Miami Madness

December 2008 Datebook

Boudin et Boulle

Oh, Pooh!

Sight Unseen

Italian Hours

Rich Heritage

In Full Bloom

Catching the Drift

Curves Ahead

Shiny Penney

Magdalena Abakanowicz Jean-Michel Basquiat Kara Walker Isaac Julien Anri Sala Francis Alys Thomas Hirschhorn Julika Rudelius

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At the Bass Museum of Art, in historic Collins Park, “Russian Dreams . . . ,” a collaboration with Moscow’s Multimedia Art Museum, brings together works by contemporary Russian artists. On view December 4 through February 2, the show reflects the artists’ ambivalence about and nostalgia for the mythic utopia of Soviet society amid the 21st-century contradictions of their now-capitalist homeland. In one featured work, the Berlin-based artist Alexei Kostroma recreates his 2002 installation, Feathering Aggression, blanketing a cannon with snowy feathers that evoke an ashen war zone.  

A dozen blocks south of “Russian Dreams . . .”—and several decades earlier in subject matter—is “American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow,” on view at the Wolfsonian-FIU through May 17. The show spotlights the futuristic visions of the ’30s and ’40s, when industrial designers cloaked time-saving technologies for the office and home in aerodynamic forms, from the jet-inspired 1947 black Amplicall intercom to the torpedo-shaped steel Eskimo hair dryer of the late 1930s.

Whether one society’s treasure is truly another’s trash is put to the test by the 20 contemporary artists in “Objects of Value,” at the Miami Art Museum (MAM) through February 22. Among the standout pieces are the Cuban conceptual artist Wilfredo Prieto’s One, a 2008 installation piece featuring a real diamond buried in fake crystals. Curator René Morales says the exhibition demonstrates that value is “a very immaterial thing.” Running concurrently are the first U.S. survey of Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s work and an installation by British-born Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare.

Uptown, from December 3 through March 1, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), North Miami, is staging the Albanian artist Anri Sala’s first major museum show, comprising an installation of seven films timed so that some begin as the others end. In Sala’s work Answer Me, set in a former surveillance tower between East and West Berlin, a woman’s pleas are drowned out by the echoes of a man’s drums, creating a sense of political and emotional disconnect.

At MoCA’s satellite location, the Goldman Warehouse in Wynwood, “The Possibility of an Island” runs from December 4 through March 21. Curator Ruba Katrib drew inspiration from the 2005 science-fiction novel of the same name by the French author Michel Houellebecq. Like the book, the show contemplates such topics as aging, death and destruction. In the 2006 video installation Forever—by the German-born Julika Rudelius—wealthy women disclose hopes and fears about aging as they pose poolside in the Hamptons.

Current threats to humanity are the primary concern of the latest exhibition at the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse. Three large acquisitions dominate the vast space: Magdalena Abakanowicz’s haunting Hurma (Crowd), 1994–95, of 250 headless fiber figures engaged in a struggle; the Nigerian photojournalist George Osodi’s projection of 200 photographs depicting life in the shadow of petroleum extraction and oppression, Oil Rich Niger Delta, 2003–07; and the British cinematic artist Isaac Julien’s Western Union: Small Boats, about African and Asian “clandestines,” who flee across the Mediterranean to escape poverty and human-rights abuses.

Contemporary African-American artists confront issues of race, class, gender and identity at the nearby Rubell Family Collection, where the exhibition “30 Americans” fills all 27 galleries with more than 200 works. Emerging talents, such as the New York photo-based artist Hank Willis Thomas, rub elbows with bold-faced names, including Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley and the late Jean-Michel Basquiat.