Last week, we had the chance to roam the construction site of the Perez Art Museum Miami, the $220 million new home of the Miami Art Museum scheduled to open in December. And this morning, we're finding out more about the kinds of art we'll be seeing inside its hand-carved exteriors and giant glass windows.
Miami art collectors Dennis Scholl, vice president/arts at the Knight Foundation, and his wife Debra Scholl, chair of Locust Projects, have donated millions of dollars' worth of contemporary art from their own collection to PAMM, the Miami Herald reports.
See also:
- Dennis Scholl Talks Knight Arts Challenge and Turning Money into Art
- Inside PAMM: The New Miami Art Museum Lets the Sunshine In (Photos)
The 300-work donation is comprised of works from the 1960s to the present day, and includes work by artists Ólafur Elíasson, Anna Gaskell, Ray Pettibon, Simon Starling, and Zoe Strauss.
The Scholls told the Herald that their intention was to motivate other collectors and to support PAMM, which upset some in Miami's arts community when it added the name of Jorge Perez to its title in exchange from a $35 million gift from the developer. But what's more interesting is the relocation of the works of art themselves. The Scholls house their collection at World Class Boxing in Wynwood; now, some of those works are moving to downtown, mirroring the exodus of other artists and gallerists who've left the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in search of cheaper rents and better opportunities. Some, like Downtown Art House tenants Dimensions Variable, BFI, and Turn-Based Press, have landed downtown.
By the end of this year, a major Miami museum set in the middle of downtown will also show art that once fit into the Wynwood landscape. Maybe the center of the city will become the city's center for the arts after all.
Follow Ciara LaVelle on Twitter @ciaralavelle.
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