The Museum of Art and Design of Miami Dade College (MOAD), which closed for a year to improve its facilities and refine its identity and goals, reopens its doors today with an exhibition significantly entitled “For the people: designing a better America ”
Located in the Freedom Tower, an iconic building from 1925 that resembles the Giralda of Seville and was the seat of a newspaper and then shelter for the first Cubans who arrived in Miami fleeing from the Revolution, the MOAD returns determined to be a ” catalyst “for cultural education and citizen participation.
Rina Carvajal, its executive director and main conservator, points out to Efe that the differential feature of the MOAD is that it is not a repository of art pieces or a place to show collections.
“We are working on thinking about the city, about collaborating with the city,” says Carvajal, who has worked for the Perez Art Museum in Miami, the Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo in Brazil, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.
A video animation made on the occasion of the reopening affects this aspect: the Freedom Tower, 88 meters high, is broken down into pieces that are integrated into other buildings and distinctive places in Miami.
“What happens in the Museum affects the city and what happens in the city is reflected in the museum,” says Natalia Crujeiras, director of Cultural Affairs at MDC.
At the same time, MOAD is committed to artistic experimentation and interdisciplinary manifestations that “explore the intersections of art, design and other artistic forms with cultural action”.
The exhibition chosen for reopening, which will be open until September 30, explores the challenges facing urban, suburban and rural communities through 60 socially responsible design projects whose authors are spread across the United States.
From drums with water that are placed on the border with Mexico so that migrants who cross the desert do not perish dehydrated to wheelchairs adapted for their users to play football have a place in “By the People: Designing a Better America” .
The exhibition was organized by Cynthia E. Smith, socially responsible design curator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York.
Solutions to prevent floods created by people from areas where sea level is rising due to global warming or housing designed specifically for the needs of low-income people who have grandchildren under their care are other initiatives included in the exhibition.
The new stage of the Miami Dade College museum, the university with the largest number of students from all over the United States, also begins with “This Situation”, by the German-British artist Tino Sehgal, starting on April 7.
Sehgal’s works are structured situations where the traditional subject-object relationship of visual art is questioned and where the interaction with the public is the center of a universe that has in its language, song and dance some of its constituent elements.
“This Situation”, originally created in 2007, is part of the interdisciplinary series “Living Together” of the MOAD, which encourages the search for new ways of thinking in the civic space and citizenship.
The series, which has brought artists from Brazil, Colombia, Palestine and other countries to Miami, will culminate with a video installation by South African artist William Kentridge from May 19.
The work “More Sweetly Play the Dance”, projected on the walls of a gallery, surrounds the viewer with images of a procession in a desolate landscape; a death parade partially filmed live and presented in Kentridge’s original animated style.
“For our main audience, art and design are not merchandise, they are vital and revealing answers to the most pressing questions of today, and a point of concentration of continuous positive change,” says Carvajal.
The new MOAD also has two spaces for “special collections”. The one dedicated to the “Cuban Legacy” will present from May a multimedia installation by the Miami artist César Trasobares entitled “Cuban Streams: 1885-1965”.
The other space, called the Kislak Center, will house the valuable pre-Columbian works donated to the MDC by philanthropist Jay Kislak. efe
