It's such a perfect project for us and for now.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude were invited to come to Miami in 1980 by Jan van der Marck.
Jan van der Marck was the first director of our museum.
We were called the Center for Fine Arts at that point in time, and kind of suggestive
of the idea that we were working on more of a project basis, less of a collection kind
of basis, the way we do now.
But van der Marck invited Christo and Jeanne-Claude to come and to make a consideration of Miami.
He had already worked with them in Chicago many years before and had an idea that Miami
was the right place, the right time.
And the fact that van der Marck would be our founding director and open the museum the
following year just puts everything together for us.
So we're here to celebrate what I think in many ways is really the symbolic beginning
of contemporary art in Miami.
We talk a lot about Art Basel at this point in time and we talk about the fairs, but in
many ways I believe that this is the heart of where it begins, 1983, Surrounded Islands,
the idea that art is big, it's for everybody, it exists for everyone to come together.
And even in the process, the making of it, physically, at that time included a whole
lot of Miamians.
So it had to be done.
And I'm just really excited that we're at this point in time, excited that we have a
curator like Rene Morales who grew up here in Miami, experienced the project in 1983,
and has been with our institution for the last 13 years.
No project this size can happen without many, many hands, and kind of same for PAM; it is
such a community-integrated space, so if you could talk a little more about that.
Absolutely.
I think the heart of this project is very much built around the idea of participation,
of collaboration, and of different people working together.
So if you look at some of the photographs that you'll encounter in the exhibition, you'll
see people from disparate places, you'll see people who are really all working together
in service of the same thing.
One of the things that we pride ourselves on is the idea that the museum is a town square,
the idea that the museum is a place for people to come together, and the idea that it is
a place where art leads us to conversations that we might not be able to have in other
places.
And frankly, I think sometimes it is somewhat of a cliche notion, but we really believe
that the potential of the museum is to theoretically make the world a little bit better.
And I believe that a project like Christo's goes certainly in that direction.
No matter how much he may play those kind of things down, you can't take away the idea
of the collaboration that it takes to bring such a massive project together.
And you get a taste of it with the collaboration that it takes to bring an exhibition of this
size together.
So this is the perfect kind of show for us, especially at a time when, now, we're in this
building that has only been here for five years, right on the bay, with an island in
sight, and having that geographical location that is so specific to the project, but also
celebrating the 35 years in between.
A lot has happened, and we went from the Center for Fine Arts to the Miami Art Museum to the
PAM to the Perez Art Museum Miami.
And I think what we embody in this moment and what we embody with this building is a
pride and a desire to talk from the point of view of being here in Miami, and this project
is all about that.
For viewers who may not be as familiar, if you could give us a little context of Christo
and Jeanne-Claude in the world of art.
Yeah, so let's think about this moment in time.
The realization of this project is in 1983.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude were working on large-scale projects that, like this one,
involved lots of people, lots of bureaucracy.
And so there's a time commitment to each of these projects.
One of the things I find really interesting about Surrounded Islands and how it came about
is that, until this point, Christo and Jeanne-Claude had done major projects in relatively isolated
landscapes: Australia, Northern California.
And in these places, it was about creating something within the landscape, but they were
not necessarily places that were populated, or very little.
And in the process of conceiving Surrounded Islands, they were working on another project.
And I would say that there are a couple of other things that were happening in addition
to those large-scale projects.
There were projects like the Reichstag, which happened in 1981, where you're wrapping a
major building, per se, a major piece of architecture.
He also did the Arch of Vittorio Emanuele in Milan.
So it was these discrete pieces, but they were put into metropolitan ares.
And so you had on one side the big landscape, and on the other side the smaller architectural
framework, but in the metropolis.
Miami brings together both of these things.
This is the first time that a major landscape work of art or project, if you call it, happened
in the middle of a major metropolitan city.
And really, Miami is one of the only places on Earth where that could happen, because
there is so much nature within the boundaries of our city.
And it plays that role.
Interestingly, Christo and Jeanne-Claude had been working on the gates project for New
York City in the same couple of years running up to Miami.
They were not given permission to do this project in Central Park, in New York City.
But when Miami came along, it was a way of being able to address the metropolis in that
fashion on a grand scale.
And in Miami, as Christo and Jeanne-Claude had said, have said many a time, is that the
water is our Central Park.
So the bay is our Central Park; we play on the water.
And it's the perfect way of moving that conversation forward, of thinking about how to create something
that is large-scale, beautiful, in the landscape, but also is part of a populace, so we complete
the piece together.