Postcard from PAMM

“It’s everyone’s museum.”

So said Darlene Pérez, one half of the Miami power couple behind the leading Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), earlier today, when I ran into my fellow Florida International University Panther in the vestibule of the downtown museum.

I had spent a bit o’ the morning checking out the comprehensive documentary exhibition of “Surrounded Islands,” Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 1980-1983 revolutionizing two-week intervention on Biscayne Bay; discovering – and immediately loving – the work of the Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson; and nearly shedding a tear of joy after seeing the final piece I saw, “American Echo Chamber,” a special commission delivered by the Peruvian artist José Carlos Martinat that seeks to represent how ideologies are amplified to the edge in the current sociopolitical landscape. (Martinat’s work will remain on view through January 2020, btw.)

Too cool, I thought, that precisely after taking a beat to wonder whether I would ever see the work of a fellow Peruvian at the PAMM, I did.

Cooler yet that I was able to thank Pérez, for offering the 305 this amazing gift of a cultural hub and bolstering artists, especially Latin American artists during a week on which Miami is at the forefront of art.

PAMM is and, indeed, now feels like, everyone’s museum.