By Carlos Suarez De Jesus
Artwork by Wendy White
For Fredric Snitzer, the magic has vanished from Miami's hottest cultural district. The pioneering gallery owner has launched the careers of homegrown talent such as Hernan Bas, Naomi Fisher, and Bert Rodriguez from the Wynwood emporium he opened in 2003. But the increasingly raucous art walk now keeps serious art aficionados and collectors away, he says, while the burgeoning bar and restaurant scene has driven up rents beyond most galleries' means.
"The reality is that only 10 percent of my collector base is local, and the rest come from elsewhere."
"Wynwood has become too hectic and lost its vibe," Snitzer says. "Crazy and quality I could have dealt with, but crazy and commercial is what drove me away. A lot of the new restaurants and businesses have been great for the area, but many of the developers don't understand the nature of the art community."
That's why Snitzer recently left the neighborhood he helped make famous, decamping Wynwood's increasingly commercial climes for a new location closer to downtown Miami.
He's far from alone. As Miami gears up for its Art Basel-fueled fall season, the cultural center of gravity is slowly but surely shifting away from Wynwood thanks to gallery owners like Snitzer and fellow pioneer David Castillo, who are just two of the latest to flee. Snitzer doesn't expect that trend to reverse anytime soon.
"Wynwood is changing at a very rapid pace," he says. "You are going to see a lot of the galleries and buildings in the area leveled and condos put up in their place over the next five years."
A big reason Snitzer and others have been pulled closer to Biscayne Bay is the emergence of the Perez Art Museum Miami, which opened its gleaming new home last December to rave reviews. Of course, PAMM also made headlines in February when local artist Maximo Caminero smashed an Ai WeiWei vase to protest what he saw as PAMM's lack of support for Miami artists. In all, more than 200,000 visitors have walked through PAMM's doors since last fall. "We're proud to say that PAMM has truly become Miami's front porch," says Leann Standish, the museum's deputy director for external affairs.
To mark its one-year anniversary, PAMM will boast a raft of new projects, including a blowout party December 4, when it presents a time-based art presentation by Future Brown with Kalela, an underground DJ supergroup. This year's Basel crowd will find PAMM debuting a commissioned work by Mexico City-based artist Mario Garcia Torres.
"[His] project incorporates photography, film, and objects that explore notions of Southern Florida as a site for withdrawal from society for the purpose of artistic creation," Standish says.
Museumgoers will also find "Jardim Botânico," the first major retrospective of Brazilian abstract painter Beatriz Milhazes, on display from September through January. Early next year, PAMM will open "Tàpies: From Within," a survey of more than 50 paintings and sculptures from Antoni Tàpies, a modernist Catalan artist.
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2014-09-18/culture/as-basel-looms-top-galleries-flee-wynwood-for-downtown-and-the-beach/
He is the owner of the Zwirner Galleries in New York and London
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