Miami art museums picture a post-covid world

Local art museums continue to fill the void the arts community has endured for the past two years.

Art lovers, collectors and enthusiasts can still check out and look forward to art exhibits filled with visual arts, heritage and culture.

The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) at 1103 Biscayne Blvd. still has on display “Christo Drawings: A Gift from the Maria Bechily and Scott Hodes Collection.”

Christo (Christo Vladmirov Javacheff) and his wife Jeanne-Claude made an inestimable impact on the history of art since the mid-20th century.

Together, they created large-scale, ephemeral, public art projects, involving dramatic interventions in carefully selected outdoor locations. This art collection will run through June 11, 2023.

Visitors can still catch “Mariano: Variations on a Theme.” Widely known simply as “Mariano,” the artist is regarded as one of the most important painters of the segunda vanguardia – the second generation of Cuban modernists who, in the 1940s and 1950s, used their work to construct and express their vision of the essence of Cuban national identity. The exhibit ends Jan. 22, 2023.

Opening Nov. 29, PAMM is set to present the first monographic survey exhibition of Leandro Erlich’s work in North America, under the title “Leandro Erlich: Liminal.” Selected and arranged by New York-based guest curator Dan Cameron, the exhibition will present 16 works that span more than two decades of Erlich’s production.

Arranged throughout PAMM’s special exhibition galleries, the exhibition has been designed to suggest an underlying narrative storyline, leading viewers through a series of encounters that act cumulatively to introduce doubt about their own sensorial input about the spaces around them.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA, Miami) at 61 NE 41st St. has a few new art installations to open Nov. 29.

ICA, Miami presents “Progressive Aesthetics,” the first US museum survey for Michel Majerus, which explores the late artist’s work by taking up his rich and varied interpretations of capitalism and cultural imperialism as they relate to art in American culture. Created at the threshold of the 21st century, his works expound on themes of transformation and are characterized by a fascination with speed, openness and transmission.

The museum is setting up “Hervé Télémaque: 1959-1964,” which brings together over a dozen paintings from the artist’s first five years of production.

Relying on an exhibition and research practice of delving into significant periods in artists’ careers, ICA Miami takes a deep and definitive look at the earliest works in Télémaque’s oeuvre.

Next up is “Big Butch Energy” featuring a new installation by Nina Chanel Abney, whose works in painting and sculpture use dynamic color and form to draw viewers into complex narratives. In these latest works, Abney explores how gender perception and performance are inspired by the legacies of social ritual and the circulation of visual culture.

The Bass Museum of Art at 2100 Collins Ave. in Miami Beach has on exhibit “Absence Revealed,” an exhibition featuring a new series by experimental photo-based artist María Martínez-Cañas, on view through Oct. 23s.

The new works came about through two events in the artist’s life, the loss of her mother and the chance finding of her home’s original 1920s wallpaper while renovating. The works highlight the physical and emotional processes of excavation and the act of revealing and uncovering, as well as the surfacing of pain, loss and absence.

“Phraseology,” a new exhibition that explores language in modern and contemporary art will be up through April 23, 2023. The exhibit features works from The Bass Collection and works on loan.

“Charo Oquet’s I am here: Translation of Mystic Symbols in an Age of New Subjectivity,” is the next cycle winner of the museum’s “New Monuments” open artist call, a project supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation through the museum’s Knight Art Commissions Program.

Installed in Collins Park, Oquet’s temporary, site-specific monument will be on view through January. A Dominican-born and Miami-based interdisciplinary artist, Oquet is known for dynamic installations that incorporate idiomatic cultural practices from Afro-Caribbean religion and folk traditions.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (MOCA) at 770 NE 125th St. has extended its exhibition “My Name is Maryan” to Oct. 22. Curated by Alison M. Gingeras, the exhibition is a monographic presentation of four decades of paintings, sculptures drawings and film by Polish-born artist Maryan.

“My Name is Maryan” is the first retrospective to holistically examine all periods of Maryan’s life and work. Throughout the museum, Maryan’s biography and prolific oeuvre represent a deeply moving monument to the perseverance of the human spirit and the power of art to work through traumatic loss.

The Wolfsonian–FIU at 1001 Washington Ave. in Miami Beach has two exhibits set to open Oct. 28.

“Plotting Power: Maps and the Modern Age” follows the use of map-like imagery for political, commercial and other purposes in the early 20th century when the possibilities of travel and technology opened new horizons for global ambition.

Featuring Wolfsonian collection items including paintings, prints, posters, industrial design and graphic materials, the exhibition traces how maps and other representations of geography were shaped by design strategies, diverse agendas and signature stories of modern history.

“Turn the Beat Around” will chart the explosion of collaborative creativity driven by Hollywood musicals, American dance studios, and Cuban performers, bringing to life the musical fusion found between cultures.