Free and cheap events at Wolfsonian on Miami Beach

Room of One’s Own: A Teeny Tiny Poetry Residency

On select mornings in April, take a stroll in front of The Wolfsonian and find one of five poets at work in our Bridge Tender House-turned-tiny writing studio. While they weave their word magic, interact, read along, and observe their overall creative process. Created in partnership with the O, Miami Poetry Festival.

Free and open to the public

Sat, Apr 7 | 12–3pm

Discovering Design Free Family Day: Word Play

It’s poetry month—and even our littlest poets can compose their first haiku, with the help of their grown-ups! Play with words on our word wall to get your creative juices flowing, then make your own book of poems. Wondering what a poem is? So does Arthur, who’s looking for ways to comfort his fish Leon in the story This is a Poem that Heals Fish (2007), by Jean-Pierre Siméon and Olivier Sorman.

Free for children and accompanying adults | RSVP here

Thu, Apr 12 | 7–9pm
Members Only | Constructing Revolution VIP Preview Party

Enjoy Russian-themed light bites from Thierry’s and signature cocktails by Bacardi as you take in the remarkably experimental and idealistic graphics on view in Constructing Revolution: Soviet Propaganda Posters from Between the World Wars, organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and the complementary library installation Red and Black: Revolution in Soviet Propaganda Graphics.

Free for members | Join or RSVP at membership@thewolf.fiu.edu

Fri, Apr 13 | 7–9pm

Second Shift

Kick off the weekend with free museum admission to The Wolf—and happy hour! Begin with a guided tour at 6pm and revel in half-priced beer, wine, and mixed-drink specials, plus $1–4 snacks and throwback jams.

Free and open to the public

Sat, Apr 14 | 2–3:30pm

Slow Art Day: Looking with the Curators

SLOW. DOWN. For Slow Art Day, pull up a stool and take your time contemplating three artworks over the course of an hour. Discover new details and hidden stories behind some old favorites as our team of curators guides your eyes over select collection gems.

$12, FREE for members | Space is limited; RSVP here

Sat, Apr 21 | 4–10pm

PosterFest: Designing for Good

Get graphic with a full day of presentations, exhibitions, hands-on workshops, and design challenges focused on the theme of posters as vehicles for advocacy and social change.

Free and open to the public | RSVP here

Fri, Apr 27 | 7–8:30pm

Sketching in the Galleries

De-stress and flex your creative muscles by taking time to draw! We provide materials and professional instruction to budding artists of all ages and skill levels in this free monthly program. English/Spanish

Free and open to the public

Weekly on Fri | 6–6:45pm

Free Friday Guided Tours

Learn more about The Wolfsonian and related art and design themes during a 45-minute free guided tour of the building, collection, or exhibitions. New guides bring different perspectives each week!

Free and open to the public

NEW! Opening Apr 5
Red and Black: Revolution in Soviet Propaganda Graphics
In the early years of the Soviet Union, artists and designers joined the project of building a new classless society. Constructivism, one of the key movements to emerge at this time, applied principles of the artistic avant-garde—abstraction and the machine aesthetic, for example—to the practical design of everything from architecture to household objects. An installation of books, periodicals, bookplates, and portfolio plates from the collection of The Wolfsonian–FIU Library, Red and Black will be presented concurrently with the major exhibition Constructing Revolution: Soviet Propaganda Posters from Between the World Wars and focus on the contribution of Constructivism to Soviet graphic design.

NEW! Opening Apr 13
Constructing Revolution: Soviet Propaganda Posters from Between the World Wars
The 1917 Russian Revolution ushered in a relatively short-lived era of experimentation and idealism in the visual arts. Including some of the most iconic images in the history of graphic design, Constructing Revolution will present more than fifty Soviet propaganda posters, among them works by major figures of the early twentieth-century avant-garde such as Vladimir Mayakovsky and Alexander Rodchenko. These posters, offering a glimpse into a period of political upheaval and cultural ferment, were part of a campaign to provide a new visual language that would convert Communist aspirations into readily accessible, urgent, public art.

Constructing Revolution is organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, and will be displayed at The Wolfsonian in conjunction with the library installation Red and Black: Revolution in Soviet Propaganda Graphics. Featured works in this exhibition are generously lent by Svetlana and Eric Silverman.

LAST CHANCE! Closing Apr 29
Julius Klinger: Posters for a Modern Age
Recognized as one of the leading graphic artists of the modern age, Austrian designer Julius Klinger (1876–1942) transformed commercial visual culture through his innovative advertising posters, book and magazine illustrations, mass promotional campaigns, ornamental and typographical design, and brand development. Associated with both the Vienna Secession and Jugendstil at the turn of the twentieth century, Klinger became famous as a poster designer in Germany, eventually returning to Austria to found a studio at the outbreak of the First World War. He would stay in Vienna, with two short visits to the United States, until his deportation to a Minsk extermination camp, where he died in 1942.

Klinger’s artistic reputation was built on the strength and range of his designs, which often shared a signature style characterized by graphic simplicity and directness—whether in the form of illustrations, graphic ornament, or his most famous posters. An advocate of “Americanismus,” and the progressive attitudes towards modern business and media coming from across the Atlantic, he understood the power of modern trademarks and logos to give identity to major businesses and manufacturers, and was a leading figure in shaping the look of major brands. Through Klinger’s life and examples of his work drawn from The Wolfsonian’s collection, this exhibition explores issues of identity—personal, corporate, and national—as well as the impact of cultural displacement on the history of design, and the role of commercial art in the modern city.

Julius Klinger: Posters for a Modern Age is presented in tandem with Double Vision, a contemporary installation by Austrian design studio Seite Zwei of Klinger-inspired typefaces, graphics, and colors. The exhibition is made possible by Dr. David and Linda Frankel and Funding Arts Network, Inc., while an accompanying book is supported by Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

LAST CHANCE! Closing Apr 29
Double Vision
Graphic design helps establish a visual identity—a brand—for a client. At the same time, it can express the designer’s individual creativity. To explore this dual nature of graphic identity, Vienna-based design studio Seite Zwei transforms The Wolfsonian’s façade and lobby with typefaces, abstract forms, and color schemes derived from the work of Julius Klinger, one of the pioneering graphic artists of the early twentieth century. Their installation, Double Vision, applies the “graphic DNA” of Klinger’s work through a mix of printing techniques, including perception-shifting lenticular prints—in which interlaced images appear to change based on viewing angle, giving the effect of animation—that invite viewers to recognize the layered meanings in the simplest of images.

Double Vision is presented in tandem with Julius Klinger: Posters for a Modern Age and made possible by Dr. David and Linda Frankel and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.

Ongoing
Material and Meaning: Earthenware, Stoneware, and Porcelain

Ceramics can be held in our hands, decorate our homes, or be incorporated into the built environment around us. They are objects of both utility and ornament, articles of industry and commerce, and even vehicles of political persuasion. To achieve these aesthetic and practical goals, designers and artists have to adapt the inherent material qualities of different kinds of clay. This array of ceramics created in the first half of the twentieth century encompasses the expressive and functional potential of earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain, and illustrates the varied design and production processes employed to make finished works. Material and Meaning is curated by Tori Arpad-Cotta, associate professor, Department of Art and Art History, Florida International University.

Ongoing
Americans All: Race Relations in Depression-Era Murals

During the 1930s, American artists covered the walls of public buildings all across the country with murals meant to showcase the nation’s ideals and lift the country out of the Great Depression. Here at The Wolfsonian, preparatory painting, drawings, and mosaics for these murals (some ultimately realized, others never executed) reveal how artists reckoned with the nature of the United States as a racially diverse nation, reflecting the contentious and unsettled state of early twentieth-century race relations through their representations of blacks, whites, American Indians, and Asian immigrants—the melting pot of America.

Ongoing

Art and Design in the Modern Age: Selections from The Wolfsonian Collection

These galleries provide an overview of the museum’s holdings of American and European artifacts from 1850 to 1950. Culled from The Wolfsonian collection are approximately three hundred works in a variety of formats, ranging from books, posters, and postcards to decorative arts, architectural models, paintings, and sculptures. Focal points include design reform movements, urbanism, industrial design, transportation, world’s fairs, advertising, and political propaganda. Inaugurated in November 1996, this ongoing exhibition is periodically updated.

The Wolfsonian is a museum, library, and research center that uses objects to illustrate the persuasive power of art and design, to explore what it means to be modern, and to tell the story of social, historical, and technological changes that have transformed our world. The collection comprises approximately 180,000 objects from 1850 to 1950—the height of the Industrial Revolution through the aftermath of the Second World War—in a variety of media including furniture; industrial-design objects; works in glass, ceramics, and metal; rare books; periodicals; ephemera; works on paper; paintings; textiles; and medals.