The Miami Generation: Revisited
In 1983, Miami's former Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture presented the groundbreaking exhibition, The Miami Generation. This exhibition represented a pivotal moment in South Florida's cultural history and brought together for the first time the work of nine emerging artists from Miami's Cuban exile community who were part of a first generation that received its artistic education in the United States. Now, more than 30 years later, NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale picks up where this exhibition left off, with The Miami Generation: Revisited, a new exhibition featuring works created since 1983 by the original nine artists: Mario Bencomo, María Brito, Humberto Calzada, Pablo Cano, Emilio Falero, Fernando García, Juan González, Carlos Maciá, and César Trasobares. The exhibition will be on view at NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale from July 12 through September 21, 2014.
Works on view in The Miami Generation: Revisited address the issues of exclusion, inclusion, and sexual identity politics that those in the original show explored as well as demonstrate the variety of materials the artists use and how their styles and interests have evolved. These artists were part of a thriving art community in the early 1980s that contributed to the emergence of South Florida as a hub for international art and culture. While six of the original nine continue working as artists today, Fernando García, Juan González, and Carlos Maciá all died from AIDS, and the exhibition also serves as a reminder of how the AIDS epidemic adversely affected Miami's artistic community.
The Miami Generation: Revisited is organized by NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale and curated by Jorge Santis. The accompanying catalog that includes reproductions of some of the works in the exhibition and essays by individuals involved with the 1983 show: former Miami Herald art critic, Helen Kohen; artist and scholar Cesar Trasobares; Florida International University Professor Juan Martinez, and a reprint of the late art historian Giulio Blanc's 1983 essay for the original exhibition. The exhibition also highlights NSU Museum of Art's strong commitment to Latin American Art, which includes a large collection of work by Cuban artists and the Pearl and Stanley Goodman Latin American Art Research Center, which will launch in 2015.
Titled The Miami Generation: Nine Cuban American Artists, the original 1983 exhibition was curated by Margarita Cano and the late art historian Giulio Blanc, and organized by the Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture.
NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale is located at One East Las Olas Boulevard, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301. For additional information, please visit www.moafl.org or call (954) 525-5500.
