FIU Performing Arts Center

The Hebert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center (WPAC) opened in 1996, and houses the FIU Department of Theatre and FIU School of Music. The WPAC is one of Miami’s premiere collegiate theatrical and concert venues. It is located on FIU’s Modesto Maidique Campus (MMC). The $14 million Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center stands as the centerpiece of Florida International University’s commitment to the performing arts. A commitment that recognizes the place of music and theatre in the educational and cultural life of our community. The outstanding facility features five distinctive stages, each of which accentuates a unique aspect of the performing arts. Soloists and orchestras revel in the Performing Arts Center’s crown jewel, a 600-seat concert hall that boasts the finest in acoustical engineering and hosts professional music recordings. Theatrical productions benefit the high-quality lighting and sound systems in the 220-seat proscenium theatre, while smaller productions find a welcome home in the the intimate and engaging black box theatre, instrumental hall, and the recital hall. Also located within the facility are practice rooms and a state-of-the-art electronic music laboratory all supportting an active and growing body of young talent. The Sydell Ida Wertheim Concert Organ is the spotlight of the Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center. The prestigious 125-year-old Schantz Organ Company took nearly a year to build the 26-ton organ that is the largest in Miami-Dade County and one of the most technologically advanced in the country. The university dedicated the concert organ to the memory of Dr. Herbert Wertheim’s mother, Sydell Ida Wertheim. Theatre majors present four productions per season at the Mainstage Theatre as well as in the Black Box Theatre. The upcoming season will feature professional-grade productions of “Cardenio”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “June Moon”, and “Julius Caesar”. Music majors participate in over 150 performances during the concert season, which incorporates music of all styles including jazz, early music, chamber music, choral/vocal, contemporary music, wind, and opera theater performed by world class musicians and ensembles. They also participate in a plethora of masterclasses and lectures that are also open to the public and offered at no charge.

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FIU Art Museum

Housed on the Modesto Maidique Campus of Florida International University, The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum (formerly The Art Museum at FIU) opened in 1977. Initially a small gallery of less than 3000 square feet, the Museum grew to achieve local, national and international recognition as one of South Florida’s key cultural institutions. The Frost Art Museum’s extraordinary programmatic growth during the 1980s and 1990s, qualified the Museum for designation as a Major Cultural Institution by both the State of Florida and Miami-Dade County. Grants from both sources, complimented by endowments, membership and private and corporate giving, provide stable funding for annual programs. In 1999, the Museum received accreditation from the American Associations of Museums (now the American Alliance of Museums) and reaccredited in 2011. In 2001, the Museum became an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. Following the groundbreaking for its new facilities in 2003, the Art Museum at FIU was officially renamed The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum. The museum gained a respected reputation for its innovative exhibitions, outstanding lecture series and educational outreach programs for South Florida’s diverse audiences. Through generous support from private donations as well as state and local government agencies, the Frost Art Museum is able to offer free admission to all exhibitions and public events. The Museum’s growing collection has several notable donations of important groups of work. In 1989, the FIU leadership and the board of the Metropolitan Museum and Art Center in Coral Gables, ensured the intact survival of this important collection by transferring its ownership to the Frost Art Museum when the private museum closed.

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Whitney Museum

As the preeminent institution devoted to the art of the United States, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents the full range of twentieth-century and contemporary American art, with a special focus on works by living artists. The Whitney is dedicated to collecting, preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting American art, and its collection—arguably the finest holding of twentieth-century American art in the world—is the Museum’s key resource. The Museum’s signature exhibition, the Biennial, is the country’s leading survey of the most recent developments in American art. Innovation has been a hallmark of the Whitney since its beginnings. It was the first museum dedicated to the work of living American artists and the first New York museum to present a major exhibition of a video artist (Nam June Paik in 1982). Such figures as Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Cindy Sherman were given their first museum retrospectives by the Whitney. The Museum has consistently purchased works within the year they were created, often well before the artists became broadly recognized. The Whitney was the first museum to take its exhibitions and programming beyond its walls by establishing corporate-funded branch facilities, and the first museum to undertake a program of collection-sharing (with the San Jose Museum of Art) in order to increase access to its renowned collection. Designed by architect Renzo Piano and situated between the High Line and the Hudson River, the Whitney’s new building vastly increases the Museum’s exhibition and programming space, providing the most expansive view ever of its unsurpassed collection of modern and contemporary American art.

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