The Bass museum in Miami will unveil its $12m expansion project on 1 December after 18 months of construction. As The Art Newspaper reported earlier this year, the Japanese design consultant Arata Isozaki, in consultation with the architect David Gauld, was asked to expand the museum’s exhibitions and programming space “without adding square footage to the building”, according to a statement from the museum.
The redesigned interior totals 41,000 sq ft—a 47% expansion—with a reconfigured courtyard that will be finished next year. The museum has also shortened its name from the Bass Museum of Art to simply The Bass, and has revamped its logo and website.
The Bass will inaugurate the new space with three exhibitions, including the first solo museum show of works by the Swiss-born artist Ugo Rondinone, titled Good Evening Beautiful Blue (until 27 March 2017). This spans three galleries and includes one multi-channel video installation and one sculptural installation titled Vocabulary of Solitude (2016) that involves 45 sculptures of clowns named after and positioned doing everyday tasks such as ‘wake, sit, walk and shower’. The third work is titled Clockwork for Oracles II (2008), an installation comprised of mirrored works that are hung salon-style over a wall of pages from the local paper sourced at the time of installation.
The Argentinian-born artist Mika Rottenberg is to present a video and sculptural installation that first premiered at the 56th Venice Biennale last year. NoNoseKnows (Pearl Shop Variant) (2015), documents Chinese labourers harvesting pearls from oysters. Also on the opening roster is a solo show for the Cameroon-born artist Pascale Marthine Tayou titled Beautiful (until 3 July), including a permanent installation at the Bass titled Welcome Wall (2016) that is composed of 75 animated LED signs that will greet visitors to the museum in various languages.
The museum, which was founded in 1964 by the City of Miami Beach with a donation from the collectors John and Johanna Bass, was first renovated to add a new wing and second level in 2001, also under the consultancy of Isozaki.