NOTE FROM MARIO: This piece isn't anything that serious - I decided to be part of the Best of Miami contributors, which meant that I got to pick what I felt like were some of the "Best" people, places, and orgs in Miami. I obviously focused on anything art related, and selected the following categories!
Best Curator: Catherine Camargo Catherine Camargo is just the curator this city needs: cutting, alternative, intellectual and homegrown. As the founder of Queue Gallery and Queue Magazine, she shares her specific vantage point as a student of institutional rigor and the grit of our local community when you peel away the glitz and glamour. A project by Camargo is always distinguishable. Want to see for yourself? Go to Little Havana and explore Queue Gallery, or drive up to the Moca North Miami for her latest triumph, “Permanent Collection Focus: Anchors of Light,” a group show featuring works from the museum’s permanent collection.
Best Artist Run Space: Tunnel Projects Think of Tunnel Projects as the cool kids’ table of the local Miami art scene. The artist studio and exhibition space is housed in the parking lot of a Little Havana strip mall and is home to the most dependable, hard-hitting and intellectually stimulating shows in Miami all year round. The brainchild of Luna Palazzalo Daboul, an incredible artist in her own right, it boasts a roster of equally impressive, young and talented artists who have succeeded in making a name for Tunnel. The team has captured the attention of art scene elites while staying true to its grassroots nature. Next time someone says the saguesera has no high culture, take them to Tunnel!
PS: When I told Luna about the fact that Tunnel was selected as best artist run space, she had just gotten done talking about quantifying rank was arbitrary, theres no such thing as a best, and that picking the best of anything was stupid LOL. I was like welllllll have i got news for you :/
Best Museum: Historic Hampton House Although Miamians sometimes like to forget we are in the South, Historic Hampton House is an important reminder that, just like any other southern city before 1964, we had Jim Crow laws segregating people based solely on the color of their skin. This hotel-turned-museum served as a foothold for the Civil Rights Movement in Miami in the ‘60s, boasting iconic Black American guests from Martin Luther King Jr. to Josephine Baker and Jackie Robinson. The museum has preserved rooms where you can see accommodations exactly as they were in the hotel’s heyday, along with photos of Historic Hampton House’s most noteworthy guests. Last December, the museum also hosted two contemporary art exhibitions; a solo show of Alexandre Diops’ work, as well as “No Room. No Vacancy,” a group exhibition featuring 25 artists.
Best Art Gallery: Homework Gallery Homework Gallery is one of the few nomadic galleries that’s stood the test of time and transitioned into a brick and mortar space. Run by married couple Aurelio Aguiló and Mayra Mejia, the gallery has always shown very moving curatorial concepts, breaking with the typical gallery format of standard sellable exhibitions and choosing instead to be bold and alternative. This commitment to unique gallery practices is demonstrated in collaborations with other organizations, like the show “¿buscando visa para naufragar?” which featured works from the permanent collection of the Miami public library system, and “poemas de sal y tierra (poems of salt and soil)” in collaboration with the art magazine Forgotten Lands. While Homework may not exclusively exhibit Caribbean artists, the space feels quintessentially Caribbean and contemporary, tackling intellectual topics relevant to the region with local flair. The gallery is currently on hiatus before relocating to a new space in December, an unfortunate but all too frequent event that should remind us all to support our local businesses.