brick, an after school program for teens, to Time-Based Arts, an active program of film/video, performance and participatory arts events, PAMM is seeking innovative ways to engage with the community and serve as a resource for all ages and backgrounds.
A Brief History: Becoming PAMM
Pérez Art Museum Miami began as the Center for Fine Arts, which was founded in 1984 as a strictly exhibiting organization, presenting works from the entire breadth of history and lacking a collection of its own. In 1996, the Center began an institution-wide reorganization which resulted in the creation of the Miami Art Museum and a focused mission to collect and exhibit works of art from the 1930s to the present with a special emphasis on the art of the Americas.
As Miami rapidly gained momentum as a cultural hub in the early 2000s, the Museum’s leadership proposed a plan for an expanded facility that would enable the Museum to better serve its growing audiences through a robust collecting, curatorial, and education program.
In 2004, the voters of Miami-Dade County approved $100 million in bond funding and the City of Miami provided a dramatic location on Biscayne Bay for the new facility. As of November 2013, private donors had committed $94.5 million in additional support for the building and institutional endowment. In December 2011, Jorge M. Pérez, a longtime trustee and leading collector of Latin American art, made a landmark leadership gift of $40 million in cash and art to support the campaign for the new Museum. In recognition of his generosity and advocacy for the project, the Museum will be renamed the Pérez Art Museum Miami when it reopens. The new PAMM serves as a cultural anchor and touchstone in a city that welcomes diverse ethnic and age groups, lifestyles, and ideas.
Pérez Art Museum Miami: Architecture Fact Sheet
With 200,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor programmable space, the new Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) provides room for larger and more varied displays of the Museum’s collection and special exhibitions and includes public gardens and outdoor sculpture installations. Pérez Art Museum Miami’s design is highly responsive to the city’s climate and the needs of a young, growing art museum, creating a dynamic interplay between the cultural experience and that of the outdoor green spaces. Overlooking Biscayne Bay, the Museum further catalyzes the transformation of Miami’s downtown district, and with its opening in December, strengthens the city’s momentum as an emerging global art capital.
Green Initiatives:
Registered for Leadership in Energy (LEED) Certification -Exterior Canopy: Reduces loads on electrical, mechanical, and plumbing systems -Hanging Gardens: Composed of native plants and irrigated by collected rainwater, reducing water consumption -Air Conditioning: Under-floor air distribution improves air quality, cools more efficiently, reduces ductwork, and decreases energy consumption -Lighting Plan: Daylight dimming sensors in the office spaces and use of natural and florescent light in the galleries -Temperature Control: Waste heat recovery chillers for dehumidification The project team is targeting a 20% reduction in the energy cost compared to standard museum buildings.
