How do you distill 40 years of Miami art history into one exhibition?
This was the dilemma faced by artist William Cordova when he was asked to curate an anniversary show for Oolite Arts, an organization whose scope and impact is both influential and tough to summarize. Known as ArtCenter/South Florida until it was renamed in 2019, the organization stages exhibitions and events throughout Miami-Dade County, hosts an artists’ residency and art classes at its Lincoln Road headquarters, and offers grants to artists through its awards program the Ellies. Artists who have participated in Oolite residencies include Teresita Fernandez, Germaine Barnes, Cara Despain, Reginald O’Neal, and Anastasia Samoylova.
“It’s impossible to, of course, include every single artist’s artwork,” says Cordova, himself a former resident at Oolite. “But it was possible to draw from the ephemera from the archives at Oolite Arts and have different types of representations of all the projects and exhibits, through brochures, photographs, catalogs, even video, and also to honor all of those alumni and those who have also passed away.”
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The result is “Penumbras: a narrative of ArtCenter/South Florida • Oolite Arts (1984–2014),” which opened on Wednesday, Aug. 6 and runs through Sunday, Oct. 19. Co-curated by Marie Vickles, head of education at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the show looks back at the organization’s history, spotlighting the artists that have come and gone through its doors through both their artistic output and various pieces of memorabilia.
Brochures, pamphlets, posters, archival materials, and other goods relating to the institution’s history have all been gathered and put on display.
In the downstairs vitrine running along the wall by the entrance, a wide variety of goods sits in front of a wall listing all known artists who participated in ArtsCenter activities in the three decades covered in the show. Upstairs, in the corner of one room, sits a neon sign for ArtsCenter from the early 2000s. Photo artworks by Cordova, Ximenia Carrion and Manuel Acevedo hang alongside framed press clippings and posters. Most of the works feature a blue color scheme coordinated with the glow of the neon sign. Across the way, a video room features a variety of rare materials, including a profile of ArtCenter dating back to 1999, a CBS News Miami interview with founder Ellie Schneiderman, and films from artists Lazaro Amaral and Josh Levine.
The main gallery changes up the color scheme from the cool blue of the sign to tropical oranges and yellows. There’s a particular focus on African diaspora artists in this section: Paintings by Fenol Marcelin and Edouard Duval-Carrié emphasize Caribbean themes, while Charo Oquet’s ornate ceramics are a riot of colors and shapes. For Cordova, who watched the transformation of Oolite and its surroundings on Lincoln Road since moving to Miami from Lima in 1987, it was also important to highlight art and artists from underserved backgrounds.
“I wanted to reflect on the marginalized community, the histories of that community,” he says. “That’s why I titled it ‘Penumbra,’ which is a less shaded part of a shadow, the outcast part. The marginalized communities and artists tend to be part of that outlaw culture.”
While “Penumbras” looks back into Oolite’s past, the organization is also hoping to move ahead into its future. Plans continue to move forward for its new campus in Little River, which is now estimated to begin construction in 2026 according to President and CEO John Abodeely. The complex was originally unveiled in 2022, with a design by Barcelona architecture firm Barozzi Vega themed after a “village of artists” featuring new studio and exhibition spaces as well as a multipurpose theater.
“My expectation would be that we do demolition on the current buildings on the site and start construction in the first half of next year,” says Abodeely. “All this stuff always takes a little bit longer than you want, whether it’s permitting or architects doing their thing, but it is 100 percent happening. And we expect all the physical stuff to start happening next year.”
Abodeely is a former Obama administration official who served as acting director and deputy director of the President’s Committee on the Arts. He left his previous job as CEO of the Houston Arts Alliance in Texas’ largest city to join Oolite officially in January and hopes to rebuild relationships upended by a censorship issue it faced in May of last year.
After Oolite abruptly removed an artwork featuring a pro-Palestine political slogan from public view, there was an uproar by artists and community members and a boycott was called by Miami Arts Accountability, a group comprised partially of former and current Oolite residents.
Drawing on a principle called “dynamic accountability,” the organization plans to create an advisory group in order to “bring diverse voices into our decision making in a formal way,” says Abodeely. He also hopes to establish working groups made up of arts community members in order to restructure the grant process, an idea imported from his work in Houston.
Conversations have already been held with staff and resident artists with such dialogues deemed necessary in the wake of the controversy.
“One of the things that we need to be better about after last year is how the staff kind of more deeply engages with the artists we work with. . . . We are rethinking a lot of our processes and how we do things. I think we can engage more deeply and be in a conversation and work more closely with our artists to support them in the ways they want to be supported.”
Do Oolite artists have to worry about further limits on expression? “No, I don’t think so at all,” says Abodeely. “We do serve a diverse group of audiences, and so, for example, what goes up in a public environment versus what goes up in our gallery are two different conversations.”
As Oolite moves into a new phase, however, it remains a crucial cornerstone of the arts community in South Florida. For Vickles, who came to Miami in 2005, the organization has always held an outsize importance in the community, especially as the city continues to present economic obstacles for artists.
“We’re always talking about how challenging it is to find not only studio space, but living space in Miami and South Florida in general. So I think what a place like Art Center/South Florida, Oolite can offer is incredibly important, and the fact that they’ve been around for 40 years at this point, I think, also underscores that.”
She continues, “without the artists continuously reinvesting into it, through their time, their energy, making work, a place like this would not even exist. I mean, it was founded by artists for artists. So I think as long as that continues to be the core essence of what Oolite is, I think we’re going to continue to see it be something that is helpful, supportive and a strong part of the arts ecosystem.”
WHAT: “Penumbras: a narrative of ArtCenter/South Florida • Oolite Arts (1984–2014)”
WHEN: Noon to 5 p.m. daily. Through Sunday, Oct. 19.
WHERE: Oolite Arts, 924 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach
COST: Free
INFORMATION: (305) 674-8278 or oolitearts.org
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