![]() ![]() But the talks ceased when the MOCA board sued North Miami for breach of contract, with charges that the city had failed to maintain its building or pay Gartenfeld’s salary. Shortly thereafter, MOCA initiated talks with the Bass Museum of Art, located in an expanded 1930s Art Deco building in Miami Beach, about the prospect of merging or at least hosting work. Her replacement as interimĭirector was the museum’s chief curator, the 26-year-old Gartenfeld, who had only recently been hired away from a job as a writer and editor at Art in America magazine. In 2013, MOCA director Bonnie Clearwater departed for a rival institution in Fort Lauderdale. The residents of North Miami, one city among many that make up the Miami metropolitan area, had voted a year earlier against a proposal for a $15 million expansion plan, and uncertainty about MOCA’s future began to set in. In 2013 the publicly funded MOCA-then the only contemporary art museum in Greater Miami, a global destination populated by 6 million people-was staring down an existential crisis. But the origin story behind the institution is a four-year saga that traces back in a different direction, a half hour north on I-95, through Little Haiti, to the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. From the Miami Beach Convention Center that houses the fair, it’s a 15-minute drive across a causeway to the ICA. ©CHRIS OFILI/COURTESY DAVID ZWIRNER, NEW YORK/LONDON/PRIVATE COLLECTIONĪlongside the ICA’s chief curator, Alex Gartenfeld, Salpeter is tasked with establishing not just an important addition to Miami’s cultural landscape but also a globally significant institution that can expect a spotlight on its programming once a year when the world’s foremost art collectors, curators, and dealers come to town for December’s Art Basel Miami Beach. ![]() “Being in the space and realizing the impact it’s going to have on the Design District-and Miami-was mind-blowing.”Ĭhris Ofili, Forgive Them, 2015, oil and charcoal on linen. “Going to the gala, honoring Irma and Norman, it was just amazing,” Robins said after the night was over. For the past three years, the ICA has operated out of temporary lodgings in the nearby Moore Building, which Robins owns. Real estate developer Craig Robins was on hand to witness the latest addition to the neighborhood he helped envision and build from scratch. Collectors Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz were in London for the Frieze art fair, but they bought a table anyway, which Salpeter filled with local artists. One night in October, local collectors including Jorge Pérez, Martin Margulies, and Debra Scholl strolled through an accompanying sculpture garden and into the new building’s main atrium to attend a Cartier-sponsored gala in honor of the Bramans and Gober. Elsewhere, the museum is showing commissioned large-scale paintings by Chris Ofili and an exhibition, “The Everywhere Studio,” that examines the societal implications of the act of art making.īefore the public could see the completed ICA in December, Miami engaged in one of its favorite pastimes: throwing parties in museums. It was a gift from ICA board chair Irma Braman and her husband, Norman, who have also loaned a series of pictures by Robert Gober as well as one of his iconic drain works from 1993–94-all of which have rarely been exhibited. The ICA’s inaugural offerings greet a visitor on the ground floor with Edward and Nancy Kienholz’s installation The Soup Course at the She-She Café (1982), a large work that evokes a cracked restaurant scene, re-created to scale, with a doll’s head floating ominously above. In the case of the ICA, the stroke of luck allowed for the debut of a momentous addition to the city’s ascendant art scene. Like most of Miami’s more established arts institutions, the new glass-paneled citadel in the Design District proved fortunate in the face of a historic storm. “We were very blessed,” said Ellen Salpeter, the institute’s director. But the not-yet-opened Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami-the Magic City’s newest contemporary art hub and the first one ever built in the city proper-was spared. This past September, Hurricane Irma thrashed Miami with 100-mile-per-hour winds, biblical floods, and an accumulation of otherworldly force that leveled buildings far and wide. ![]()
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