With Art Basel Miami Beach returning to the Miami Beach Convention Center for its 23rd edition this week, and several satellite fairs taking place across Greater Miami, local art museums are stepping up by showcasing their best exhibitions of the year. We’ve highlighted six must-see museum exhibitions, including a 15-year survey of Hiba Schahbaz’s vibrant approach to traditional Indo-Persian miniature painting through a modern feminist lens at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Woody De Othello’s lively anthropomorphic sculptures and abstract paintings at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and Yu Nishimura’s ethereal and melancholic paintings that blend everyday scenes with a dreamlike quality at the Rubell Museum. Also featured are Igshaan Adams’s new monumental tapestry installation for ICA Miami’s stairwell, a survey of Jack Pierson’s multidisciplinary practice inspired by his years in Miami at the Bass Museum of Art, and a curated selection of Pop Art paintings and sculptures collected over the years by Martin Z. Margulies at the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse.
Spanning 33 years from 1959 to 1992, “Pop Art” features nine significant Pop paintings and sculptures from the Margulies Collection, a major private collection of modern and contemporary art, housed in a 50,000-square-foot converted warehouse in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District. The exhibition highlights the American movement and emphasizes distinctive works from American history, including a real New York City subway car in George Segal’s Subway (1968), crushed car parts from John Chamberlain’s Dee Dee Bitch (1976), and Roy Lichtenstein’s Hot Dog (1963). Five of Andy Warhol’s 1964 silkscreened grocery packaging boxes and Tom Wesselmann’s Bathtub Collage #6 (1964) further demonstrate the use of readymade objects, while Jasper Johns’ 1959 monochromatic 0-9 painting almost transforms his thick impasto numerals into three-dimensional forms. Two works from the early 1990s also honor significant moments in American history, including James Rosenquist’s 1992 painting of a gift-wrapped doll, which reflects the 1980s AIDS crisis, and George Segal’s Depression Breadline (1991), which evokes a time of scarcity, patience, and perseverance.