|
|
 |
|
| Feature |
The Miami Medicis
Ernest Beck
08/01/2005
|
Last year her Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation
opened Miami Art Central (MAC), a 33,000-square-foot space in the Kendall
neighborhood near the University of Miami, as a venue for these activities.
Cisneros paid $4.5 million five years ago for the 1940s MAC building and
invested a further $5 million in renovations. Cisneros married into one of
Venezuela’s leading business dynasties, with soft-drinks, media and other
holdings, and ran a gallery in Caracas in the 1970s. She sees MAC’s focus on
Latin-American artists complementing Miami’s ethnic diversity.
 | | IN FRONT, Ernesto Neto’s fabric-and-fragrant-spice sculpture É Ô Bicho (It Is
the Animal!), a prized work in the Margulies collection. (Photograph by Malcolm Varon, NYC.) |
Space Invaders
The cost of Cisneros’s exhibition space illustrates how the
influx of collectors has pushed real estate prices upward. The Rubells bought
the former DEA contraband depot more than a decade ago for the price of a
one-bedroom condo, Mera says. Since then they have added 10,000 square feet to
better accommodate a collection of several thousand works, including popular
artists such as Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans and Richard Prince.
Not all local
residents and artists are happy about these changes. Dana Murphy, a community
activist who has organized a local homeowners’ association, says the art frenzy
is a cover for those looking to promote sales and inflate prices. New condos are
being snapped up by so many speculators that locals fear their neighborhood will
be commandeered by them. They worry that this type of development could price
them out, leaving the district, like New York’s SoHo, a mere retail center for
tourists, rather than a place to create and display art.
The future of the
neighborhood, and Miami as a whole, as either an art capital for the ages or a
fleeting place in the sun will largely be determined by how these new de Medicis
eventually decide to dispose of their treasures. The legacy depends on whether
they will support the area’s local museums or endow their private exhibition
spaces for public access—or whether their heirs will simply put the collections
on the block.
Ernest Beck has written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. ecbeck1@yahoo.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
