While the art in his Miami Warehouse has changed over 15 years of exhibitions, the educational mission of Martin Margulies’s collection is as strong as ever. The creation of the space in 1999 was “an extension of our experience sharing the collection with the public that goes way back to the early 1980s”, says Katherine Hinds, the curator who has worked with Margulies for more than three decades. The evolution in programming—from photography-based displays to large-scale installations and sculptures, video and now 21st-century painting—has been “a response to what we were seeing at art fairs and galleries but also to our audience of young students”.
The new acquisitions installed in the 45,000 sq. ft galleries for 2014-15 include a 65-foot-long neon Fibonacci sequence by Mario Merz, which joins the Arte Povera pieces by Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jannis Kounellis and Michelangelo Pistoletto, and new paintings by Gregor Hildebrandt, Jeff Elrod and Thomas Fougeirol. Three stone circles by Richard Long (above) are paired with a video of the artist’s journeys in the Sahara Desert “so our students can see his process”, Hinds says.
Students and visitors have the chance to walk through Do-Ho Suh’s translucent recreation of a Manhattan apartment corridor in pink nylon, 348 West 22nd St, Apt A, New York, NY 10011 USA, 2001—a hit with the public when it was last shown in 2003. “Many people have asked about it over the years,” Hinds says.
True to the roots of the collection, the special exhibitions are dedicated to photography, new and old. The Miami-based documentary photographer Annette Bonnier is presenting the series “India’s Elephants” in the Auxiliary Gallery, with sales contributing to the Asian Nature Conservation Foundation. Meanwhile, a show co-organised with the Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York brings the sculpture of Constantin Brancusi—as seen through the lens by the artist himself—to Miami for the first time. “Many students here have yet to travel to see art so it is exciting to think they will encounter a master of 20th-century abstraction at our space,” Hinds says.
• Fifteeen Year Anniversary Exhibition and India’s Elephants: Annette Bonnier, until 25 April; BrancuŞi: the Photographs, until 1 January
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'New season at the Warehouse'