Miami Design District commenced Miami Art Week with the reveal of “A Train of Thoughts,” a new exhibition of works from the Craig Robins Collection. Art and design world luminaries, international tastemakers and notable guests joined Craig Robins, CEO of Dacra and Chairman & Co-Founder of Design Miami/ at the Buick Building in the heart of the Miami Design District to celebrate.
The Craig Robins Collection comprises more than 1,300 pieces of contemporary art and innovative design, and is exhibited within the Dacra headquarters in the Miami Design District on a rotating basis. This year’s rehanging of the collection, “A Train of Thoughts”, focuses on two core subgroups of the collection’s holdings: figuration and conceptualism. The exhibition highlights a collecting history that has favored a taste for the abject and hyperbolic figurative image, in tandem with the self-reflexive, institutional critique of art based on ideas - a seemingly incompatible pair that yields unexpected dialogues. The exhibition features standout works by iconic artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Francisco de Goya, Marlene Dumas, Kara Walker, Jana Euler, Nicole Eisenman and others.
A prelude to Miami’s busiest season, the opening reception offered guests an intimate glimpse into the masterpieces curated from the portfolios of some of the world's most esteemed artists, displayed across two floors of the building.
Notable guests included Gaetano Pesce, Gigi and Ronnie Vogel, Isabela Grutman, Javier Mora, Jeffrey Deitch, Marlon Robins, Nikolai Haas, Anna Williams, Alex Schapiro, Steven Gretenstein, JR, Karen Grimson, Connie Butler, Lara Bohinc, Mario Ayala, Matthew Chevallard, and Paola Alberdi, among others.
ABOUT CRAIG ROBINS COLLECTION: “A TRAIN OF THOUGHTS”
The Craig Robins Collection in Miami is comprised of over 1,300 pieces of contemporary art and innovative design, and exhibited within the Dacra headquarters in the Miami Design District. The 2023-2024 rehang, titled “A Train of Thoughts,” focuses on two core subgroups from the collection holdings: figuration and conceptualism. Marcel Duchamp’s Three Standard Stoppages serves as a starting point for a lineage of conceptual practices in the collection that includes Joseph Beuys, Richard Tuttle, Jac Leirner, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Jorge Macchi, and John Baldessari. Simultaneously, prints from Francisco de Goya’s Caprichos and Disasters of War series find phenomenal resonance in more contemporary artworks by Marlene Dumas, Jana Euler and Nicole Eisenman, defining a sense of figuration that deals with eerie and uncanny subjects and prevails throughout the collection.