Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)—officially known as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County—is a contemporary art museum that relocated in 2013 to the Maurice A. Ferré Park in Downtown Miami, Florida. Founded in 1984 as the Center for the Fine Arts, it became known as the Miami Art Museum from 1996 until it was renamed in 2013 upon the opening of its new building designed by Herzog & de Meuron at 1103 Biscayne Boulevard. PAMM, along with the $275 million Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science and a city park which are being built in the area with completion in 2017, is part of the 20-acre Maurice A. Ferré Park (formerly Bicentennial Park, Museum Park). In 2014, the museum's permanent collection contained over 1,800 works, particularly 20th- and 21st-century art from the Americas, Western Europe and Africa. In 2016, the museum's collection contained nearly 2,000 works. Since the opening of the new museum building at Maurice A. Ferré Park, the museum has seen record attendance levels with over 150,000 visitors in its first four months. The museum had originally anticipated over 200,000 visitors in its first year at the new location. At its former location on Flagler Street, the museum received on average about 60,000 visitors annually. Pérez Art Museum Miami is directly served by rapid transit at Museum Park Metromover station.
History
Miami-Dade Cultural Center
On November 7, 1972, a county referendum passed that included the "Decade of Progress" bond. This bond provided funding for investments in the arts, including for a new art center. The Center for the Fine Arts opened in the downtown Miami-Dade Cultural Center, a 1983 Spanish-style barn and the first of three buildings to be unveiled in a $24 million county-owned complex designed by Philip Johnson. The museum was built at 101 West Flagler Street in the same Miami Cultural Plaza as HistoryMiami and the Miami-Dade Public Library. The opening's delay of more than a year was occasioned by a $16.5 million renovation of the smoke evacuation system for the complex. Founded as a hall for traveling shows, the $6 million fine arts center did not start acquiring art until 1996. But its efforts were constrained by little storage or exhibition space. The Miami Art Museum was founded in 1996 as a successor to the Center for the Fine Arts.
Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County In November 2010, construction began on the new MAM building in Museum Park in Downtown Miami. The building is designed by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron, who were hired by Terence Riley, director of the museum in 2009, when plans were made. The structure is meant to resemble Stiltsville, which is the name given to a group of wooden houses built on stilts that stand off the coast of Key Biscayne in Biscayne Bay. The new museum building was built alongside the new Miami Science Museum building at the redesigned park. The three-story building has 200,000 square feet (19,000 m2), composed of 120,000 interior square footage, and 80,000 exterior square footage. Inside the museum, display spaces can be illuminated by floor-to-ceiling windows, which can also be blocked off or used as backdrop. Otherwise the rooms get clinically even light delivered by strips of fluorescent tubes, though spotlights can also be used. A grand staircase — nearly the entire 180-foot width of the platform — connects it to the waterfront. Thick, sound-absorbing curtains cordon off one large or two small areas of the stair for programs. With their raised, wraparound terraces and broad overhanging canopies, the houses are conceived to withstand hurricanes and floods, while providing ample shade and ventilation. The museum also incorporates a series of hanging vertical gardens made from local plants and vegetation, designed by French botanist Patrick Blanc. Blanc experimented with different kinds of species throughout the years and the gardens now comprise 80 kinds of plants which are supposed to survive subtropical heat as well as hurricanes. According to Christine Binswanger, the project architect, the plants provide a transition for visitors entering from the outdoors. The new PAMM building opened in December 2013, and the Miami Science Museum building opened in May 2017. To build the new $131-million museum building, the MAM entered into a public-private partnership with the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County. The location on Biscayne Bay was provided by the City of Miami. The museum cost $220 million to build, with $100 million coming from Miami-Dade voters in general obligation bond funding, and $120 million from private donors. As of mid-2011, private donors had committed more than $50 million in additional support for the building and institutional endowment. Jorge M. Pérez, longtime trustee and collector of Latin American art, made a gift of $35 million, to be paid in full over ten years, to support the campaign for the new museum, which was in turn renamed the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County. The new MAM location is intended to transform Museum Park into a central destination on Miami's cultural map, promote progressive arts education, build community cohesiveness, and contribute substantially to downtown revitalization.
Architecture
Herzog & de Meuron's design for the new building has drawn critical acclaim. For example, the Wall Street Journal stressed that their design could be instrumental in making the museum a destination and the New York Times called the design "spectacular" The Washington Post went as far as to say that "the new setting is as much a part of the gallery as the collection". The Perez Art Museum Miami was chosen for the 2015 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Professional Awards.
Collection The museum displays paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, installation art, video, and photography. The Pérez Art Museum has been collecting art since 1996. The focus of the museum is 20th century and contemporary art, as well as cultures of the Atlantic Rim, which it defines as the Americas, Western Europe and Africa. At the time of the new building's opening, the museum's holdings included 1,800 objects, nearly 500 of which were acquired in 2013, including pieces by John Baldessari, Olafur Eliasson and Dan Flavin. In its permanent collections, there are second half of the twentieth century and Contemporary works by Purvis Young, Joseph Cornell, Kehinde Wiley, James Rosenquist, Frank Stella, and Kiki Smith.
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