Wag the Art

Dog-themed art has a message for you. It doesn’t appreciate being reduced to the series of 16 “dogs playing poker” paintings that Cassius Marcellus Coolidge made in 1903 for a cigar company’s ad campaign, and it’s going to prove it to you at the opening reception for “Dog Tales: Words and Images, Fact and Fiction” at the Miami-Dade Public Library Main branch.

Independent curator Barbara Young culled the exhibition from a range of Miami artists and collectors, discovering or commissioning great work by local stars such as Bert Rodriguez, Pablo Cano, Jill Cannady, Mette Tommerup, Robert Chambers, and John Bailly. Because it’s the first night of the exhibition (which runs through August 23), there will of course be wine and cookies, in addition to an appearance by the Miami Poetry Collective’s Poem Depot (full disclosure: this writer is a member), in which visitors can order a custom-made poem written on the spot. Suggestion: “Ode to a Sleeping Chihuahua.” Everything — admission, wine, cookies, and poems — is free.
June 11-Aug. 23, 6 p.m., 2009