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| Feature |
The Miami Medicis
Ernest Beck
08/01/2005
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Martin Margulies is planning his party for Art Basel Miami Beach, the
four-day international art show beginning December 1. About 500 carefully chosen
guests, primarily art dealers and gallery staffers, will receive invitations to
his soiree, an exclusive highlight of this annual aesthetician’s pilgrimage. But
Margulies wants to keep the event low-key. As he did with his dinner last year,
Margulies will offer a simple buffet to guests at communal tables in his
exhibition space, a converted warehouse in the Wynwood Arts District. “It wasn’t
glitzy or show business,” he explains.
 | | CARLOS AND Rosa de la Cruz at home with Rotten Renaissance Rita by Albert
Oehlen (left wall) and Dr. No’s Verdun by Jonathan Meese (right wall). (Photograph by CM Guerrero.) |
Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz are taking a more expansive approach. They plan to
invite art insiders—and the general public—to tour their home in Key Biscayne.
Last year 4,000 people traipsed through their house during Art Basel. The de la
Cruzes have filled the 16-room all-white edifice with important artwork
(including the laundry room, where a Sigmar Polke hangs). Even the exterior,
where a colorful Arturo Herrera mural overlooks Biscayne Bay, is an exhibition
space. Art Basel is only one of many occasions when they open their home to
aficionados. The de la Cruzes show their collection by appointment to smaller
groups—from schoolchildren to art students and senior citizens—with Rosa serving
as docent.
After leaving Cuba in the early 1960s and settling in Miami—from
which Carlos runs various business ventures, including the Coca-Cola
distributorship in Puerto Rico—the de la Cruzes began collecting art, primarily
from Latin America. Soon afterward, they began broadening their acquisitions
with a more global perspective and received calls from dealers, collectors and
curators who wanted to see their collection. “Little by little the house became
a place where you can see art,” Rosa says.
 | | THE VIEW from Martin Margulies’ Wynwood showcase shows Jorge by Vik Muniz in the
foreground. (Photograph by Malcolm Varon, NYC.) |
The de la Cruzes, Margulies and
about a dozen other art-scene doyens are transforming Miami into the city of the
moment for contemporary artwork. Art Basel Miami Beach, the U.S. sibling of the
world-renowned Swiss art fair, launched four years ago in Miami, is one of their
showpieces. The group, which includes Mera and Donald Rubell, Ella Cisneros and
Craig Robins, now wields tremendous power in the art world. When the director of
Art Basel, Sam Keller, was seeking a U.S. location, the impassioned lobbying
(and the hospitality) of Miami’s collectors factored strongly into his decision.
“They opened up their homes and collections, and provided lavish entertainment.
That would never happen in another city,” Keller told the London
Independent.
Serendipitous Influx
This emergence of Miami as an important center for
collectors of contemporary art is remarkable, in part, because it occurred by
happenstance. Over the last 10 years, collectors have migrated to South Florida,
assembled collections and cultivated audiences. Prior to that, there was no
visible constellation of benefactors, established museums and collectors with
the requisite capital (and egos) to build and sustain cultural institutions. Now
a critical mass of collectors and galleries are in place to support and
patronize Miami’s lively troupe of established and emerging artists.
 | | A MURAL by Jose Bedia on the back of the Latin Grammy’s Miami office building is
part of Miami’s Open Air Museum project. |
Whether
this confluence of like-minded collectors matures into a long-term artistic
community depends on how members of this loosely connected band will manage
their holdings for posterity. It is unclear whether, in 50 years, tourists will
flock to the de la Cruz house and art museum, or whether the site will pass into
the Floridian oblivion of a condominium development. Rosa de la Cruz, who
manages the family’s art activities, says she is considering building a new
public space in Miami’s high-end Design District, which borders the
neighborhoods of Wynwood and Edgewater, in what is now a contiguous swath of
design boutiques, galleries and museums. “Right now I have no long-term plans,
just short-term,” she admits. “I don’t know what might happen in 20
years.”
Nearly all of Miami’s new community of collectors make their holdings
accessible to the public. Their private exhibition spaces have become the city’s
de facto museums. On a recent afternoon, Margulies held court in his
warehouse-cum-exhibition-space, lecturing a group of college students on the
history of German photography, from vintage works by August Sander to the
large-scale photographic portraits of Andreas Gursky and Thomas Ruff (see
“Exposed to Brilliance”). A few blocks away is the Rubell Family
Collection, a museum space that was once a Drug Enforcement Administration
warehouse for confiscated drugs and weapons. Mera Rubell, a teacher turned real
estate developer in New York before she and her husband, Donald, a physician,
made Miami their main residence, opened the warehouse 12 years ago.
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