Three years after abandoning plans to construct a non-public museum in Miami for his assortment of works by Richard Serra, James Turrell, Anish Kapoor, Jean-Michel Basquiat and others, the hedge-fund supervisor Bruce Berkowitz is constructing an artwork park in northwestern Florida round his prized Serra sculpture. The Longleaf Artwork Park, positioned on 15.5 lush acres in Walton County, will embody a pavilion designed by OLI Structure, which labored with Serra earlier than his dying in March, to accommodate the late artist’s 217ft-long metal sculpture Passage of Time (2014).
The park is being created by Berkowitz’s non-profit, the Berkowitz Modern Basis (BCF), although its operations can be overseen by the native Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County. “The significance of entry to a chunk of labor as important as Richard Serra’s Passage of Time can’t be overstated, and the impression it’s going to have on our native artists, residents, college students and guests can be limitless and lasting for generations,” Jennifer Steele, the alliance’s govt director, mentioned in an announcement.
For now, the snaking, 13.5ft-tall, 540,000-pound Serra sculpture is the one artwork destined for the Longleaf Artwork Park, which may even function a pond, boardwalks, landscaped mounds and an out of doors occasion area. The park is scheduled to open to the general public in 2026.
Rendering of the Passage of Time Pavilion as seen from the Longleaf Artwork Park’s pond OLI Structure
The selection of website for Berkowitz’s new artwork area, round 600 miles northwest of the deliberate location of his deserted Miami museum—about as distant because it may very well be whereas nonetheless inside the state of Florida—might sound stunning however isn’t any accident. The Longleaf Artwork Park can be located inside Watersound Origins, a big real-estate growth being constructed by the St. Joe Firm. Berkowitz is the chairman of the publicly traded firm’s board of administrators and at one time owned not less than 40% of its excellent shares, in line with Forbes. (Fairholme Capital Administration, the hedge fund Berkowitz based, stays headquartered in Miami.)
Berkowitz’s plans for a Miami museum, first introduced in 2014, concerned a brand new constructing within the Edgewater neighbourhood designed particularly to accommodate the big Serra sculpture and Turrell’s towering mild set up Aten Reign (2013), which was the centrepiece of the artist’s survey on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. After municipal and county officers in Miami initially blocked Berkowitz’s challenge, it was ultimately greenlit in 2015. Initially, the native workplace of worldwide structure agency Arquitectonica was hooked up to the challenge; by 2018, the Miami-based structure agency Rene Gonzalez Architects was main it. Building on the 45,000 sq. ft museum was anticipated to start out in 2020 and be full by 2023, then Covid-19 hit. In early 2021, Berkowitz quietly scuttled the challenge.
A BCF spokesperson says the inspiration has no different tasks underway in Walton County, Miami or elsewhere. “There are not any present plans for a BCF-owned area in Miami, however BCF continues to work with quite a few Miami-based arts organisations,” the spokesperson mentioned.
Whereas the BCF museum would have been one in every of a number of non-public museums dedicated to up to date artwork in Miami—alongside the Rubell Museum, the Margulies Assortment on the Warehouse, the Craig Robins Assortment, Jorge Pérez’s El Espacio 23 and others—the Longleaf Artwork Park can be a comparatively distinctive attraction on its stretch of the Florida panhandle, the place the closest important cultural establishment is the Man within the Sea Museum in Panama Metropolis Seaside, a museum dedicated to the historical past of diving.
