A dozen new works of art, commissioned for the Osvaldo N. Soto Miami-Dade Justice Center, will have their grand debut on Saturday (6 December). The city’s new 23-storey civil courthouse at 20 NW 1st Avenue, which opened in November, will take over the activities of the historic 1928 Neo-Classical “Cielito Lindo” courthouse on West Flagler Street, which has been put up for sale.
The new commissions were funded by Miami-Dade County’s Art in Public Places programme—one of the oldest of its kind in the country, established in 1973 through an ordinance that sets aside 1.5% of construction costs for new buildings to be used for purchasing art.
All the artists are based in Florida and most have a connection to Miami. Their works range in scale from modest to monumental. Edouard Duval-Carrié’s 56-ft-long mural Ode to the Everglades, for example, has been installed in the lobby and depicts the complex ecosystem that encompasses much of South Florida. Other artists commissioned to create site-specific works include Beverly Acha, Jennifer Basile, Loriel Beltran, Morel Doucet, Tomm El-Saieh, Loni Johnson, Karen Rifas, Onajide Shabaka, Philip Smith and Laura Tanner.
The public-art programme also funded the acquisition of more than 25 existing works by a range of artists to decorate the building’s halls, offices and courtrooms. Among them is an historic series of paintings of Florida wildlife by the Modernist artist Charley Harper, which were originally commissioned for the Royal Palm Visitors Center in the Everglades.
Following the destruction of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the works were removed and kept in storage for decades. But Jennifer D. Bailey, a lifelong admirer of Harper’s work and a judge who served in Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit Court for 31 years, located the works and helped secure their donation in 2021 to the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, which has had the works fully restored for display in the new courthouse.