PUBLIC PROGRAMS
*All events are free unless otherwise noted.
Friday, November 6 | 6–8
Join EXILE Books and The Wolfsonian on November 6 for a refreshing take on Florida history! From 6 to 8pm, celebrate all things orange at the opening of Orange Oratory, a temporary activation of the museum’s Bridge Tender House, with festive citrus refreshments inspired by the landmark’s 1939 inauguration. Toast this magical moment of Miami history, help us usher in EXILE Books’ museum residency, and meet the team behind the upcoming artist’s book featuring all things sunny and South Florida in The Wolfsonian’s collection.
Friday, November 6 | 7pm
Book Club: Frankenstein
Few creatures of horror have seized readers’ imaginations as the anguished monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Read this classic tale of horror and suspense through the Halloween season and discuss it with The Wolfsonian Book Club on November 6.
Free for members and first-time participants // Join or RSVP by emailing bookclub@thewolf.fiu.edu.
Saturday, November 7 | 1–4pm
Free Family Day: Discovering Design “Tropical Explorers”
Let your creativity blossom at The Wolf! Bring your family to collage a mixed-media artwork inspired by tropical plants with artist Deming King Harriman. Then, explore wild jungles with story time in the galleries, or navigate the special exhibition Philodendronwith our new family gallery guide, Tropical Explorers.
Free for children under 15 and accompanying adults // RSVP here.
Sunday, November 8 | 3pm
Concert: FIU Jazz Guitar Ensemble
Jam out to an afternoon of jazz, featuring FIU’s School of Music Jazz Guitar Ensemble! Directed by Professor Tom Lippincott, the ensemble will perform standard and contemporary jazz repertoire as well as original compositions that take advantage of the unique and varied sounds of the electric guitar. Co-sponsored by the FIU College of Music.
Friday, November 20 | 4–9pm
Join us for happy hour in The Wolfsonian Café every third Friday of the month! Enjoy half-price beer, wine, and mixed drink specials, as well as live music or a local artist showcase. Free gallery admission and free guided tours begin at 6pm. #WolfHappyHour
Weekly on Fridays | 6–6:45pm
Free Friday Evening Guided Tours
Learn more about The Wolfsonian collection and related art and design themes during a 45-minute, free guided tour of the permanent collection or temporary exhibitions.
OPENING IN NOVEMBER
Opening November 13
Margin of Error explores cultural responses to mechanical mastery and engineered catastrophes of the modern age—the shipwrecks, crashes, explosions, collapses, and novel types of workplace injury that interrupt the path of progress. Revealing the consequences of mankind’s endeavor to defy and exceed limits, the exhibition traces the narrative of technological ambition from myth and triumph to peril and accident prevention through over two hundred works from the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including decorative and graphic art, painting, sculpture, industrial artifacts, photography, and ephemera. Major artists and designers showcased include Man Ray, Lewis Hine, Margaret Bourke-White, Herbert Bayer, Julius Klinger, and Louis Lozowick.
Opening November 6
The history and spirit of South Florida lie at the heart of Orange Oratory, a glowing neon sculpture suspended within the museum’s iconic Bridge Tender House in a visual reference to the fresh-squeezed orange juice served at its 1939 inauguration ceremony. Paired with a virtual exhibition and an artist’s book designed by Richard Massey, the installation marks EXILE Books’ residency in The Wolfsonian Shop, where the pop-up bookstore will be stationed this winter to celebrate all things “orange.” Presented in partnership with EXILE Books founder Amanda Keeley.
LAST CHANCE! CLOSING IN NOVEMBER
Closing November 15
Promoting the Good Life: Recent Acquisitions
With the advent of mass consumerism, modern advertising emerged to market not only goods, but the good life. As advanced printing processes made it easier and less expensive to reproduce images, street posters, catalog advertisements, and trade fairs turned bystanders into buyers. The promotional materials in this installation, generously donated by Jill and Avram Glazer, promised a leisure lifestyle through a range of graphic strategies developed by the advertising industry in the beginning of the twentieth century. From direct representation to distinctive typography, the fundamentals of branding on view here—perhaps taken for granted now, though revolutionary at their time—shaped the rise of the mass consumer market as we recognize it today.
ONGOING EXHIBITIONS & INSTALLATIONS
Through February 28
Philodendron: From Pan-Latin Exotic to American Modern
Central and South American flora take center stage in Philodendron, a sprawling exhibition that charts the migration of tropical plants from their native habitats to North American and European gardens and interiors. Spanning three centuries and drawing together objects from the Amazon, Caribbean, and beyond, the survey explores this often-overlooked, Pan-American cultural exchange to deconstruct the “social lives” of the plants, from their influence on material culture to their impact on diverse fields ranging from the visual arts, architecture, film, and fashion to the agricultural, industrial, and medical sciences. By following the philodendron from the jungle to the home, the exhibition illustrates the myriad ways the plant shaped Western ideas of the tropics—becoming an evolving symbol for what is exotic, Latin, and modern. Philodendronincludes objects created by indigenous Amazonian peoples; botanical drawings by Heinrich Schott, who first classified hundreds of Philodendron species; and works by such artists and designers as Henri Matisse, Roberto Burle-Marx, Paulo Werneck, and Erdem.
This exhibition is made possible by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award. The Exhibition Award program was founded in 1998 to honor Emily Hall Tremaine. It rewards innovation and experimentation among curators by supporting thematic exhibitions that challenge audiences and expand the boundaries of contemporary art.
Through January 17
Miami Beach: From Mangrove to Tourist Mecca
The third and final installation in our library series celebrating the centennial of Miami Beach, Miami Beach: From Mangrove to Tourist Mecca documents the city’s fledgling years. Sculpted by pioneering developers such as Carl Fisher, Miami Beach blossomed during the 1920s into a winter tourist hotspot catering to the wealthy elite. Photographic albums of “lost” hotels—the Nautilus, Flamingo, King Cole, and others—show how these self-contained luxury resorts lured the rich and famous south with regattas, elephant rides, and amenities such as tennis courts, golf courses, polo fields, private bungalows, and yacht docks.
Americans All: Race Relations in Depression-Era Murals
During the 1930s, American artists covered the walls of public buildings all across the country with murals meant to showcase the nation’s ideals and lift the country out of the Great Depression. Here at The Wolfsonian, preparatory painting, drawings, and mosaics for these murals (some ultimately realized, others never executed) reveal how artists reckoned with the nature of the United States as a racially diverse nation, reflecting the contentious and unsettled state of early twentieth-century race relations through their representations of blacks, whites, American Indians, and Asian immigrants—the melting pot of America.
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 the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. 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. The United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands are most fully represented in the collection. Art and Design in the Modern Age: Selections from The Wolfsonian Collection examines the ways in which art and design have both influenced and adapted to the modern world. During this period the fine arts were characterized by unprecedented experimentation and innovation. At the same time, design became a critical issue for producers and consumers as machine-made objects replaced those crafted by hand. The works on display demonstrate designers’ responses to the profound social and technological changes stimulated by the Industrial Revolution. They reveal how people living in this tumultuous period viewed the world and their place in it, as industrialization, urbanization, mass production, and new transportation and communication systems revolutionized modern life. By interpreting these artifacts in their historical context, The Wolfsonian aims to elucidate the technological and aesthetic concerns, as well as the social, political, and economic motivations that influenced their production. Inaugurated in November 1996, this ongoing exhibition is periodically updated.
The Wolfsonian is a museum, library, and research center that uses objects to illustrate the persuasive power of art and design, to explore what it means to be modern, and to tell the story of social, historical, and technological changes that have transformed our world. The collections comprise approximately 180,000 objects from the 1850s to the 1950s—the height of the Industrial Revolution through the aftermath of the Second World War—in a variety of media including furniture; industrial-design objects; works in glass, ceramics, and metal; rare books; periodicals; ephemera; works on paper; paintings; textiles; and medals.
The Wolfsonian is located at 1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL. Admission is $7 for adults; $5 for seniors, students, and children age 6–12; and free for Wolfsonian members, State University System of Florida staff and students with ID, and children under six. 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.