The Bass, Exhibition...November 24, 2023The Bass Museum of Art

Social Assembly: Welcome to the Museum

The Bass, Exhibition...November 24, 2023The Bass Museum of Art

An exhibition platform foregrounding opportunity for audiences to gather frequently and informally around art and its ideas.

Curated by James Voorhies

The Bass Museum of Art
Miami Beach, FL
December 3 2023–September 29, 2024

assume vivid astro focus, Francesca DiMattio, Mark Handforth, John Giorno, Tracey Moffatt, Emmett Moore, and Cerith Wyn Evans

Made possible with funding and staff from The Bass; realized within my responsibilities as Curator of The Bass

Social Assembly: Welcome to the Museum is an initiative to reconsider the traditional exhibition experience and how audiences interact with and learn from art—and each other—in a museum setting. This multipronged exhibition and flexible program, staged in The Bass’s Harrison Gallery, coincides with the uncovering of the gallery’s original windows. Just as these restored windows give expansive views onto Collins Park, allowing transparency between interior and exterior spaces, Social Assembly blurs boundaries by creating more opportunities to gather informally and more frequently with art. Whether meeting friends, reading books, watching videos, drinking coffee or listening to music—all ways for visitors to relax, refresh and regroup—these activities are now underway in a single gallery as part of one exhibition experience.

Central to the exhibition is Exploded View: Coconut (2023), an installation by Miami-based artist and designer Emmett Moore. The work includes tables, seating and a bar, inviting visitors to linger and enjoy the museum at their own pace. Moore’s piece intermingles with works from The Bass’s permanent collection, each selected for its capacity to straddle the characteristics of art object and functional domestic design. The goal is to offer visitors—including local groups and informal networks—greater agency to decide how they wish to assemble in the spaces of The Bass, on their own terms.

Throughout the year, Social Assembly—melding art, design and architecture—combines the functions and aesthetics of a lounge, coffee bar, café, domestic interior and art gallery to explore the many possibilities for coming together around contemporary art and the ideas it inspires. In that spirit: Welcome to the Museum.

Booklet

Left, Haegue Yang, Coordinates of Speculative Solidarity, 2019, digital color print on self-adhesive vinyl film; with Francesca DiMattio, Chandelabra II, 2015, glaze and luster on porcelain and stoneware, epoxy and steel frame, 120 × 96 × 96 in.; and Emmett Moore, Exploded View: Coconut, 2023, aluminum, corrugated steel, Dade County pine, expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam, concrete, upholstery and hardware. Top: Mark Handforth, Untitled (Silver Branch), 2016, aluminum and streetlamp, lava rock, and travertine, 47 ¼ × 122 × 31 ½ in.

Haegue Yang, Coordinates of Speculative Solidarity, 2019, digital color print on self-adhesive vinyl film; with Emmett Moore, Exploded View: Coconut, 2023, aluminum, corrugated steel, Dade County pine, expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam, concrete, upholstery and hardware. Back: Cerith Wyn Evans, Philosophy in the Boudoir—To Libertines’ by the Marquis de Sade (1795), 2004, chandelier (Barovier and Toso), flat-screen monitor, Morse code unit and computer; and assume vivid astro focus (avaf), Chandelier (Venice), 2016, digitally printed carpet, 66 × 46 ½ in.