The Bass Museum Celebrates 50 Years with New Exhibits and a $7.5 Million Grant for a New Wing

The Bass Museum of Art has announced plans for a new wing dedicated to educational facilities and exhibition space after receiving a $7.5 million grant from the City of Miami Beach, which recognizes the museum's contributions to the City's artistic and cultural landscape. These planned additions to the museum will coincide with the museum's 50th anniversary in 2014.

"The City of Miami Beach Mayor and Commission voted to support the Bass Museum of Art's $7.5 million grant for its expansion. Miami Beach is such a progressive city and its commitment to the arts continues to reinforce its position as the most important cultural destination in South Florida. As President of the Board of Directors and Miami Beach resident, I am thankful to the City of Miami Beach for its continued generosity and support for the Bass Museum of Art," states George Lindemann.

The Bass Museum of Art's Expansion Plan calls for two additional classrooms to be built adjacent to the existing Lindemann Family Creativity Center. Each of these three spaces can accommodate at minimum 25 students, with one larger space that can accommodate 40 art students or 75 people sitting in rows for a lecture, film screening or performance art. With its own entrance, separatefrom the rest of the museum, the space will be open and accessible after regular museum hours and in the evenings. Additionally, the museum's expansion will make possible the simultaneous scheduling of classes and events, whichwill equip the museum to serve double the participants it currently serves.

In 2001, the Bass Museum of Art completed phase 1 of its expansion, which added a 20,000 ft. addition to the museum's original, historic building, built in 1935 by Russell Pancoast. The addition, designed in 1993 by Arata Isozaki & Associates, included a switchback ramp leading to the second level, and provided additional galleries and a sculpture terrace for the museum.

"We are working to create an improved and functional design that will provide 47 percent more exhibition and program space within the museum's same building footprint. This will enhance the museum's commitment to its education and exhibition programming in a responsible and sustainable manner," says Silvia Karman Cubiña, Executive Director and Chief Curator, Bass Museum of Art.

Twenty years after the design of the addition, the museum has a newly established Board of Directors and a new Executive Director, who in 2011 jointly developed a newmission statement: we inspire and educate by exploring the connections between our historical collections and contemporary art. The key words of this mission statement are "inspire" and "educate," shifting the museum's main focus to serving the community and developing educational programming goals enriched by the exhibitions and permanent collection.

The Bass Museum also celebrates their 50th annviersary with many new exhibits and events. Below are some of the highlights of the upcoming year.

50th Annviersary Exhibits and Events

Gold

Occupying the entire museum, GOLD is a tribute to the Bass Museum of Art's 50th anniversary, which will be celebrated in 2014. This exhibition includes works of art in diverse media by Miami-based and international artists exploring gold, both as a color and as a concept. Additionally, a number of works of art from the permanent collection will be included.

August 9, 2014 - March 15, 2015 (downstairs Taplin Galleries)

September 5 - November 2, 2014 (upstairs Muss Gallery)

Time

To mark their 50th Anniversary, the Bass Museum of Art has invited internationally celebrated contemporary artists Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmu? to engage with some of the works in the John and Johanna Bass collection. Choosing to focus on reproductions after old master paintings, and including a number of decorative objects, Pirici and Pelmu? have devised a work in which four performers enact selected pieces from the Bass collection. Each piece is transformed into an immaterial object; both an original and a copy, which conceptually extends beyond the physical into the realm of projection and memory. Pirici and Pelmu?'s work will be exhibited in the Taplin gallery from December 4 to 8, 2013.

Vanitas: Fashion and Art

Vanitas: Fashion and Art examines the theme of vanitas as expressed in avant garde ready-to-wear and haute couture as well as in contemporary paintings, sculptures, industrial design and new media. As a meditation on the ephemerality of earthly pleasures and worldly accomplishments, vanitas artworks incorporate allusive imagery to suggest life's transience and more explicit representations of momento mori. Fashion, with its accelerated cycle of obsolescence, explicit manifestation of status and material success, and potential for a narcissistic self-regard, is therefore an especially apt medium for vanitas.

The exhibition will include works by contemporary designers and artists. The installation will also highlight rare examples of the Bass Museum's remarkable collection of historic frames by incorporating them spatially in the installation to create a dynamic and interactive engagement of artworks and viewer.

March 13, 2014 - July 20, 2014

Guest Curator of the exhibition: Harold Koda, Curator-in-Charge of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui

The first traveling solo exhibition in the United States by the globally renowned contemporary artist El Anatsui, this show will feature over 30 works in metal and wood that transform appropriated objects into site-specific sculptures. Anatsui converts found materials into a new type of media that lies between sculpture and painting, combining aesthetic traditions from his birth country, Ghana; his home in Nsukka, Nigeria; and the global history of abstraction.

Included in the exhibition are twelve recent monumental wall and floor sculptures, widely considered to represent the apex of Anatsui's career. The metal wall works, created with bottle caps from a distillery in Nsukka, are pieced together to form colorful, textured hangings that take on radically new shapes with each installation. Anatsui is captivated by his materials' history of use, reflecting his own nomadic background. Gravity and Grace responds to a long history of innovations in abstract art and performance, building upon cross-cultural exchange among Africa, Europe, and the Americas and presenting works in a wholly new, African medium.

April 11 - August 10, 2014

Opening reception: April 10, 2014

About the Bass Museum of Art

Located in Miami Beach, the Bass Museum of Art offers a dynamic year-round calendar of exhibitions dedicated to our mission "we inspire and educate by exploring the connections between our historical collections and contemporary art." This includes art from our permanent collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, textiles and Egyptian Gallery. Artists' projects, educational programs, lectures, concerts and free family days complement the works on view. Additionally, the museum opened the Lindemann Family Creativity Center in January 2012. The center is the home of the museum's IDEA@thebass program of art classes and workshops. The museum was founded in 1963 when the City ofMiami Beach accepted a collection of Renaissance and Baroque works of art from collectors John and Johanna Bass, and renamed the collection that was housed in the Miami Beach Library designed in 1930 by Russell Pancoast to the Bass Museum of Art. Architect Arata Isozaki designed an addition to the museum between 1998 and 2002 that doubled its size from 15,000 to 35,000 square feet. For more information, please visit http://www.bassmuseum.org.