Miami Art Museum gets engaged

Related: Art at the fairs, part one.

The evolution of the Miami art museum scene continues ahead at breakneck speed. In just the last year the city has attracted a well-respected museum director and chosen the hottest starchitects to build that museum. During the most recent ABMB/fairs week Miami's private 'museums' showed new ambition, most clearly at the Rubell Family Collection which tried to present a museum-style, tightly-curated show. (Their heart was in the right place, I suppose, but the show was one of the worst I've seen all year.)

Today comes news that Terry Riley's Miami Art Museum and Miami Art Central, a private kunsthalle founded and funded by Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, have joined in a six-month-long partnership. (Fontanals-Cisneros is one of a relatively small number of big Miami collectors to sit on MAM's board.) After the engagement, the two institutions may formally marry. During the partnership MAM and MAC will develop exhibitions and other programming together. MAM will keep its Herzog + de Meuron building on track and MAC will continue to host shows in its (quite excellent) south Miami space.

So what does this all mean? The MAM-MAC partnership is the latest sign that Miami's much-vaunted collectors are buying into MAM as it transforms itself from a sub-regional museum into (it hopes) a museum of national import. (Earlier, Dennis Scholl started MAM's 'Collectors Council' in an effort to help boost MAM's tiny collection.)

MAC may have Miami's best exhibition program -- it's at least as good as MAM's. (Lorna Simpson?! Groan.) In the last two years MAC has hosted an excellent William Kentridge survey and a video show from the Pompidou. Last month I wrote that the video show "won't be a huge ABMB hit because it requires people to sit, watch, shut up and enjoy. Art fair visitors are not known for shutting up. A good thing, a sign of maturity: It's a show intended for a Miami audience."

All this said, I think that the Miami Herald went a little over the top in its coverage. Gugg Museum boss Lisa Dennison always gives great quote, but there's nothing Gugg-like about this semi-merger. And Fontanals-Cisneros is hardly going all-in -- her Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation will continue to operate from its own (excellent) space just north of downtown Miami.

I'll be interested to see what happens with CiFo: Of all the private spaces in Miami, the Cisneros-Fontanals kunsthalles are the most curatorially rigorous, the most museum-like. During ABMB/fairs week CiFO hosted two interesting shows: One of Latin American modernism from the Cisneros-Fontanals collection and a show about classification, also from the Cisneros-Fontanals collection. Just before the Miami shows opened CiFO hosted an exhibition of art made by 10 participants in its residency program. (That's right, TEN. I don't know if there are 10 residencies available in all of Washington, fer chrissakes.)

If Los Angeles doesn't watch out (and pony up), Miami's going to pass it as America's next museum capital.

Related: The Next Few Hours looks inside MAC to explain more.