When the Miami Art Museum announced it was renaming itself for real estate mogul Jorge Pérez, people lost their minds. It wasn't just that the Pérez Art Museum of Miami's acronym, PAMM, sounds more like a cooking spray than an art collection.
No, people were really pissed off because Pérez forked over only an extra $5 million up front to get his name etched in perpetuity. (His $35 million gift includes $5 million he already promised plus $15 million worth of his art collection; another $10 million will be donated down the road.) Miami taxpayers, meanwhile, gave $100 million and a free bayfront location.
Hey, MAM, if you're going to whore yourself out, you could have at least done it to the highest bidder. To help you, we tracked down five much more appropriate Miami sponsors who could really bring home the Britto bacon:
Café Bustelo Art Museum Presented by Pitbull: What could be more Miami than our very own pint-size rapper hawking hot cortaditos inside the foyer of the shiny Herzog & de Meuron-designed museum? As Emmanuel Kant once mused, nothing helps you experience the sublime like the lyrics to "Dale Más Gasolina."
Miami Art Muzeum: Ever notice that nothing in Miami is spelled correctly? Whether it's an attempt to be cool or just plain ol' Spanglish, we don't see any reason to break the habit now. Bienvenido to the hizouse of hizart, amigos.
The (Jorge) Perez Hilton Art Museum: It's the best of both worlds: The museum gets to keep Jorge Pérez's money, but inside there will just be a photo of the Mona Lisa with some MS Paint foam dribbling out of her mouth, courtesy of our native pink-haired tabloid mogul. Art is for the people. Give them what they want.
Genting's No Limit Museum of Slots and Texas Hold 'Em: Jorge Pérez made $61 million last year flipping the Omni Center land to the Genting Group, the Malaysian firm now planning to build the world's largest casino on the site. Flush with gambling cash, Pérez no doubt can afford to be magnanimous to MAM. Let's just skip the middleman and name the museum after its true benefactors: addiction, broken dreams, and free seafood buffets.
The Rick Scott Museum of Drug-Free Art: In return for sponsoring the museum, Governor Scott will get to personally drug-test each and every artist before his or her art can be included. As a result, we end up with some sketches of ponies by Mayor Carlos Gimenez and a tear-stained watercolor by Alex Sink.
