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Miami has established itself over the past twenty years as one of the world capitals of contemporary art, even going so far as to challenge the leadership of New York and Los Angeles. However, artistic life did not wait for the advent of Art Basel in 2002 to blossom in Florida. Since 1958, the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale (formerly Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale) has been at the heart of an art scene constantly renewed by the arrival of artists from around the world.
Since 2013, the institution has been directed by Bonnie Clearwater. Formerly director and chief curator of MoCA North Miami. Bonnie also was curator of The Mark Rothko Foundation, New York and has dedicated several books to American Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko.
- When it comes to Miami and the art industry, people think of Art Basel. But the city has a much longer history with art and artists. It does not just wake up once a year for the fair. What does Miami stand for? Particularly in comparison with New York and Los Angeles?
{BC}: I would say that for the longest time, the Miami art scene was artist-driven. In the 80s and 90s, there was no expectation of having an international spotlight on what was happening here, but artists were already strongly connected and doing amazing work. It was incredibly diverse: all parts of the world were coming here and mixed in a very organic way. I am a New Yorker and was entrenched in the New York art scene. I also had the opportunity to work in Los Angeles and be part of a totally different art community. But the Miami art world is unique in so many aspects: I have found here a diversity of artists that I could not find in N.Y.C. and L.A. in the 80s, 90s, and even in the early 2000s.
South Florida individuals can make a difference. They are people with a vision, with energy. Here you really see the changes that someone makes by having a specific vision or a reason for being. People can be a catalytic force in a way that is not possible in New York… or maybe they do but in a way that is more difficult to recognize.
When I arrived in Miami, it was a fairly new city that was not entrenched around historical institutions. We did not have to fit the models that were in place elsewhere. There was a sense that we were making things up as we were going along and that we could make something truly unique in South Florida.
I started my involvement in the region when I was the director of the Lannan Foundation Art Programs based in Los Angeles. Part of my responsibilities was to run the Lannan Museum in Lake Worth, Florida. At the time there were only a few contemporary art institutions in the region. This gave me the opportunity to meet local collectors and artists who are now well-known in the art industry. We were committed to showing international artists but also seeking out the artists who were making South Florida their home and who were representative of the creativity emerging from the region. This is the reason why in 1990 my husband James Clearwater and I decided to move from Los Angeles to Miami instead of going back to New York. We wanted to be part of this growing art world.
It was an environment that was not driven by the commercial aspect of the art world… until it was: The first international art fair in Miami appeared in the early 1990s. That was followed in the early 2000s by Art Basel Miami Beach. It became an event for the entire region where collectors, artists, museums, and art dealers welcomed the international art world and built on this global recognition to become a thriving art center. Now we consider it “South Florida Art Week” more than “Miami Art Week”. Miami is still different from other cities and its successful transformation has become a model that subsequently has been emulated in other cities.
- The museum has a very dynamic program: exhibitions, talks, events are constantly updating the agenda of the museum. Way more than some of the very established museums. Where does it come from?
{BC}: It comes from the fact that we have so many ideas and we think that we should let things develop organically. I always worked this way in previous museums. NSU Art Museum’s 83,000-square-foot building provides over 24,000 square feet of flexible exhibition space and we have staff that is equally inspired and driven.
I have an unusual career that allowed me to meet board members, the community and patrons on an international level. Everybody acknowledges how important museums are. We just go for it and make it happen. Our ultimate goal is to present an international approach but also function as a community hub: a cultural center that brings the community together. As Fort Lauderdale is located mid-way between Miami and Palm Beach, the community we serve encompasses the entire South Florida region
- The museum benefits from the strong support of the private sector (patrons, donors, collectors). It seems that part of the reason is that their role is truly considered. They are not here just to write a check once a year. How does it foster the dynamism of the Museum?
{BC}: From the curatorial position, we are very independent on what art should be presented and how it should be presented. This is one of the reasons why I am comfortable at NSU Art Museum. Fortunately, we have a community of collectors and donors who are very respectful of that independence. They will make their treasured collections available to us but the decisions are those of our curatorial professionals.
In 1996 Bonnie Clearwater organized the exhibition “Defining the Nineties: Building Consensus in New York, Miami and Los Angeles” for the inauguration of MOCA Miami. This raises the question of whether there are, in these three cities, mechanisms that create a form of consensus around the relevance of a specific artistic approach. The exhibition catalog is still a reference today.
- As a curator, how do you define your program? Do you tend to make strong statements… and by doing so you have, to a certain extent, a subjective approach? Or do you try to be as objective as possible and exhibit artists that benefit from a consensus?
{BC}: We are fortunate to have a very strong collection at NSU Art Museum. We start our curatorial projects by looking at the most relevant works at our disposal. The exhibitions come from our historical research but they could also take their origin from the artistic community.
We don’t follow any consensus so we feel free to present a young emerging artist, a mid-career artist, or even a prominent artist that people haven’t seen in an original way for a long time. That seems to be our sweet spot: to deal with subjects that resonate with our times and to avoid the hot artist of the moment.
Take for instance the exhibition Happy! that we organized in 2019. We realized that there are so many artists out there incorporating a dimension of a juvenile element to their works. So we wondered why there is such an interest in those specific aspects? And why does it emerge now, in our society? Where is it coming from? How is it different from Pop Art in the 60s? Our research directed us to consider a lineage of artists dealing with the concept of emotions and happiness and tracing it from Andy Warhol and even from Mark Rothko to Yoko Ono, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons and Murakami.
- You studied the notion of consensus in depth. In a nutshell: is a consensus something positive that allows the best artists to stand out? Or is it a standardization of the Art World that leads certain unlucky talented artists to be left aside?
{BC}: My conclusion on the concept of consensus is that it is just a myth. There is just no secret cabal controlling the consensus process. Consensus occurs organically. From time to time a consensus regarding a specific artist emerges. But it tends to exist for a limited time before the consensus process moves on.
With the recession of the late 80s came the crash of the art market in the early 90s and everything had to be rethought at that moment. After that, N.Y.C. was not the only epicenter of the art world anymore: other cities such as Los Angeles and Miami had grown up. When Defining the Nineties premiered in 1996 at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, people were generally shocked that I included Miami alongside New York and Los Angeles. But everything I wrote in the catalog has since occurred and even expanded beyond my own expectations.
I took the approach of the study of consensus in the art world as an anthropologist. I was curious to watch how people interacted with each other and how consensus around artists formed in Miami, New York and L.A. The dynamics appeared to change from place to place and from time to time.
As a Museum, we are very careful not to overly influence that consensus. We might present an artist early in the career but then sit back and let the consensus process take its course organically.
- The current cycle of exhibitions is focused on the notion of “Picturing Fame”. It raises a very interesting point: some artists are unconsidered because they are not exhibited enough. But on the other side, some very well-known artists suffer from their fame as people don’t look at their art anymore. They are almost not considered as artists and are merely viewed as a brand. This is to a certain extent the case for Warhol and Toulouse-Lautrec. Exhibiting famous artists might be the easiest and the most difficult thing to do for a curator. How did you approach the project ?
{BC}: The subject of fame and how fame is created and validated by the consensus is something I have been long interested in. It is at the core of a society ruled by social media. I had a peculiar interest in how algorithms play a role in the decision of journalists, writers and publishers to determine who or what specific subject to feature, based on its popularity and social media following. I wanted to bring attention to the fact that we are now able to quantify the success of a creation by measuring algorithms and how this perpetuates a cycle of fame, which in itself creates a perpetual cycle of elevating certain celebrities, public figures and artists.
The exhibition developed with the opportunities that presented themselves. For instance, we had access to two major collections of late XIXe century posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He was so instrumental in creating the marketing of celebrities of his day in Paris that his methods are still in operation today in many ways. The exhibition was about looking at what he did and why he was successful in transforming cabaret and dance hall performers into celebrities.
Starting from there I looked at artists such as Miami-based Emilio Martinez, who comes from Honduras. I was following his work for a few years and the Museum bought some of his works for our Latin American collection. During the pandemic, Emilio and I had discussions about Vincent van Gogh and he started to create a series of collages that were a cross centuries collaboration with Van Gogh, in which he collaged elements of reproductions of Van Gogh’s paintings into his compositions of monstrous personages. While researching Van Gogh, Emilio discovered that he was close friends with Lautrec. He immersed himself in Lautrec’s work as well and created a series of paintings and collages inspired by them. I decided to present a solo show of those two series alongside the Lautrec show as a way to see how a young artist could interact and connect visually, emotionally and intellectually to those two famous artists and bring a fresh engagement with their work.
In addition, I was intrigued by an arrangement of Stephanie Seymour’s vintage couture collection of iconic designs by Christian Dior, Cristobal Balenciaga, Yves Saint-Laurant, Azzedine Alaia, and others with the paintings by Karen Kilimnik that Stephanie and her husband Peter M. Brant have collected in depth that I had seen presented by their son Dylan Brant in a gallery in Palm Beach. I had a strong connection with Karen Kilimnik as I presented a solo exhibition of her work at MOCA North Miami several years ago. It was interesting to connect Kilimnik’s work to Stepahnie’s couture collection but the project really took off when we had to find a title for the exhibition. Stephanie suggested, among other ideas, to call it: The Swans. That immediately resonated with me: The Swans was the expression coined by Truman Capote to describe the mid-20th century women who were famous for being famous. Fashion was an important part of their image and their celebrity contributed to the fame of the designers. That title gave the conceptual framework to the exhibition.
The fourth exhibition of the program is titled Hooray for Hollywood, which was drawn almost exclusively from the Museum’s collection. The title references a drawing by Jack Pierson that was recently purchased for the museum’s collection, which references the title of the famous song with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Pierson’s work captures the irony of attempting to seek fame in Hollywood, and ultimately facing disappointment and despair. Warhol also understood how the Hollywood machine could create stars like Marilyn Monroe and that authoritarians such as Chairman Mao could use similar methods to create a cult of personality.
- As you said, you decided to exhibit the work of Emilio Martinez that interacts with the works of van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec. Is it a way to reactivate their work? So we can appreciate those iconic works with a fresh eye…
{BC}: I was looking at how an artist today can communicate with artists long dead and how that interaction could be meaningful for the living artist as well as encourage today’s audience to think of these icons’s work from a fresh perspective.
- The Swans Exhibition was not only an exhibition that showcases Art and Fashion. It was also the celebration of the friendship of two people: Stephanie and Karen. Did it have an impact on your curating process?
{BC}: It started as a small exhibition. I was intrigued by Kilimnik’s vision through art history and fashion and by the way Stephanie was approaching her collection of haute couture and how those visions came together. I am interested in how Kilimnik is able to tell stories and how stories can be told, using fashion. Then I allow visitors to put everything together and create their own story.
- Your exhibition Future Past Perfect presents the work of emerging artists who unfortunately were not able to show their work in real life during the pandemic. What was the origin of the project? Is it a way to tell people to come back to the museum to enjoy art in real life? Is it a way to say to emerging artists that they should not only be obsessed with the market side of the Art world?
{BC}: When the pandemic ended, it seemed as though all of a sudden everybody was coming out of hibernation. It seemed like a lot of artists emerged at once, when in fact those artists were already here but they were isolated. The exhibition is a tribute to how many strong local artists were struggling with real-life issues. Plus most of these artists did not know each other before the exhibition. One of the goals was to rebuild the artist community by forging new relationships through these concurrent solo exhibitions. It was essential for the revitalization of the art scene. It needed to be done.
Ink & Voices 