As you can see from our work-in-progress picture, when We Heart visited Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) in October there was still plenty to do, but the curators were already busily arranging displays amid the construction. Two months on and there are still finishing touches to be applied, but the multi-million dollar waterfront venue is nearly complete.
And what a spectacular venue it is, designed by visionary architects Herzog & de Meuron and sitting pretty in a prime spot on Biscayne Bay provided by the City of Miami. The venue will be joined in 2015 by the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science and the development, formerly the Bicentennial Park, will be known collectively as Museum Park. PAMM has been positioned to look onto the park, the water and the city, and Herzog & de Meuron’s design aims to break down the traditional Art Deco separation of inside and out by making Miami’s climate and vegetation prominent references.
Jorge M Pérez got his name on the door by an exceedingly generous donation of 110 works including Latin American masterpieces by the likes of José Bedia, Beatriz González, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta Echaurren, Diego Rivera, and Joaquín Torres-Garcia (as well as chipping in $40 million cash). Reflecting Miami’s multicultural demographic, there is strong representation of Caribbean and North American art extending to the Atlantic Rim and beyond, and the collection which began in 1996 now numbers 1,300 works, swelled this year by the acquisition of 300 multimedia pieces from Dennis and Debra Scholl. This place really is a showstopper that should be at the top of everybody’s Miami itinerary.