25.mar.03 - party at Marty's

The panel discussion regarding who was going to pay for the MAM expansion and what the thing would look like was a festival of ax-grinding. You can read about the details in the Herald, which will feature an article about it by Elisa Turner, whom I don't envy in trying to make sense of the whole thing.

To sum up, one side of this argument says that Miami should allow MAM to build a behemoth on Bayfront Park because it's a shame that a city of this size doesn't have a 200,000 square foot exhibition space like other US cities, and such a thing would be a great benefit for the community.

The other side says that the people who are putting it together are not going to be able to pull it off - the plan is senseless, the money is absent, MAM has no collection to justify the space, recent history is rife with examples of museum cutbacks, and the poorest city in the nation has a track record of building useless edifices - and the ultimate effect on the community will be injurious.

Both of these sides have flaws and merits, but the disturbing thing that this meeting made clear is that no one has a realistic idea of what the community is. When Martin Margulies talked about helping the community, he was usually referring to poor black kids from Overtown. That's a different community that the one envisioned by real estate guy who referred to the homeless people in Bayfront Park as "bums and crackheads" in a tone that implied that we ought to get rid of them as if they were a bunch of raccoons. (I wonder how many of them were once poor black kids from Overtown.) Rosa de la Cruz got up and, after introducing herself as a Cuban-American, talked about how important the whole community was to her, as evidenced by her work with the United Way, and preceded to hurl invective until she was halted by the moderator. (Remember the Elian debacle? This is the same Rosa de la Cruz who withdrew her support from the Miami art world in general and and MoCA in particular because she failed to bully Bonnie Clearwater into "say[ing] something nice about Cuban people" as a public statement. I wrote an unpublished letter to the Herald saying that such ox-headed ethnic pride had no place gumming up the works of the art world, and that I hoped her withdrawal would be immediate, total, and permanent.) After Garibaldi conquered the peninsula he remarked, "We have an Italy. Now all we need are some Italians." What we need are some Miamians. The community includes the tie-wearing power brokers, the crackheads, and everyone in between, and we need to make sure that the project benefits the community in its entirety.

So, here's my answers to the questions raised.

Should we build a 200,000 square foot art museum?

Why the heck not? I'd like to see those recent floor-cracking Richard Serra sculptures and blockbuster shows and all that. It would be fun.

Should it go in Bayfront Park?

No, it should go into the space currently occupied by the allegedly useless Miami Arena. But if it ends up in the park, that's not the worst thing that could happen. San Francisco has a nice park/ museum combo. I'd prefer that to another sports arena. Or condos. If the plan is as flawed as the critics say it is, that's another story.

Who should pay for it?

A bunch of rich people. In principle, this should be a civic institution supported by public funds. In practice, Miami has a habit of turning public projects into disasters: cost overruns, cronyism, long delays, hiring Architectonica. The airport, held to be one of the worst in the country, has been under construction since my family moved here in 1975. The Performing Arts Center, bisected by Biscayne Boulevard and delayed by years, was built for five performing companies, three of which are in bankruptcy. (This fact was told to me by a friend who concluded that we will be seeing productions at the PAC like "Smurfs on Ice.") The Miami Arena resulted in the construction of another arena. The new Miami Children's Museum (a stuck-in-the-80s architectural fluff piece) and Parrot Jungle are being built on a barrier island. (For a demonstration of why they're called "barrier islands," please stay tuned for the next hurricane.) Rich people are rich is because they don't sit around and let their money be wasted, so let them pay for it and we won't have these problems. The public can show its support during membership drives.

Where will the art come from?

The usual: collectors donating work. That's the way it has always been. De la Cruz and others faulted MAM for not having a vision. It doesn't need vision, it needs largesse. If anything, the mandate to collect postwar art of the western hemisphere should be relaxed - they should just go for any good stuff they can get their hands on. Let the vision take care of itself. My idea is that just like a museum sometimes has guest curators, it should also have guest buyers/schmoozers charged with acquisitions according to their areas of expertise. This is not a chicken-or-egg problem - there won't be a collection if there is nowhere to show it. While the collection builds, the museum can function as a big kunsthalle.

MAM has had difficulties from the get-go clarifying the reasons why it needs a new facility. One of the first press releases from MAM objecting to the installation of a sports facility in Bayfront Park protested that it would block the view of the water, neglecting to consider that a museum would do the same thing unless they made it out of Saran Wrap. A new press release came out shortly thereafter with that assertion removed. Now, Margulies thinks this new museum is a bad idea, and he convened this panel to raise objections to the whole enterprise. But the mandate to go ahead and build the thing is the result of a legislative process and a protracted series of public meetings, and could only be stopped by the same method. (Except maybe a lawsuit.) If anything, MAM now is clear on what the sticking points are, and will be able to address them, thanks to this panel. Things often happen like that.