New Digital Initiatives Generously Supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Digital Engagements Initiatives Grant
(MIAMI, FL — December 5, 2022) — Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) is thrilled to announce a dynamic new digital department, which includes the debut of a new virtual gallery space, a streaming platform titled PAMM TV, and a cutting-edge website featuring a bilingual digital museum collection. This comes from the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Digital Engagements Initiatives Grant, awarded in 2018. The museum’s first virtual exhibition for commissions in augmented reality, New Realities, will be on view to the public beginning November 30, 2022 featuring a digital work by Carla Gannis curated by Kelani Nichole.
“With significant changes over the past few years in the way museum audiences can experience art, it’s become apparent that art can and should be accessible far past the walls of a museum. With generous support from Knight Foundation’s Digital Engagements Initiatives Grant, we’re able to make PAMM’s ambitious programming obtainable to the world while reaching new audiences and cultures. We’re thrilled to debut a gallery dedicated to digital art, a new innovative streaming service, and an inclusive online platform for encountering art in new ways,” said PAMM Director Franklin Sirmans.
The news of PAMM’s new digital initiatives comes on the heels of Knight Foundation’s announcement yesterday, where the Foundation announced a total of $40.7 million—including $5 million to PAMM—in new multi-year investments in local arts organizations and initiatives that use technology in their practice to enhance the way art is produced, shared and experienced. These investments will bring Knight’s overall commitments to the arts in Miami to $200 million since 2005. This is the first time that all of Knight’s arts investments in Miami – and around the country – will center on technology. By funding the application of technology to the creation, dissemination and experience of art, Knight seeks to support artists and institutions as they use new tools to attract, retain and grow audiences.
ABOUT PAMM’S NEW DIGITAL INITIATIVES:
THE NEW PAMM.ORG
In May 2022, PAMM launched its new website. For the first time, the museum’s collection is browsable on the internet and all content, including the collection, is in English and Spanish. PAMM’s education team provided visual descriptions for every artwork on the site with an image to improve accessibility for visually impaired users.
With this launch, PAMM challenges the standards of a typical museum website. Instead of looking toward other museum sites for inspiration, the museum turned their focus to industries such as fashion, athletics, and video games for inspiration. After an extensive RFP process, PAMM selected Spring/Summer as their collaborator in design. Spring/Summer is an award-winning digital design agency based in Denmark with extensive experience working with brands such as Stine Goya, Nike, and Uniqlo.
PAMM TV
Launching in early 2023, PAMM TV is a streaming platform that will be an online destination to view films from PAMM’s collection, new commissions and educational materials. The museum will partner with film festivals to showcase work from a variety of perspectives not usually found on streaming platforms.
NEW REALITIES GALLERY
During Miami Art Week, PAMM will present its new virtual exhibition gallery, New Realities, curated by Kelani Nichole featuring digital works by Carla Gannis. Launching on November 30, New Realities will showcase rotating commissions in augmented reality specifically created for this digital space. Using the PAMM logo as the stage, New Realities asks users to participate rather than view. Whether through games, apps, QR codes or websites, interaction is at the core of digital practice—users rather than viewers, works that emerge from unexpected places. More information on New Realities can be found here.
This gallery exists wherever the PAMM logo exists. To use the current work, users open ar.pamm.org on their phones and point it at the PAMM logo.
About the Exhibition
Inaugurating PAMM’s New Realities gallery is wwwunderkammer from Carla Gannis. In this work, viewers can see the avatar “Lady Ava Interface ” emerging from the “holodeck” to greet people as they enter Gannis’ virtual wunderkammer (the precursors to museums). This artwork playfully invites viewers to explore layers of meaning—from imagining new futures for historical figures like Lady Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), celebrated as the first computer programmer, to revisiting the origins of museums, and reflecting on emerging technologies of power like Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence. The animated AR sculpture appears on top of PAMM’s logo, adorned with patterns generated by Gannis’ AI trained on images of video games. Lady Ava Interface beckons visitors in, and the interior of the cabinet pulses with stunning animations. Visitors can peek into the wwwunderkammer portal for a glimpse into Gannis’ immersive world that contains a collection of collections, an archive to come. More information on the exhibition can be found here.
About the Artist
Carla Gannis is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She produces works that consider the uncanny complications between grounded and virtual reality, nature and artifice, science and science fiction in contemporary culture. Fascinated by digital semiotics, Gannis takes a horror vacui approach to her artistic practice, culling inspiration from networked communication, art and literary history, emerging technologies, and speculative design.
About the Curator
Kelani Nichole is a technologist and founder of an experimental media art gallery, called TRANSFER, based in Miami, FL. She has been exploring decentralized networks and virtual worlds in contemporary art for over a decade. Currently she is building a new cultural organization as Head of Experience at E.A.T_WORKS, and advising artists and institutions on Web 3 strategy.
ABOUT KNIGHT FOUNDATION
We are social investors who support a more effective democracy by funding free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community, research in areas of media and democracy, and in the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once published newspapers.
ABOUT PAMM
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), led by Director Franklin Sirmans, promotes artistic expression and the exchange of ideas, advancing public knowledge and appreciation of art, architecture, and design, and reflecting the diverse community of its pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas. The nearly 40-year-old South Florida institution, formerly known as Miami Art Museum (MAM), opened a new building, designed by world-renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron, on December 4, 2013 in Downtown Miami’s Maurice A. Ferré Park. The facility is a state-of-the-art model for sustainable museum design and progressive programming and features 200,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor program space with flexible galleries; shaded outdoor verandas; a waterfront restaurant and bar; a museum shop; and an education center with a library, media lab, and classroom spaces.
