MAM Turns on the Juice

Comments (0) By Carlos Suarez De Jesus Thursday, Jun 29 2006

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This summer the Miami Art Museum beckons you to unleash that inner size queen with “Big Juicy Paintings (and more): Selections from the Permanent Collection,” a space-gobbling show organizers hope will leave the public tingling with thoughts that bigger is better indeed. How big is big? Try Arturo Herrera’s When Alone Again III on for size. At 40-plus feet, it’s almost as big as a Mack truck. “Bigger,” Peter Boswell, the show’s curator boasts. “MAM’s collection is growing so rapidly that visitors to the exhibition will see a show that is bigger and juicier than we could have imagined even six months ago,” he adds. Herrera’s Kong-size canvas towers over the viewer while referencing Snow White and her seven dwarfs.

Another highlight includes a gargantuan twelve-by-fourteen foot portrait of Leon Golub’s mug. Small children could easily fit into one of the well-known painter’s pores. Boswell is cranked about the museum’s expanding collection and says many of the pieces will be making their MAM debut. “The exhibition includes a number of new acquisitions, including Fernando Botero’s Still Life, Fabian Marcaccio’s From Raging Aggression to Decoration, and groups of recently donated works by Joseph Cornell and Purvis Young.” A reminder that God doesn’t endow all canvases equally is Gene Davis’s unusual pip-squeak piece, Micropainting. This abstract artist’s thingy peters out at a half-inch square. The exhibit runs through September 17. Admission costs five dollars. Call 305-375-3000, or visit www.miamiartmuseum.org.
July 1-Sept. 17