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discarded paragraph from upcoming snitzer review

Post #293 • June 7, 2004, 6:58 AM • 4 Comments

Frederic Snitzer has officially relocated to Wynwood, and he billed his reception last Thursday, "Lock, Stock, and Barrel," as a grand opening celebration of the new space. With this move, the center of gravity of the Miami art world has officially shifted to North Miami Avenue between 23th and 36th Street. When Chris Ingalls leaves her 125th Street location and moves a couple doors down from Locust Projects, the wind will have been sucked out of the sails for cooperative art openings everywhere else in the city except Coral Gables, where gallery nights have been disappointing for years. The lack of geographic diversity concerns me but there's nothing to be done about it; for now, this is where it's at.




June 7, 2004, 6:25 PM

Why was that paragraph discarded?



June 7, 2004, 8:29 PM

Well, any paragraph that has "23th" in it, that's a paragraph you shoot in the head.

No, really it was just a low word count on the article. My method for writing a 300 word review is to write 350 words and take a knife to the excess. There wasn't room for wandering into my thoughts about the scene in general, which fortunately I can put here.



June 7, 2004, 9:01 PM

What problems does geographic diversity solve?



June 7, 2004, 9:39 PM

This one: "Gee, let's put all this expensive artwork in one conveniently located warehouse!"

Well, that was probaby a fluke, but I think we were in better shape when we had a burgeoning arts corridor on 125th Street opposite MoCA and a little bit going on south of the Gables where Snitzer used to be, in addition to Wynwood and the Design District. It mixed things up a little - you had a different neighborhood to check out each week or two, with a manageable number of galleries to see in each place. Startup galleries are going to have that much of a harder time getting established, faced with a choice of locating themselves in or near increasingly expensive Wynwood or, well, not near it; decentralization would have made getting in on existing activity easier.

I'm not proposing a solution, by the way. Eventually anyone who doesn't own their space will be forced out of Wynwood, and the few that do will finally get offers they can't refuse. The artists will find the next tract of cheap real estate and the cycle will begin anew. (Next stop: Little Haiti.) In the meantime, if a Category 5 hurricane decides to cut down North 29th Street this summer, it's going to make national headlines in the arts sections.



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