South Florida writer documents Miami’s global eminence in visual arts

For over the past three decades, Elisa Turner has been a witness to the changing landscape of Miami’s art scene and the people who shaped it.

When internationally renowned artist Edouard Duval-Carrié introduced a milestone exhibit in 2000, she saw him introduce Haitian Voudou and iconography to a wider audience.

When the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami — or MOCA for short — first opened its doors in 1996, Turner wrote about “the candy-coated gimmick,” a tin of chocolate, she received at the opening celebration.

When the 9/11 terrorist attacks postponed plans for the inaugural Art Basel Miami Beach, Turner watched as the arts community created new opportunities for other artists and themselves.

Now, the award-winning art critic and journalist has turned more than a hundred profiles, reviews and articles into a record of the city’s local art history. In her new book, Miami’s Art Boom: From Local Vision to International Presence, Turner compiled her work as a freelance writer for the Miami Herald, with articles dating back to 1987, to help illustrate Miami’s global eminence in the visual arts.

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She told WLRN she was inspired to revisit and share her work after reading press coverage of Art Basel that called Miami “a cultural wasteland.”

“I also felt that this was history that was gonna be forgotten if no one preserved it, so I have a record of everything I wrote for the Herald,” she said. “I just wanted special stories that would stand the test of time and really help this narrative unfold about how Miami became a more interesting, proactive place in the arts.”

In tribute to the artists and curators referenced in her book, Turner makes a point to include the date of their death at the end of a passage. After surviving a harrowing car accident with her family 20 years ago, Turner said she saw the importance of seizing the moment and chronicling her work.

“As I worked on this, people kept dying and they were younger than me sometimes. So I thought, you know, I better get this finished before something happens to me, because we all know that our time here is limited and really all that we have is the next few minutes in front of us,” she said.

The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

WLRN:  What were the key moments that shaped Miami into an art destination? 

TURNER: It was a series of key moments really, and they kind of built upon each other. That’s what I tried to show in my book. For the second Art Basel Miami Beach, I used to be the Miami correspondent for ARTnews Magazine, so all the time, often Milton Esterow, the founding editor-in-chief and publisher, would come to visit Miami during that time, and we would get together for coffee or lunch and he would say, ‘Elisa, I have never seen a city embrace an art fair as enthusiastically as Miami has.’ I thought, well, this is a very important observation because it’s one thing to get people here saying, ‘oh, it’s so exciting,’ but they have a vested interest in it. Milton Esterow, at that time, had been to art fairs all over the country, all over the world, so he had no reason to promote Miami as an art fair.

How would you describe Miami’s art scene? What makes it different from other art capitals like New York or Paris?

There are all kinds of artists who have come here from the Caribbean and Latin America. One time when I was writing at the Herald, we were always being told to think about Miami as the gateway to Latin America, and it still is. But really the longer I was there, I felt, ‘Well, wait a minute. We are really the gateway to the Caribbean.’ Miami is like a capital for the Caribbean ’cause everyone can converge here. And then I also think about all the artists who had come here from Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic — they brought a special energy and creativity that has continued to enliven the city’s art community.

Several blue chip, well-known galleries have reportedly withdrawn from Art Basel Miami for various reasons, including a softening market. What’s your perspective on the business side of running art galleries in Miami? 

Well, our galleries tend to come and go. I’ve seen that a lot over the years that I’ve been here, and I can’t really speak to very specifics of the business side, but I will say, it’s interesting. Someone was asking me about Wynwood and someone else said, well, you know, Wynwood was. We still have the terrific Wynwood murals, which a lot of people come to, but now, because of the rising rents, artists have gone to other neighborhoods, Little River, Little Haiti and Allapattah. It’s been exciting to see how the art community evolves.

For people who don’t really know, can you kind of pull the curtain behind art galleries. What is the role of art galleries in helping contribute to an art scene? 

Well, for one thing, providing money to support the artist to go on making more work.

I mean, that’s really essential. There are some really important grants here that artists have access to, but also it’s important that they can sell their work and people will buy it. And then a really good gallerist has connections with museum curators and they. [They] can reach out to museum curators and say, ‘I really think you should see this person’s latest work.’

Can you talk about the role that public art has played in shaping Miami’s artistic identity?

I think public art is incredibly important. Thanks to the Knight Foundation, I was able to have 40 color illustrations of artwork. And I wanted to have art primarily from the Art and Public Places collection because we have one of the oldest art and public places collections in the country, and I wanted to showcase that. I mean, you could go to different places, public transportation, parks, and you don’t have to pay admission to see it. It’s a very democratic spirit, which I like.

You talk a lot about how local institutions shaped the art scene, but have you seen a change in the way in which locals engage with the art? 

Well, I think everyone gets more excited about Miami Art Week, which I think is wonderful, but I want people to be excited about the art opportunities we have to experience art all year round, and I think that’s becoming more prevalent. This book took about three years of my life — putting this together and revising the essays — and so I was pretty much living with this manuscript for three years, so I didn’t get out [and] about a lot.

Your book outlines key moments when major institutions, such as museums and art collectors, began to embrace Miami’s local artists. That really helped set the stage, as you say. What can the arts community and everyday people learn from understanding its art history?

I think they can learn to value the kind of history that has happened in Miami and appreciate that. We see certain buildings being torn down, and so Miami is a place where things come and go really fast. So this is a way to say, stop. Let’s see what we did. We can move forward, but we can be proud of what we did and recognize that. So I think it’s important to recognize how you got to where you are.