HISTORY
In 2001, art collector Rosa de la Cruz approached fellow collector Craig Robins with the idea of producing an exhibition to showcase Miami artists during what would be the first ArtBasel/Miami Beach. The fair was later cancelled, but the effort continued. It resulted in an exhibition titled HUMID, curated by Dominic Molon, Associate Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, presenting artists from Miami alongside artists from Chicago, New York, Barcelona, Pittsburgh, and London. This was held on the second floor of the historic 1920’s Moore Furniture Company building. Without knowing it, this gesture was the beginning of a fruitful venture that would eventually be known as The Moore Space. To date, and in only four years, the space has generated numerous exhibitions and commissioned artists’ projects and offers a year-round educational program including lectures and guided tours on contemporary art.

Shortly after HUMID, a second exhibition titled THAT PLACE presented a wide selection of works of contemporary art chosen from private Miami collections, giving the community the opportunity to see works of art usually inaccessible to the public. Later that year, as preparations were underway to coordinate activities concurrent to the postponed Art Basel/Miami Beach, again Mrs. de la Cruz and Mr. Robins joined forces and recruited two independent curators: Silvia Karman Cubiñá and Patrick Charpenel. In an exhibition titled INTERPLAY, these curators turned their gaze mainly towards the South in a selections of works by artists from Miami, Mexico, and the Caribbean, together with artists from the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Opening on December 5, 2002 in Miami, this exhibition became The Moore Space’s first traveling exhibition as it was later shown at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan from April 10 to May 26, 2003.

The Moore Space has since presented a number of group shows including centered around concepts or trends and included a wide variety of international and local artists, emerging and well-known. One important focus for The Moore Space has been on individual artists projects. The Yang Fudong project was the first solo exhibition of this artist in the United States and later traveled to TRANS Area in New York and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Other individual artists exhibitions/projects presented are: LET’S GO! Aida Ruilova (Sept-Nov 2004); Soap-OPERATIC/ Hernan Bas (Dec 2004-Mar 2005); and in 2005: Drawing from Life: Steve Mumford in Iraq 2003-2004 (Apr 14-Jul 1); Miami Calling… a project by Jonathan Monk, produced with students from the New World School of the Arts Intermedia Department. Also, in 2005, we participated in the e-flux Video Rental, a project in collaboration with e-flux in New York, shown at the same time in KW Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin and the Manifesta Foundation in Amsterdam. Most recently, we presented Distance, by Jeppe Hein and EyeShadow, by Bozidar Brazda.
Our guest curator program, with which The Moore Space’s programming began, continues strong and to date, has included international figures such as: Lawrence Rinder, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Christine Macel, Sandra Antelo Suarez and Shin-Yi Yang, among others.The Moore Space is committed to producing publications to document its exhibitions. In a relatively new city like Miami, aside from ten days in December each year, contemporary art is not commonplace and scholarship is sorely lacking. We believe publications are necessary tools for the visiting public and important for exhibiting artists. These one-person exhibitions and projects have been very successful in this respect as they offer more in-depth opportunities for focused scholarship. The Moore Space produced first-time publications for Yang Fudong, Aida Ruillova, Hernan Bas and Bozidar Brazda. In all three cases, we commissioned essays from well-known scholars and curators and these texts are the only existing texts on these artists.
Performance has always been of critical interest for the organization. In May 2003, we produced FAN DANCE, a new performance by artist Patty Chang. Later that year, a second performance JOAN JONAS: AFTER A LONG TRAIN RIDE, was organized by Sandra Antelo Suarez and presented in collaboration with TRANS, New York. This new work was later included as part of the artist's retrospective at the Queens Museum in New York. Last year, performances and performative works of art were included within the group exhibitions, for example: Christian Jankowki’s The Day We Met karaoke project and Brock Enright’s ongoing VideoGames Project. For 2006, we joined forces with other US arts organizations: The Kitchen, New York, to present ROOM by Tracy and the Plastics; and the Renaissance Society, Chicago and the San Francisco Arts Institute to present CLAMOR, a site-specific project by Allora & Calzadilla. In December, we concluded our performance-focused year with John Bock/ZERO HERO. 2007 began with a group show CONDITIONS OF DISPLAY, featuring artists whose work question presentation and display techniques. The Fall season begins in August with Re-creating Histories, a project by the Dutch artist Allard Van Hoorn. In September, THE HURRICANE PROJECTS I: Outbursts of Energy, a new annual series of artists projects, presents four artists whose works negotiate movement, change and the body. In December 2007, The Moore Space presents FRENCH KISSING IN THE USA, the first exhibitions in the United States of the emerging contemporary art scene in France.

Our educational program began as simple guided tours for the visiting public and for students attending the public high school across the street. Since Fall 2003, The Moore Space has established a full collaboration with D.A.S.H. (Design and Architecture High School) in a program which has been recently named “DASH, Skip and Jump to the Moore”, integrating the space’s programming into DASHes curriculum. The Moore Space also joined forces with the New World School of the Arts in Downtown Miami yielding an ongoing Internship Program which seeks to enhance the students’ education and exposure to the professional arts field. Our educational program today serves approximately 100 students a week. More such events and programs are planned for the future, as well as the creation of resources for the Miami arts community including an expanded art library, a video lounge, an artist resource center and support for commissioning artists projects.

THE MOORE SPACE/MISSION STATEMENT
The Moore Space is dedicated to presenting international contemporary art forms. It will achieve this through an experimental program of cross-disciplinary exhibitions, performances, artists and curators residencies and public programs which reflect the state of contemporary art today: new forms, new voices and new thought.