MIAMI—“Can you hold on a minute while I move somewhere quieter? I'm standing in a construction site,” says Ella Fontanals Cisneros, a Venezuelan-born philanthropist who has been collecting art for some 30 years and has been a vital force in Miami's art scene, when ArtInfo reaches her by phone in Miami.

Nearly drowning out her voice are the sounds of workers putting the finishing touches on the 12,000-square-Foot Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) warehouse. Designed by architect Rene Gonzalez, the building is to serve as a venue for rotating displays of Fontanals Cisneros' vast private art collection; it will also provide quarters for the artist-residency program that CIFO supports. CIFO opens on Dec. 2 to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach.

CIFO, which she founded with members of her family three years ago, provides a link with Latin America, especially through the studio-residency program for Latin American artists, started last year. Two years ago, Ms. Fontanals Cisneros founded Miami Art Central (MAC), which has since become a major venue for contemporary art.

The new CIFO space may be in Miami's warehouse district, but Rene Gonzalez has created a facade that incorporates nature, bringing a dash of green to an area dominated by grey. Inside the flexible gallery spaces are curated exhibitions of artworks from Ms. Fontanals Cisneros's collection. She enlisted the skills of not one but two well-respected curators for the job.

Michael Rush, former director of the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art and recently appointed director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, and author of a survey of video art, has assembled a survey of video art called Indeterminate States that includes works by artists ranging from Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra to Douglas Gordon and Candice Breitz.

For the other show, Beyond Delirious, Christopher Phillips, curator at New York's International Center of Photography, has culled photographs by Ed Ruscha, Andreas Gursky, Massimo Vitali and many others.

What do you hope will be CIFO Warehouse’s greatest contribution to the local art scene?

First of all, we will be able to show to this area my collection of contemporary art. That will be a contribution similar to that of all the other collectors who have really changed the profile of this city. We will be able to show it not only to the general public but also to groups from schools—universities and art schools. Also we are bringing to this area something human—the building will be very interesting and will bring warmth to the area.

How did you choose the location for CIFO?

We are in the warehouse district, more towards the performing arts center. The Wynwood area is a few blocks up. It took me a while—over a year—to find a space because I wanted to have a warehouse as well as a space where we could put parts of the collection, and also room for the studio program for Latin American artists. We needed space so that they could have exhibitions after they finished their studio programs. Finally we found this. It was a formerly a boxing school.

How did you choose to work with Rene Gonzalez?

I have worked with him on other projects. He is someone I know and trust, so it was an easy choice.

It sounds like there is a great deal of nature—both real and imagined—integrated into the building's facade. Depictions of a jungle, and actual bamboo and ficus plants…

Covering the front of the building will be a mural that is like a jungle, full of bamboo and greenery. In front of that mural will be real bamboo. We’ve changed the front of the warehouse so that it looks more like a garden.

There isn’t much green space in that district…

Yes, unfortunately this is a warehouse area, and a place that has been developing lately— there is a lot of cement. It’s really coming up now, but still has a long way to go.

How did you decide on these two curators?

The collection has many aspects—not just photography and video. I have collected Latin American art, including geometrical abstraction, for instance. But because photography and video are main centers of contemporary art, at the fairs and elsewhere, the decision was made to do something with the holdings in those areas. Christopher Phillips had already done things at MAC, so he was the perfect person. And Rina Carvajal, the director of MAC, brought Michael Rush to my attention. I knew his work and met him and liked him.