The Perez Art Museum Miami

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The Pérez Art Museum Miami, abbreviated PAMM, is a contemporary art museum located in Downtown Miami, in the state of Florida. It was founded in 1984 as the Center for Fine Arts, and in 1996 it changed to Miami Art Museum. It was not until 2013 that the museum changed to its current name and location, moving from East Flagler Street to Downtown Miami. The current name derives from a donation of Jorge M. Pérez, the biggest among private donors. Besides, Mr. Pérez is a well-known and respected trustee and collector of Latin American art. During my visit there was an artwork that caught my attention. It was painted by Sue Coe, born in Tamworth, England in 1951, and living in New York. The name of this work is Pinochet, and it is a mixed media collage on paper. The painting shows the tunnels under the National Stadium of Santiago de Chile that were used by the putschists as centers of detention, torture and execution during Pinochet’s dictatorship. At the left, there is a pile of corpses with blood on them. In fact, the red of the blood is the only color different to the black, white and grey that predominates in the painting, giving a sense of death, cruelty and nightmare. In the middle, we can see soldiers pointing their guns to a group of civilians that will probably be executed. To the right, we can find a group of prisoners, probable awaiting to be executed (in the middle), to be moved later to the pile on the left. The fact that the author included a Pepsi vending machine, is a clear reference to the complicity of the United States corporations with Pinochet’s unconstitutional government, due to the privatization of many industries that were previously run by Salvador Allende’s government. This masterpiece is the reflection of t... ... middle of paper ... ...ere was a very particular exposition of some of his work, called Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. It consisted in pages of regular notebooks, but with observations, sketches, ideas and poetry fragments, either from popular culture or from world history and races. These pieces were very unique and the sketches had a special touch that I had never seen before in any other artwork. Basquiat’s work was very simple, but with strong ideas and a clear message. That was the beauty of his work. During my visit to the Pérez Art Museum Miami, I did more than just observing beautiful artworks. With the guidelines provided I could appreciate and study also the hidden meaning of some of the pieces I had in front of me. Some of them were easier than other ones, due to previous knowledge I had, but all of them made me examine them in a critic way that enriched my cultural heritage.

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