Art Galleries Miami
While Art Basel Miami Beach attracts the most attention each December, there is plenty of visual art to enjoy year-round in the city’s eclectic neighborhoods. From a reimagined theater space to alternative landscapes in modern painting, these top art galleries miami are sure to inspire.
This husband-wife gallery brings contemporary Latin American artists to a wider audience. From the politically charged to the spiritually uplifting, their diverse offerings are sure to have something for everyone.
David Castillo Gallery
Despite the fact that Art Basel Miami Beach draws the most attention each December, there’s so much more to see and discover year-round. From Wynwood and Allapattah to the Miami Design District and beyond, there are world-class galleries and creative enclaves to explore in South Florida’s many eclectic neighborhoods.
Gallerist David Castillo understands how to spot talent and nurture it. His eponymous gallery opened in 2005 and has since helped develop a range of closely watched artists, from Xaviera Simmons and Sanford Biggers to Lyle Ashton Harris and Shinique Smith.
The Cuban-American Castillo is no stranger to the immigrant experience, which might explain why he’s drawn to artists who use their work to tell narratives about identity. His booth at this year’s fair, for example, showcased sculptures by Glexis Novoa and Quisqueya Henriquez, whose “All Spiked in Black and White” features metal spikes arranged in a geometric pattern across a cream-colored canvas measuring five feet by four.
Nina Johnson Gallery
Located in the heart of Miami, Nina Johnson Gallery cultivates the city’s burgeoning contemporary art community. From ceramics to sculpture to paintings, Johnson’s exhibits seek to inspire conversations about current issues and to highlight craftsmanship.
Johnson grew up in the Shorecrest neighborhood of Miami and is a longtime supporter of its cultural growth. When she first opened her gallery in 2007, she knew she wanted to celebrate artists with an emphasis on craft and a sense of place.
Her eponymous space began in Wynwood (then known as the Diet Gallery) and relocated to Little Haiti in 2015. Johnson has a knack for organizing museum-quality exhibitions while representing emerging artists like Emmett Moore, Bhakti Baxter, and Katie Stout. Her current solo show, featuring the work of Dee Clements, highlights basketry as a medium that plays with craft and ethnography. Her sculptural installation explores how woven basketry can create spaces that are a “cross between domesticity and design.” Johnson’s commitment to showing historically relevant artists who are not typically shown in Miami is also key to her mission.
Mindy Solomon Gallery
Founded in 2009, Mindy Solomon Gallery is a contemporary Miami art gallery located in Little River. It represents a roster of contemporary emerging and mid-career American (Scot Southern) and international artists who work through a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, photography and video. The gallery program explores the intersection of art and design, while embracing diasporic voices.
The gallery business is tough in any market, and the gallery business in Miami has seen its share of closures over the years. But that hasn’t stopped the Mindy Solomon Gallery from staying strong and growing into a respected name in Miami’s art scene.
The current exhibition at the gallery, Drift, marks a bit of a departure for the owner. Solomon tends toward figurative or narrative works that suggest a backstory, but these paintings by Erin Parish are almost abstract, with translucent orbs that seem to melt into thin air. Their surfaces are coated in glossy epoxy, a material that enhances the luminosity of the work.
The Margulies Collection
The Margulies Collection is consistently regarded as one of the world’s most important private collections by curators, critics, artists and dealers. Consistently named to lists such as ARTnews Top 200 Collectors, the collection is housed in a 45,000 square foot retro-fitted warehouse in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District and presents seasonal exhibitions, educational programs, and an international loan program.
Among the collection’s defining features are works from the neo-avant-garde of postwar Italian art. The materialism of pieces such as Gian Marco Montesano’s “Eppure Tra Loro Coperta di Vento, C’e una Bambina che non Puo Correre” and Anselm Kiefer’s stacked cement huts (“Ages”) are right at home in the Warehouse infrastructure.
The gallery also has a strong commitment to socially aware and even politically committed art. For example, this past weekend a long line of well-heeled visitors at the gallery’s opening were greeted by Lotus House alumni who collected admission fees for the shelter. It was a gesture that was eloquently symbolic of the kind of social awareness the gallery champions.