Pérez Museum of Modern Art

By Laura Tanna

Amazing Miami became even more amazing after the creation of Museum Park in 2017 with the Herzog and de Meuron designed Jorge M. Pérez Museum of Modern Art (PAMM) on one side and the new Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science on the other, across a vast green space. Spectacular One Thousand Museum condo tower, the first and only condo in the Western Hemisphere designed by acclaimed and now deceased Zaha Hadid rises on Biscayne Boulevard across from the museums while Biscayne Bay provides a relaxing backdrop.

The City of Miami gave the gorgeous bayside property for the new art museum which opened in December 2013, while Miami-Dade voters approved $100 million in bond funding. Millions more came from private donors, with Jorge Manuel Pérez giving a gift of $40 million. There was controversy when the Centre was renamed Pérez Museum of Modern Art to honour him for fear that future donors might be deterred. But galleries within PAMM now bear the names of other important contributors, as does a wall in tribute.

Pérez the man is as fascinating as the museum itself. Born October 17, 1949 in Buenos Aires, from Cuban parents of Spanish ancestry, his father headed Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company in Argentina. The family moved to Cuba after the revolution where his father started his own pharmaceutical company, which was soon nationalised, and the family fled to Colombia. Pérez left Bogota for higher education in the USA in 1968 — though one account says he followed a girlfriend. Whatever the reason, he attended Miami Dade Community College, then graduated summa cum laude in economics from Long Island University before moving on to the University of California, and finally to the University of Michigan where he gained a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning.

He moved to Miami, Florida where his parents lived after he married an American with whom he subsequently had three children, though the couple later divorced. He has a fourth child with his second wife Darlene. In 1979 he and Stephen M. Ross from New York formed The Related Group, becoming the biggest developers of low-income, affordable housing in Miami and South Florida. First with rental apartments, later condominiums, and then luxury condo towers in South Florida and sites in Las Vegas, Pérez went on to become a billionaire real estate tycoon.

Though Pérez had been associated with the museum since 1994, after overcoming financial problems associated with the housing market meltdown in 2008 and a health scare in 2010, Pérez, in consultation with his family, signed the Warren Buffett-Bill Gates inspired The Giving Pledge to donate at least half of his wealth for philanthropic causes. PAMM is but one of many causes assisted by Pérez. As Chairman and CEO of The Related Group real estate development company his wealth in 2018 was estimated at 2.6 billion dollars.

Former Chief Curator of PAMM, Tobias Ostrander, whom I interviewed in April 2019, noted: “Aaron Podhurst has been the chairman for over 20 years, so he’s been really crucial in getting this building built but he really pushed Jorge to get more involved.” Of Pérez, Ostrander revealed: “He’s a self-made man so he really knows what it means to work and to really put passion into what he’s doing. I think his gift is his enthusiasm. He’ll look at a work of art and just be ‘WOW, isn’t that the most amazing thing?’ That kind of enthusiasm is contagious and that’s why I think he’s been so successful, honestly. It’s fun to be around him because you get excited.  I couldn’t ask for a better patron in that sense. He’s also extremely respectful of the professional staff and our expertise.” Ostrander said: “Jorge continues to be incredibly generous to the museum and he’s helping us build the endowment. He’s particularly interested in building the collection and giving us many avenues to do that.” In 2016 it was announced that in addition to Pérez’ original donation, he would be giving 200 works valued at $5 million dollars from his own Cuban art collection, $5 million to build the museum’s endowment fund, and $5 million to acquire more Latin American artwork.

PAMM and the Caribbean

I was thrilled to see Hew Locke’s For Those in Peril on the Sea, 2011 exhibition of 79 boats of varying dimensions hanging in the lobby once again. Though the artist was born in Scotland, he moved to Guyana at Independence before moving to England. His work, referencing bolsaros, resonates deeply with the Cuban American community, many of whom have lost loved ones. Another extraordinarily evocative exhibition was that of Jamaican Ebony G. Patterson. Her While the dew is still on the roses with its night blooming garden video and lush floral and textile creations was to end May 5^th, 2019 but the superb catalogue, including text by acclaimed Jamaican author Olive Senior, is still available commemorating Patterson’s art.

Caribbean artists are appreciating even greater exposure in Miami as a result of the July 18, 2019 opening of The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Contemporary Caribbean Art, a group show of 14 contemporary Caribbean artists from Haiti, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Bahamas, and the USA of Caribbean heritage. PAMM Associate Curator Maria Elena Ortiz is organising it with Dr. Marsha Pearce, a Trinidadian Cultural Studies Scholar based at the University of the West Indies St. Augustine Campus. Said Ostrander: “They’re both exploring notions of what a Caribbean future might look like. They asked artists to consider that in the context of each artist’s work, thinking about how the future is always related to the past, thinking about how the past informs the future, but also in a Caribbean space often weighted in the past or still dealing with traumas of the past, the future is often not discussed, or not confronted in a direct way. So, it was provoking artists to think about that, artists both working in the Caribbean and in the diaspora, really mixing those spaces, not maintaining that divide in any way.

“We have a project called Tilting Axis. When I started here, I started working in the Caribbean, talking to professionals about how we as an institution might foster dialogue in the field. Artist Annalee Davis and Holly Bailey, a curator, wanted to start Tilting Axis, an annual meeting trying to get arts professionals in the Dutch, British, Spanish, and French Caribbean to meet and talk because in the Caribbean a lot of the conversations still are held along linguistic or colonial lines. The first one was in Barbados at an artist’s run space called Fresh Milk. The second was held here at PAMM. The third at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands and the fourth at Centro Leon in Santiago, Dominican Republic. This year we’re doing it at Memorial Act in Guadalupe.

“We think of ourselves as an international museum of modern and contemporary art. We try to be best in class in work from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the African diaspora. And we’re particularly interested in the crossover between African diaspora, Afro-Caribbean, Latin America, and the Caribbean, those intersections are interesting to us. So, we’re continually doing research and collecting from those parts of the world.”

In July 2019, after eight years with PAMM, Tobias Oslander resigned to explore new opportunities and in January 2020 René Morales was named Director of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator of PAMM after having been on the curatorial staff there since 2005, during which period he curated over 50 exhibitions himself.

Of interest is the newly created Caribbean Cultural Institute (CCI), a curatorial and research platform at Pérez Art Museum Miami that promotes the art of the Caribbean and its diasporas through scholarships, exhibitions, fellowships, public programs, and collection development. The CCI was established with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,  drawing on old and new initiatives that PAMM has been developing for over 10 years. The Other Side of Now was the first major project tied to PAMM’s Caribbean Cultural Institute and was on view until June 2020 — JP