Summer’s home stretch is almost here! We’re looking ahead to a jam-packed August at The Wolfsonian–FIU as the season winds to a close. Before the kids head back to school, your readers can flex their little ones’ creative muscles at two family-friendly events bookending the month: a travel poster-making workshop (8/3) plus Sketching in the Galleries (8/30).
The rest of August is more “adult swim”—because grownups need a little R&R. 🙂 Party with glam goddesses of entertainment at Deco + Drag (8/2), showcasing Miami’s top drag queen divas; toast the weirdest works in our collection over classic cocktails with Nathaniel Sandler at Into the Stacks (8/9); or slow dance and get your romance on with us at Foggy Windows (8/16). There’s also the last museum-and-a-movie pairing of summer, Lights: Camera, Deco: Things to Come (8/25), so make it a date night by inviting your S.O. or crush for a culture combo to remember.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Fri, Aug 2 | 6:30–9pm
Bow down to Miami’s top divas! Our city’s most beloved drag queens are riffing on Art Deco for a one-night-only ’20s-themed extravaganza. Tour our exhibition Deco: Luxury to Mass Market with curator Shoshana Resnikoff and 2019’s “Ultimate Miami Drag Queen” Karla Croqueta, then catch a performance spectacle headlined by Kat Wilderness, Persephone Von Lips, Opulenceeeeee, and Aeon Hues, with sounds by Gami. Fan yourselves and bring your dollar bills—the girls are bringing the heat.
$12, free for members (drinks available for purchase) | Tickets
Sat, Aug 3 | 12–3pm
Discovering Design Free Family Day: Traveling with The Wolf!
Summer’s almost over, and we can’t wait to hear about where you’ve been and what you’ve seen. “Draw” inspiration from Cuban graphic designer Conrado Massaguer and design your own travel poster based on your summer vacation. Then, at story time, we’ll dive into color choice in Frank Viva’s Along a Long Road—a book illustrated with only five colors!
Free and open to the public | RSVP
Fri, Aug 9 | 6–9pm
It’s SoBe’s best-kept nightlife secret: when the other happy hours wind down, we keep the killer specials going! For a sophisticated date night that will be kind on your wallet, pencil in a stop at The Wolf. First take a free guided tour of the galleries at 6pm, then head downstairs to the Design Store for half-priced beer, wine, and mixed drinks. After pre-gaming with our one-two punch of culture and cocktails, you’ll be right in the heart of the action only a couple of blocks from Ocean Drive—perfectly situated to hit the town in style.
Free and open to the public; drinks available for purchase
Fri, Aug 9 | 7–9pm
Welcome to our oddest Into the Stacks yet! This time, we’re straying from objects and heading straight to 2D in a painting-centric edition focused on wild and wacky canvases. Talk mystic images and dystopian visions with Bookleggers Library director Nathaniel Sandler and Wolfsonian curator Silvia Barisione as they comb through our curious collection, plus enjoy drinks made from vintage recipes (available for purchase). Presented in conjunction with Sandler’s Knight Foundation-funded project, Crypt Cracking.
Free and open to the public | RSVP
Fri, Aug 16 | 8–11pm
The Wolfsonian is turning the heat up with Foggy Windows, a traveling talk show and party that seeks to answer a simple question: why doesn’t anyone slow dance anymore? Through conversation and performance, Foggy Windows invites its audience to investigate the adventure and absurdity of modern romance, culminating in a night of slow dancing in a foggy ballroom. In this special Wolfsonian edition, we’ll dive into our collection to explore modes of communication and technology and how they tend to keep us apart—or bring us closer together. We supply the fog, you bring the steam.
$15, free for members | Tickets
Sun, Aug 25 | 4–7pm (4pm tour + 5pm film)
Lights, Camera, Deco: Things to Come
The grand finale in our Deco film series with the Miami Beach Cinematheque is William Cameron Menzies’ 1936 sci-fi classic Things to Come, a film about a world war that spans 30 years. Adapted from H.G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come, the film centers around the citizens of Everytown as they struggle to survive war, famine, and disease before scientific progress heralds an age of salvation and growth. Join us for a 4pm tour of Deco: Luxury to Mass Market at The Wolfsonian before experiencing the Art Deco metropolis of Everytown in Things to Come at the Cinematheque at 5pm.
$11; FREE* for MBC and Wolfsonian members, seniors, and students | Tickets
*Optional tour of Deco at The Wolf is included in the film admission price.
Fri, Aug 30 | 7–8:30pm
Tap into your inner artist by sketching in our galleries! Drawing materials, gallery stools, and professional bilingual instruction provided to participants of all ages and skill levels. English/Spanish
Free and open to the public; walk-in basis, no RSVP required
Weekly on Fri | 6–6:45pm
Learn more about The Wolfsonian and related art and design themes during a 45-minute free guided tour of the building, collection, or exhibitions. New guides bring different perspectives each week!
Free and open to the public
EXHIBITIONS + INSTALLATIONS
LAST CHANCE! Closing Aug 25
Deco Designs
Deco Designs highlights decorative compositions from leading artists and designers working in Paris in the 1920s. Featuring vibrantly colorful and complex patterns, this library installation illustrates a variety of influences and individual styles and shows how Deco borrowed from exotic and ancient cultures, contemporaneous avant-garde movements, and modern technologies. Produced using the pochoirtechnique, a refined and labor-intensive stenciling process, the handmade prints on view epitomize the opulence of the era. Compiled in luxury portfolios and marketed to collectors, design studios, and artists, they inspired designs for interior decoration and helped spread the spirit of Art Deco.
The Wolfsonian’s library installations are generously sponsored by Henry S. Hacker. Deco Designs is presented concurrently with the museum’s major exhibition Deco: Luxury to Mass Market.
LAST CHANCE! Closing Aug 31
Cover Girls
The brainchild of publisher, illustrator, and art director Conrado W. Massaguer, Social set the tone for Cuban values and taste in the early 20th century. From the 1920s into the 1950s the influential magazine launched the careers of numerous Cuban artists and popularized a bold Art Deco aesthetic, particularly in its depictions of young women—flapper types who showed off the fashion, makeup, and hairstyle trends of the time.
Many of Massaguer’s original Social covers are displayed in Cuban Caricature and Culture: The Art of Massaguer, an installation of recent gifts by collector Vicki Gold Levi to The Wolfsonian Library. Shown along the museum’s 10th Street facade is just a taste of these covers, presented alongside two of Miami artist Andres Conde’s contemporary reinterpretations of Massaguer’s historic “ideals.” More work by Conde will be featured in Deco Fashion: Painted Illustration, an exhibition opening September 19, 2019, at the Art Deco Museum located just two blocks away from The Wolfsonian on Ocean Drive.
Through Feb 2
Cuban Caricature and Culture: The Art of Massaguer
With his biting political satire, celebrity caricatures, and magazine and advertising illustrations, graphic artist Conrado Walter Massaguer (1889–1965) helped shape the visual culture of his native Cuba between the 1920s and 1950s. This installation of works recently gifted to The Wolfsonian Library by Vicki Gold Levi will bring forth Massaguer’s legacy through dozens of works, from images of the “New Woman” flapper ideal (the so-called “Massa-girls”) in his magazine Social to depictions of tropical paradise for the Cuban Tourist Commission. Massaguer’s transnational reach will be shown in his covers for Collier’s and Life, while cartoons of visiting dignitaries and Hollywood stars will reveal how he rubbed shoulders with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, and the King of Spain—all evidence of an artist at the center of Havana’s cosmopolitan culture in the decades before the Cuban Revolution.
Ongoing
Deco: Luxury to Mass Market
“Art Deco” has come to evoke a set of styles that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s out of aspirations to fuse art and industry into a modern language of design. From exquisite handcrafted objects to streamlined household appliances, the items on display in Deco will demonstrate how American designers adapted a style associated with European luxury to the demands of industrial mass production. Through decorative arts, product design, architecture, and graphics from the Wolfsonian collection, the exhibition will trace Art Deco’s origins in Europe, its migration to the United States, and its evolution into a fully American style—perhaps most spectacularly realized on Miami Beach in the 1930s.
Deco: Luxury to Mass Market is made possible by Diane and Alan Lieberman and the South Beach Group, with the support of Jamestown, L.P., and Saul and Jane Gross and Streamline Properties.
Ongoing
Art and Design in the Modern Age: Selections from the Wolfsonian Collection
These galleries provide an overview of the museum’s holdings of American and European artifacts from 1850 to 1950. Culled from The Wolfsonian collection are approximately three hundred works in a variety of formats, ranging from books, posters, and postcards to decorative arts, architectural models, paintings, and sculptures. Focal points include design reform movements, urbanism, industrial design, transportation, world’s fairs, advertising, and political propaganda. Inaugurated in November 1996, this ongoing exhibition is periodically updated.
The Wolfsonian is located at 1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL. Admission is $12 for adults; $8 for seniors, students, and children ages 6–18; and free for Wolfsonian members, State University System of Florida staff and students with ID, and children under 6. The museum is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, 10am–6pm; Friday, 10am–9pm; Sunday, noon–6pm; and is closed on Wednesday. Contact us at 305.531.1001 or visit us online at wolfsonian.org for further information.