MIAMI BEACH, FL - (December 12, 2006) – The Bass Museum of Art has been awarded $314,695 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the museum’s exhibition Promises of Paradise: Staging Mid-Century Miami and the concurrent publication Miami Modern Metropolis. Over five years in the making, both projects have been supported by numerous other grants, including two previous grants from the Endowment as part of its “We the People” program promoting the knowledge and understanding of American history and culture. In addition, the Florida Department of State Division of Historical Resources, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Furthermore Foundation’s “Grants-in-Publishing” Program have underwritten the production of Miami Modern Metropolis which goes to press in the Spring 2007.

This generous Implementation grant from the Endowment will allow the Bass Museum to create an innovative multi-media exhibition and superb publication, both of which will be the first to comprehensively present the architecture, urbanism and design of mid-century Miami. “It is wonderfully satisfying that the subject matter of the Bass Museum exhibition and publication were deemed of such national importance by an esteemed panel of experts,” states Ruth Grim, Bass Museum Curator and Project Director for Promises of Paradise, “and reinforces the mid-century built environment of our region is worthy of more scholarship, publication, exhibition and preservation.” Chief Curator and Director, Diane Camber, lauds Ms. Grim for her pursuit of this creative project and is proud that the Bass Museum was among only fourteen institutions nationwide to succeed in getting this category of National Endowment for the Humanities support and that the Endowment was so impressed by the originality and multi-disciplinary interpretation of the design arts in Miami. “This is the culmination of an interest in post-war design arts that has been developing at the Bass Museum starting with its first collecting in this field nearly twenty years ago”, said Ms. Camber. Nancy E. Rogers, Director of the Division of Public Programs for the National Endowment for the Humanities has stated, “The Endowment judged Promises of Paradise: Staging Mid-Century Miami to be a highly original exhibition that will place the design arts in the context of larger historical and cultural forces….and that the installation will be a compelling combination of objects and two-dimensional materials. The endowment especially commends the balance struck between the glamorous side of Miami and the critique of the city on that same point. ....NEH is impressed by this original, comprehensive, multi-disciplinary interpretation of the design arts of a major American city.”

The exhibition will open at the Bass Museum in November 2007, showcasing the architecture, urban planning, design and decorative arts of mid-century Miami. Mid-century Miami design and decorative arts exhibited a great range of style and innovation locally, but, in contrast to the rediscovery of it’s architects, artists, craftsmen and designers of decorative arts of the period have been largely forgotten. This exhibition will be the first to showcase their efforts.

Promises of Paradise will address the fact that, in the experience of some communities within mid-century Miami, some promises were not kept. For example, thousands of the residents of Overtown – a vibrant urban community c. 1955 – were displaced when the huge I-95 interchange was constructed virtually in the middle of it in the early 60s. Part of a longstanding political agenda to essentially remove the Afro-American community from the valuable land in downtown Miami, this construction in the name of progress adversely affected the development of downtown Miami for decades to follow, and represents an important part of Miami’s history – one in which the promise of paradise was denied to a significant portion of the population. A section of the exhibition will highlight Overtown at mid-century and highlight its heyday as an entertainment Mecca for black visitors, performers and locals – who were not allowed in the toney nightclubs unless they were performing there and had to stay in the segregated hotels.

A full complement of public programming will accompany the exhibition including a lecture series, symposia, a film series, tours of the exhibition and mid-century architecture of Miami, a family day and interactive components built-into the exhibition which invite visitors to create their own designs based on mid-century aesthetics or remember aspects of their own family’s mid-century experience in Greater Miami.

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