Introducing Historically Significant
Latin American Artists
and international Artists to South Florida’s Art Community
For More Than 35 Years
For more
than 35 years, Virginia Miller has introduced artists
with unique personal visions and techniques to the
South Florida art community. These have included
numerous mid-career latin american artists and international artists as well as a number of
historically significant modern latin american masters.
Some of her exhibitions have been
spectacular, such as the one-person show of sculpture
and paintings by Karel
Appel, the installation of
grass growing in the shape of Ana Mendieta’s
body, or Eric Staller’s "Lightmobile," a
VW Beetle studded with 1,659 tiny light bulbs flashing in computer-programmed patterns. |
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Ana Mendieta installation
and ‘Silueta’ photos in May 1992 |
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Other shows
have been bold, such as Fernando Luis’ one-person
exhibition of lascivious priests and pregnant nuns, or
contemporary Russian art years before glasnost and perestroika,
when the Soviet Union was still viewed as our enemy.
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Eric Staller’s ‘Lightmobile’
with its1,657 programmed lightbulbs
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Karel
Appel and Virginia Miller
select a sculpture for his exhibit
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The
common denominator has been the "spirit" or
artistic integrity of the work, a highly accomplished
technique, and outstanding value. Miller strongly
believes that a dealer in contemporary art has
a great responsibility to help people learn how
to look at art, to feel what it’s about,
and not to be intimidated by new art forms. Miller
exhibits at such shows as Art Miami, Art Palm
Beach, and Arteamericas.
Miller’s start in the art
field was as unique as the works she sells. After
working in a law firm and bank, then managing an
advertising agency, she decided to return to college.
As an undergraduate, she met a number of artists
who complained that local galleries only wanted to
exhibit nationally known artists. With her business
and advertising background, Miller saw an opportunity,
and soon she was organizing exhibitions of fine art
in banks and other venues to benefit local charities.
Beginning in the late 1960s, those exhibitions may
well have made local art history as Dade County’s
first synergism of art and business for the benefit
of charitable organizations.
Exhibiting Historically Significant
Artists
After opening her gallery in 1974,
five years after she began dealing in art, Miller
sought out and curated major exhibitions of a number
of important artists who had never before exhibited
in the region.
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In
1978 she exhibited a retrospective of Alice Neel’s
works on paper dating from 1926 to 1977. It was Neel’s
first exhibition in Florida, and like all of Miller’s
exhibitions, it was curated by the director herself.
Along with the exhibition, the gallery showed the
award-winning public television film, “Alice
Neel: Collector of Souls. ”
Miller, who had served on a panel
with Neel at Manhattan’s prestigious New
School, persuaded her to show the historic works
by offering to dredge them out of the nooks and
crannies of her spacious apartment in Spanish Harlem. “My
husband and I dragged paintings from beneath her
bed and out of the depths of her closets,” Miller
recalls.
Clearly, Neel had not seen many of the works for
a long while. Years before, an irate lover had
cut up and burned 60 of her paintings and 200 drawings
and watercolors, and from time to time as the artist
saw an artwork she exclaimed, “I thought
that son-of-a-bitch had burned that one!”
About that same time, Miller arranged
for the first exhibition of models and architectural
drawings by SITE, the multidisciplinary art and
architecture organization from New York. The SITE
team had created a number of famous “deconstructed” buildings
around the nation, including two in Greater Miami,
and Miller arranged for two Greyhound buses, complete
with live music and snacks on the road, to take
art enthusiasts to tour them. Many of the works
from the SITE architectural exhibition went on
to be shown in Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New
York and eventually at the Museum of Modern Art.
In 1983 Miller scored a national coup with a worldwide
exclusive exhibition and sale of “Doonesbury” animation
drawings and paintings. “Doonesbury” animation
art is rarely seen on the market, as Garry Trudeau
only allows it to be sold to benefit select charities–-
in this case, for abused children.
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Alice Neel’s 1978 portrait of Virginia Miller
was in her exhibition |
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First time in the south: Richard Pousette-Dart’s 1985 retrospective
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The 1986 exhibit of Pousette-Dart’s black and white paintings
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World’s first on-site digital art exhibit in Dec. 1990 by Larry Gartel
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Region’s First
History of Photography Exhibition
The following year, ArtSpace/Virginia
Miller Galleries mounted one of its largest exhibitions:
130 images from 19th and 20th century master photographers.
Including works by the inventor of the photographic
negative, William Henry Fox Talbot, and the first
woman photographer, Anna Atkins, the show presented
a history of photography, including works by the
early Europeans, the American pictorialists and
the then-courant colorists, such as Elliott Porter,
represented by a pair of oversize dye transfers.
First Southern Exhibition of Pousette-Dart
In 1985 the gallery presented another historic blockbuster: Richard Pousette-Dart’s “Paintings: From the 1940s to the Present.” It was the first exhibition in the south for Pousette-Dart, youngest member of the first generation of the New York School of abstract expressionists. “This may well be the most important exhibition ever held in the history of Miami,” said Dr. Phillip George, a prominent local collector, to Virginia Miller, who curated the show. Miami Herald art critic Helen L. Kohen called the exhibition “a highlight of the season.” The following year Miller did a second Pousette-Dart exhibition, “Magical Radiances: Black and White” that included works from 1978 to 1981. That exhibition coincided with a one-person Pousette-Dart show at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art.
First On-Site Digital Art In December
1990
The gallery made international
history in December 1990, when Laurence Gartel
used digital cameras developed by Canon for the
Gulf War to photograph visitors as they entered
the gallery and the first large toner printer,
the Canon Bubble Jet, to output manipulated color
prints of their images.
Gartel, whose
book, “Laurence
M. Gartel, A Cybernetic Romance” (Gibbs Smith,
1989, illustrations by Nam June Paik) is considered
the first book on an individual’s computer-generated
art, believes the event was the first time in history
digital art had been produced at a gallery’s
opening reception.
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Other Historic ‘Firsts’ Include
Aboriginal Art, Latin American Masters
In 1992 ArtSpace/Virginia Miller
Galleries presented Florida’s first major exhibition
and sale of Australian aboriginal art, “Walk
About In The Dreamtime.” Its guest of honor
was Rover Thomas, a founder of the Turkey Creek School
of aboriginal art and one of two Aborigine painters
who had represented Australia in the Venice Biennale.
In 1998 the gallery presented a
major exhibition of paintings by Ramón Oviedo,
the leading master artist of the Dominican Republic.
Called “one of the greatest masters in Latin
American contemporary art” by José Gómez
Sicre, Oviedo had never had a major exhibition in
the United States.
In the spring of
2004, ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries presented
the latest in its series of exhibitions of modern
masters. “Gunther
Gerzso: Defining Mexican Abstraction” featured
86 works done from 1935 to 1941 by Mexico’s
leading abstract artist, a stellar figure in the
pantheon of Latin American artists. The exhibition
was a world premiere of the early works as well as
the first time Gerzso had a major exhibition in the
southeastern United States.
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Florida’s first major exhibit
and sale of Aborigine art in 1992 |
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Dominican master Ramón Oviedo’s
first major U.S. exhibit in 1998 |
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Major Sculpture
Commissions Include
Massive Bronzes
Miller commissioned two of the nation’s
largest bronze sculptures—a 36 by 78-footer
on Biscayne Bay in Miami and a 60-foot-tall work
at the International Airport in Omaha, Nebraska.
Other public sculptures include a larger-than-life
bronze of baseball immortal Joe DiMaggio and a small
boy at the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital
in Hollywood, Florida. Miller’s article on
outdoor sculpture for Collector-Investor magazine
was full of advice for anyone contemplating an outdoor
work, particularly one in the subtropics or near
salt water.
More than 300 Exhibitions In 12 Locations
Altogether, over the past 30 years,
ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries has presented
close to 300 exhibitions in a dozen locations, including
her five galleries: Coconut Grove, downtown Miami’s
Miamarina, the Biltmore Hotel, the present ArtSpace,
and the 9,000-square-foot ground floor of Douglas
Centre. Other venues for the gallery’s exhibitions
have included Broward Community College, the Boca
Raton Museum, and various financial institutions
and corporate offices. Many of the shows introduced
artists to the region; some exhibitions introduced
emerging artists. Some of the artists, like those
mentioned above, were already historically significant;
others have gone on to become important figures in
the art world.
“Early on, I chose to ignore
the latest trends and instead to show only works
that I personally relate to and artists that I believe
in,” says Virginia Miller. “I’ve
always insisted that my clients buy only works that
they love. Although many of those works have appreciated
in value substantially, I urge clients not to consider
their art acquisitions merely as a financial investment,
but as an investment in their quality of life.”
Judging by the number of grateful
letters received by Miller from clients who bought
work from her years before, her philosophy has
proven successful.
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