Local residents often lament Miami’s lack of culture: no stellar museum collections, a dearth of first-run, first-rate theater, frequent snubs by rock and pop stars who bypass us on their U.S. tours, and so on. But while many sit and bitch about our relative poverty in the fine arts as…
Elio Reve was an obstinate man who refused to miss a beat. In more than 40 years as bandleader of Orquesta Reve, his celebrated troupe, Reve remained as consistent a presence on Cuban stages as the inevitable pair of timbales he banged on-stage. And he had no intention of abdicating…
Dark clouds loom over Opa-locka, auguring a summer squall that will soak the clothes hanging on the line in Ezequiel Torres’s back yard. But inside the house he shares with his girlfriend, it has already begun to thunder. Clad in plaid shorts and a T-shirt that reveal the rangy build…
Miami Beach’s volunteer Art in Public Places committee will not be convening this week. The reason for cancellation of the scheduled meeting is simple to explain but difficult to understand. Simple part: The committee, a panel of experts charged by the Beach’s city commission with overseeing a program to purchase…
In a painting on paper that hangs just inside the door of Miami-Dade Community College’s InterAmerican Gallery on SW 27th Avenue, a man screams. The cartoonish figure’s mouth is wide open, his beady eyes popping, conveying a darkly comic sense of slow-burning distress. Joseph Oakes, the artist, a resident of…
Bass player Eddie “Gua Gua” Rivera recorded a couple of tunes with his quintet, the Latin Jazz Crew, in a Kendall studio on a recent afternoon. For the first time in three decades, the tips of his long, elegant fingers blistered. Rivera has hardly touched an instrument since May, and…
Sculptor Florencio Gelabert — whose work is the subject of a solo show at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale — arrived in Miami in 1990, the first of several dozen Cuban artists who decamped here at the start of the decade. At the time, these young emigres caused…
thursday july 3 Marisa Monte: Critics are hailing Marisa Monte, the new Brazilian diva whose cascade of black hair, red lips, and sexy moves qualify her to carry the torch of Gal Costa and Astrud Gilberto. Her voice might just have something to do with it, too. Best-known for rejuvenating…
In Miami, summer is the best time to visit a museum. While crowds, unfortunately, are never a big problem at our local art institutions, on a weekday during the summer months a person can often have the run of the exhibition space, with only the museum guards for company. And…
A Discography Most Miami music stores carry CDs by contemporary Cuban bands. (If there’s no section for Cuba, see “Latin,” “tropical,” or “salsa”). But shopping locally for the latest sounds from the island can still be hit-or-miss; stores usually stock only a few copies of each disc, and what’s on…
By ten o’clock the migration has begun. Thousands move slowly on foot through the humid night streets. They squeeze into buses or haggle lifts from cab drivers cruising in their compact Ladas and battleship Fifties Chevrolets. At the outdoor dance hall La Tropical, a line forms around the block. Some…
A white horse clops across the small stage in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s pavilion gallery. Steady on articulated legs made from wooden dowels and metal hooves that formerly capped the ends of chainlink fence posts, the steed carries St. Barbara, an oil-can warrior with the beatific plaster face of…
In his classroom on Florida International University’s north campus, Campbell McGrath makes an announcement. “I’m invoking the High Plains Drifter rule,” he proclaims, sitting at the front of the room with his legs stretched out, his blue Converse sneakers sticking out from under his desk. “If you mention a Clint…
Kenny Scharf was eight years old when he first saw the work of Salvador Dali. While playing at a neighbor’s house in Hollywood, California, Scharf, best known for his use of cartoon imagery in his paintings, must have been watching TV when he spotted a heavy book on the coffee…
thursday may 15 Happy Birthday, ArtCenter-South Florida: The ArtCenter-South Florida celebrates a dozen years of providing a haven for local and national artists on Lincoln Road with a new name (it used to be called the South Florida Art Center), a new look (the galleries have been revamped), and a…
thursday may 8 Celebrity Golf Challenge: A bevy of celebrities, including Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Dawnn Lewis, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Drew Bledsoe, and Barry Sanders, will take a swing at sickle cell anemia at this weekend’s Celebrity Golf Challenge. Among the events taking place this weekend are a celebrity bash at…
On a postcard from Tel Aviv, bathers wade at a crowded Mediterranean beach shadowed by a stretch of resort hotels and condo towers. Artist Hilla Lulu Lin has blown up and manipulated this typical shot of Israel’s modern secular attractions, replacing the perfect blue sky with a slab of marbled…
Joseph Cornell would have been delighted to observe the scene at the Norton Museum of Art on a recent Sunday afternoon, when children ran excitedly about the gallery in which the artist’s work is on display. Engaged in a treasure hunt organized by the museum, they each held a list…
The second-floor nightclub at Yuca restaurant on Lincoln Road is no ballroom; it’s more of a low-ceilinged cocktail lounge. When Tito Puente and his big band played a brief set there last Thursday, the thirteen band members were tightly packed on the small stage. The brass section had little elbow…
thursday april 10 The Maroon Experience: The Historical Museum of Southern Florida (101 W. Flagler St.) continues its Thursday night lecture series in conjunction with its current exhibition, “A Slave Ship Speaks: The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie,” tonight at 6:00 p.m. with a screening of Sergio Giral’s Maluala. Giral,…
A late-model Pontiac sits in the driveway of the stucco house that Juan Pablo Torres recently bought in a planned community mushrooming over a lonely strand of south Dade. Torres cheerily answers the door in shorts and sandals and walks quickly past the pristine living room, where the cushions of…
Deputy City Manager Sergio Rodriguez cuts a smart figure at Miami Beach City Commission meetings. A silver-haired architect who favors trim dark suits and speaks with a refined Cuban accent, he presents an elegant contrast to the flamboyant, bow-tied Mayor Seymour Gelber and the motley crew of commissioners with whom…
