Rumors that North Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art and the Bass Museum of Art will soon become one, just six months after MOCA's legendary director Bonnie Clearwater left her post for the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, seem ever more likely to be true. According to queen bee of the grapevine and former Eater Editor Lesley Abravanel, Bass head honcho Silvia Karman Cubiñá will serve as executive director of the new museum, while MOCA interim director Alex Gartenfeld will take up the title of chief curator. Lesley revealed the news, from an anonymous source, in a tweet. Yes, just an unsourced tweet, but Lesley knows her stuff.
"Tons of people who came for Art Basel and wanted to see the Tracey Emin show complained that it was a $45 cab ride and then there's not much there," a Bass administrator told Curbed Miami, referring to the artist's retrospective at MOCA. Rumors about the two institutions joining collections and redoubling, as it were, their efforts to get Miamians and tourists off the beach and into museums, are old hat. MOCA's media rep Valerie Ricordi told Lesley that "this is a recycling of old news and speculation. There is nothing new to report on the matter." If the two do merge, the new museum would have a strange permanent collection that includes Renaissance and Baroque religious iconography, a smattering of Old Masters and dozens of contemporary pieces, some of which donated by Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz. (In other words, it might remain a small, slightly more encyclopedic, museum.) It was Rosa, back in December, who asserted MOCA was closing. No word yet on whether MOCA would move into the Bass Museum or vice versa, or if the plan is to jointly occupy a different space altogether.
· Is the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami Merging With The Bass Museum? [miami.com]
· Rosa de la Cruz Bashes MOCA, Bass and P.A.M.M. [New Times]
· Previous coverage of the Bass Museum of Art [Curbed Miami]
· MoCA NoMi No Mo [Twitter]
[Courtesy of the Bass Museum]
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