VARIOUS ARTISTS
SOCIAL ASSEMBLY: WELCOME TO THE MUSEUM
The Bass invites you to rethink how we interact with and learn from art—and each other—in a museum setting with our latest initiative Social Assembly: Welcome to the Museum, on view December 3, 2023 through September 1, 2024.
This multipronged exhibition and flexible program is staged in The Bass’ Harrison Gallery, coinciding with the recent uncovering of the gallery’s original windows. Just as these restored windows give expansive views onto Collins Park, allowing transparency between interior and exterior spaces, Social Assembly provides audiences with greater opportunities to gather informally and more frequently with art. Whether meeting friends, reading books, watching videos, drinking coffee or listening to music—all ways for visitors to relax, refresh and regroup—these re-envisioned museum activities are now underway as part of one exhibition experience.
Within Social Assembly, Exploded View: Coconut (2023), an installation by Miami-based artist and designer Emmett Moore, includes tables, seating and a bar, inviting visitors to linger and casually enjoy the museum. Moore’s piece intermingles with others from The Bass’ permanent collection, each work selected for its capacity to straddle the characteristics of art object and functional furniture. The goal is to offer museum visitors greater agency to decide how they wish to assemble in spaces at The Bass, on their own terms.
As a backdrop to the exhibition’s social scene, Haegue Yang’s Coordinates of Speculative Solidarity considers the recent conditions and pressures of climate change by visualizing Miami Beach’s metrological research and weather data in a floor-to-ceiling digital collage spanning forty-five feet. This unique “wallpaper” abstracts infographics, satellite photos and diagrams, reflecting upon weather and circumstances related to climate change as a social binding agent. As Yang’s work suggests, weather unconsciously unites people through a shared determination to face a challenge and react in solidarity.
Throughout the year, Social Assembly melds art, design and architecture, combining the functions and aesthetics of a lounge, coffee bar, café, domestic interior and art gallery to explore the many possibilities for coming together around contemporary art and the ideas it inspires. In that spirit: Welcome to the Museum.
