Miami, March 28, 2018 — Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College (MOAD) will inaugurate its newly renovated galleries with two outstanding exhibitions, By the People: Designing a Better America and This Situation, a work by the acclaimed British-German artist Tino Sehgal. The reopening of MOAD’s facility in the National Historic Landmark Freedom Tower coincides with its new focus and new graphic identity. A VIP reception and open house will be held for MOAD members and the media on April 6. Both exhibitions will open to the general public on April 7.
An extensive, yearlong upgrade to MOAD’s galleries and infrastructure has left the Museum better positioned than ever to bring significant exhibitions and programs to Miami audiences.
“We are very excited to reveal what we’ve been planning for so long,” said Rina Carvajal, MOAD’s Executive Director and Chief Curator. “MOAD will reopen with new energy and a new mission to bring art to our communities. I am very proud of the hard work done by MOAD’s staff, who have put in long hours as the big reopening approaches. We’re also grateful for the support and encouragement of our colleagues in MDC’s administration as we remake the museum into a major international venue for the arts.”
MOAD’s new facilities in the Freedom Tower in Downtown Miami will be instrumental in attaining its newly reformulated mission: to provide open, critical, and collaborative frameworks for artistic experimentation and interdisciplinary risk-taking that explores the intersections of art, design, and other art forms with cultural action. The Museum advances MDC’s core values, contributing to the intellectual life of the college, and engaging students and audiences from the community and the world beyond.
“In a region where the arts sector is dominated by private collections and market trends, MOAD has the opportunity to be more than just a repository or exhibition space,” added Carvajal. “By offering a program of fresh, highly relevant artistic perspectives, activities, and provocations, MOAD can become a unique catalyst for cultural education, collaboration, and social purpose within our city. For our target audience, art and design are not commodities. They are vital and insightful responses to today’s most pressing questions and a rallying point for continuous positive change.”
MOAD’s inaugural programming advances the Museum’s redefined mission. MOAD’s commitment to exhibiting the art of design is expressed in its first major exhibition held in the refurbished galleries. By the People: Designing a Better America features 60 design projects from every region across the U.S. and explores the challenges faced by urban, suburban and rural communities in the U.S. and its bordering countries. Organized by Cynthia E. Smith, curator of socially responsible design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, in New York, By the People highlights design solutions that expand access to education, food, health care and affordable housing; increase social and economic inclusion; offer improved alternative transportation options; and provide a balanced approach to land use between the built and natural environment. The exhibition aims to empower visitors to see themselves as designers — not just of objects, but also of ideas, strategies and solutions that improve our daily lives. It will showcase the innovative and impactful actions generated through design, and inspire creative problem-solving at local, regional, national and even international levels. By the People will be on view through Sept. 30.
This Situation, a work by Tino Sehgal, offers visitors a unique and constantly evolving live experience that radically expands ideas of what art can be. Sehgal creates works that are constructed situations which question the traditional subject-object relationship of visual art. He takes language, singing, dancing, and other modes of behavior as his artistic material, often generating immersive artworks in which interaction between the visitor and the work takes a central position, and focus is placed on ephemeral gestures and the nuances of the audience’s experience, rather than any material objects. In Sehgal’s works, “interpreters” act out various episodes that may comprise conversation or choreography, often involving the visitors. Originally created in 2007, This Situation enables a conversation that questions our self-image as a society and our roles as individuals within that society. Six interpreters enact a discussion in the form of a contemporary salon. They cultivate the visitors’ participation in the dialogue that follows, helping to generate a conversational practice that is continually renewed and potentially endless. This Situation will be on view through April 29.
This Situation is part of Living Together, an exciting cross-disciplinary series of programs that commenced in January. Living Together includes thoughtful and challenging performances and exhibitions that draw from art, music, theater, politics, and poetry. Spread across the city at a wide array of venues, the series features performances, exhibitions, film and video screenings, readings, talks, and workshops by 17 of the most acclaimed national and international artists, art collectives, musicians and writers that reflect the cultural, social, and political realities of how we live now. Living Together seeks to find new ways to think about civic space and citizenship, to instigate actions and conversations that may help to reimagine cities and lives. The curators of Living Together are Rina Carvajal and Joseph R. Wolin, an independent curator based in New York.
MOAD will present the culminating program of Living Together, an immersive eight-channel video installation titled More Sweetly Play the Dance, by the renowned South African artist William Kentridge, from May 19, 2018 to Jan. 20, 2019. Projected on the walls of a gallery, this work encircles the viewer with images of a procession in a blasted landscape. An update of the danse macabre, partly filmed live, partly rendered in Kentridge’s signature animated style, this parade of death includes a brass band in the lead, followed by people carrying possessions or shrouded bodies, priests, patients dragging their IV drips, skeletons, and a live ballerina who wears a military uniform and carries a rifle. Wooden chairs for the viewers and four megaphones on tripods playing the soundtrack complete the ensemble. Combining elements of medieval allegory with evocations of recent sights such as Syrian refugees and bodies felled by Ebola, Kentridge presents a never-ending carnivalesque reminder of our own mortality that is by turns morbid, chilling, comic, and political. But in the artist’s hands, the triumph of death ultimately becomes a celebration of resilience and life.
Living Together represents the first program in MOAD’s new initiative, Museum without Boundaries, which moves out from the walls of the institution and into the city to meet its residents, connecting art, design, performance, and public programs to Miami’s daily life. Museum without Boundaries aims to open, connect and expand public participation in art at a citywide scale. Venturing beyond traditional exhibition formats, Museum without Boundaries encourages interaction and collaboration with and between people in Miami, allowing a plurality of voices to engage in dialogues around pressing cultural and social issues. While MOAD’s facility in the Freedom Tower was closed during renovations, Museum without Boundaries turned the Museum’s focus outwards and maintained an uninterrupted season of programming. In the belief that contemporary art and design can play a vital role in civic and public life, its various programs will encourage alternative ways of making, engaging with, and thinking about art, and spark relationships among people and places that foster a sense of belonging and inclusion.
Museum without Boundaries will take place on MDC’s campuses, the streets and various community centers and organizations across the city’s many neighborhoods. It will also be activated through interactive online components, accessed via MOAD’s website, and its mobile and social-media platforms. These initiatives will continue to be a dynamic facet of MOAD’s programming and mission after the Freedom Tower’s reopening.
MOAD’s reopening coincides with a new membership structure, offering patrons a way to support MOAD while gaining benefits like free museum admission for a year, among other perks. Several membership tiers are available, including individual ($45) and dual/family ($75), with higher tiers that offer access to private curator-led tours and meet-the-artist events. Memberships and donations to the museum are partly or fully tax-deductible.
The Museum of Art and Design also reopens with a new graphic identity. MOAD’s new logo departs from the previous use of the iconic Freedom Tower. The new, more abstract logo, quietly echoing a game of connect the dots, reflects the dynamic direction of the museum’s new mission and outreach. “Our new logo, underscores the concept that we are defined by what we do, not where we do it,” stated Carvajal. “The dots may be seen as points of connection between the Museum and its audiences, and between one idea and another, helping to find the “big picture” and unexpected networks.”
MOAD’s new image was designed by Lemon Yellow, a Miami design, branding, marketing and communication studio.
WHAT: By the People: Designing a Better America and Tino Sehgal: This Situation
WHEN: April 7–Sept. 30, 2018 (By the People)
April 7–29, 2018 (This Situation)
Gallery hours: Wednesday, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays 1–6 p.m.;
Saturdays 1–8 p.m.
VIP Opening Reception for By the People, April 6, 4–6 p.m.;
MOAD Open House (by RSVP), 6–9 p.m.
WHERE: Museum of Art and Design at MDC, located inside the Freedom Tower
600 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami, FL 33132
Museum admission: $12 adults; $8 seniors and military; $5 students (ages 13–17) and college students (with valid ID); free for MOAD members, MDC students, faculty, and staff, and children 12 and under
For updates and a full schedule of events, please visit http://www.mdcmoad.org/
Press Contacts: MOAD — Scott T. Smith, Marketing and membership coordinator, 305 237-7741, ssmith9@mdc.edu; JWI PR — Jessica Wade Pfeffer, 305-804-8424, jessica@jwipr.com; or Juliana Gutierrez, 305-991-4259, juliana@jwipr.com.