dig

Yesterday’s NYT reported that Terence Riley, currently curator of architecture and design at MoMA, has accepted the position of director at the Miami Art Museum. Elisa Turner and Daniel Chang contributed to a Herald article announcing the matter. And many are blogging about it.
I don’t find it of much interest that MAM’s board hired a curator/architect/director to ensure that the Museum Park project will be done right, thus, assuring that Miami will have a very good public building. I could digress into the functionality of the the current MAM/Library/Historical Museum building and Cesar Pelli’s mistakes in the making(MPAC), but I’ll talk about it some other time. I don’t think Terence Riley will be Miami’s art/architectural savior, unless the position of MAM’s directorship and MAM grow to encompass the role of being the city’s steward on all things art and architecture. I would like to see like some aspect of that come true and everyone’s wish of Miami being on the international art agenda for more than one week per year. But the other Miami institutions will have something to say about that stewardship position; MoCa in North Miami and Miami Art Central in South Miami are doing great job culturally.

There might be a lot of PR that comes with the presence of Terence Riley in Miami; and MAM’s shows will probably get more inter/national coverage, much like MoCA. And the design and architecture ‘community’ might come to relevance and even prominence.

Party at Churchill’s to benefit ISAW.

The guardian has an article on Miami and some post-ArtBasel reflections. It, of course, refers to Miami has ‘the city that coke built’–a Miami New times reference. The article focuses on Miami as a host city for culture. At CIFO, Manny Diaz said that was one of his goals. Well, here some international press confirming it.

This is a similar article; the noteworthy parts being, Robert Rauschenberg and Alain Robbe-Grillet was in town, Raleigh Hotel parties and a quote:

There were many events outside the Convention Centre. The most moving work I saw was at Miami Art Central, a museum set among Spanish-style bungalows in the suburbs. Here they were showing William Kentridge, a South African artist who does brilliant charcoal drawings that he works into disturbing films. I thought that these genuinely caught some of the horror and pain of the late 20th century.