I can hardly believe it's been eight full months since I last posted something, but then the year sort of got away from me. Especially with something like the death of a close family member, it becomes a struggle to rebuild those synapses, and with the case of me and blogging, those habits were never that strong to begin with.
I'm here in Miami because the long-awaited survey of Leandro's work is finally opening this week at Pérez Art Museum Miami. Depending on how you look at it, I've either been laboring on this project for the past 3 1/2 years, since work began in earnest for the MALBA version in early 2019, or the past 8 years, when I first began to seriously investigate organizing an Erlich survey for a U.S. museum (at that time it was OCMA).
What you see above is the cover of the hefty catalog, which was put together by a crack design & production team in Paris. Since 'Pool' is his signature piece, it makes sense to be the cover image, and I have very little doubt that his work will attract the same level of attention as it did in Buenos Aires 3+ years ago.
In every way this is a professional high-water mark for me. I've never organized a big museum exhibition in Miami, & certainly not for ABMB, where literally everyone will see it. The idea of opening during Art Week, but keeping it up for 9 months afterward, is brilliant, as it will become a completely different exhibition once the art mafia leaves town. It's also
the biggest project I've done since Open Spaces in 2018, but it's a peculiar experience as the guest curator, insofar as my hands-on involvement with the installation is pretty much zilch. All the important decisions were made many, many months ago, and when I walk in the museum tomorrow & see it for the first time, the installation will be complete.
Something else I appreciate about the way this has been organized is that there isn't a VIP opening for high-rollers, which tends to be off-putting for the vast majority of fair attendees, who'd like to attend but can't. Instead, PAMM hosts a couple of private parties for their clients early in the week, and the rest of the time it's pretty much open house, which is why I'm supposed to be on call for most of 4 continuous days, before returning to NYC on Friday night. I'm glad I got here early, so that I could spend the weekend catching up on the different exhibitions that I won't be able to see otherwise, and rest up for what is sure to be a marathon of greeting people and thanking them for coming to the exhibition.
Here is The View, as seen in MALBA in Buenos Aires, back in 2019.