The Calendar
Cultural Compass
A curated guide to what Downtown Miami has to offer culturally. FROST SCIENCE. ARSHT CENTER. SILVERSPOT. HISTORY. PAMM. MCAD. (Enjoy videos.)
FROST SCIENCE / Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs
The exhibition — May 15 through September 6, 2021, takes the audience to the world of the largest flying animals that ever existed. Not dinosaurs. Not birds. Just amazing Pterosaurs.
Organized by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Pterosaurs is the largest exhibition about these flying reptiles ever mounted in the United States. It highlights research by scientists and leading paleontologists around the world and features rare pterosaur fossil casts from Italy, Germany, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil.
The exhibition includes life-size models, captivating videos and interactive exhibits that immerse visitors in the mechanics of Pterosaur flight, including a motion sensor-based interactive that allows you to use your body to “pilot” two species of pterosaurs through virtual prehistoric landscapes.
Info: frostscience.org/pterosaurs.
ARSHT CENTER / LIVE AT THE PLAZA — Sol and Tribu
Friday May 7. Performance starts at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 6:00 for Happy Hour!
Sol and The Tribu is a group of Cuban musicians who blend traditional Caribbean music and modern technology with a Miami twist. As ambassadors of the New Miami Sound, they pride themselves on what makes Miami “The Magic City,” with its blend of Caribbean influences and American swamp funk.
Sol and Tribu has seven members, but more than 20 musicians and creatives. They curate and produce original material that represents the 305 and its cultural diversity. Hailing from Miami, the band performs in its native tongue, Spanglis, and encourages positive thinking.
Live on the Plaza is a series of outdoor, socially distanced performances.
Info: Arshtcenter.org
DOWNTOWN NEWS ONLINE / Musical Performance
A fabulous jazzy rendition of John Lennon’s song Imagine for voice and piano performed by Ria Iparraguirre exclusively for Downtown News.
Info: Downtown-News.com
SILVERSPOT / Movie DEMON SLAYER
English dub or subtitled. Action, Rated R. 1 Hr. 57 Minutes. Silverspot Cinema, Downtown.
Tanjiro Kamado, joined with Inosuke Hashibira, a boy raised by boars who wears a boar’s head, and Zenitsu Agatsuma, a scared boy who reveals his true power when he sleeps, board the Infinity Train on a new mission with the Fire Pillar, Kyojuro Rengoku, to defeat a demon who has been tormenting the people and killing the demon slayers who oppose it!
Info: silverspot.net
PAMM / Art at the Park.
Fresh Air | Fresh Art
An outdoor installation at the Maurice A. Ferré Park. On view through June 16, 2021.
There are replicas throughout the park of abstract works, landscapes, collages, graphite drawings on paper, and much more, with something different for everyone.
Featured artists include: José Bedia, Ed Clark, Morris Louis, Wangechi Mutu, Beatriz Milhazes, Christina Pettersson, and Sandra Ramos.
Anita Braham, PAMM Associate Director of Adult Programs and Audience Engagement: “We are thrilled to continue to find new ways to make the museum’s permanent collection — really Miami’s art collection — more accessible to all. We strive to extend our reach and impact well beyond the museum walls and Fresh Air | Fresh Art helps us do just that, while also encouraging Miamians and visitors to spend a little more time in the beautiful Maurice A. Ferré Park and the larger downtown cultural campus…”
Downtown News: What role does public art play in fostering a sense of community?
Anita Braham: Art is at the core of what Miami does best and public art provides the space and opportunity for Miami’s diverse communities to gather together around art that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. I see public art as an entry point to finding your own artistic community and your people in Miami, a city that often feels overwhelmingly large until you find where you are meant to be. Public art can take many forms and is key to community building because it creates a common ground upon which to connect with others… Fresh Air | Fresh Art aims to give the public a good feel for what our larger permanent collection with absolutely no barriers to access it. We hope it makes art in general more accessible and really a part of daily life in Miami.
A free audio tour is available on the PAMM App. If you find yourself wanting more art, the museum is just a few steps away!
Info: pamm.org
MCAD / MIAMI CRUNCH.
The Food- Water-Energy Nexus
Through May at the Miami Center for Architecture & Design. In person and virtual.
Greater Miami is one of the most climate-vulnerable regions on planet Earth. In the coming decades, the low-lying areas of Miami are set to be swallowed by sea-level rise combined with increased yearly threats of hurricanes, king tides, tropical storm surges and heatwaves. Municipal, state and federal governments, and the private sector debate, strategize, borrow and spend billions to defend the region.
Climate Resilient Urban Nexus Choices (CRUNCH), and the Food-Water-Energy Nexus research looks through this exhibit at designing adaptive, resilient, biology-inspired, off-the-grid and carbon-positive green-blue infrastructures, self-growing coastal barrier islands and buildings on a timeline from 2019 to 2100.
These systems and structures act as dynamic self-powered hybrids that are floating, sitting in, out, or under the water with the ability to be completely self-sufficient. The exhibit features experimental scenarios of selected design approaches each envisioning and testing self-sustaining, adaptive, and resilient green-blue infrastructures with living shorelines, buildings and neighborhoods, all benchmarked against 100% carbon-neutrality and the Food- Water-Energy nexus.
Downtown News: What is CRUNCH?
Thomas Spiegelhalter: It consists of over 19 project partners in the UK, Poland, Netherlands, USA, and Taiwan addressing all three sectors of the food, water, and energy nexus through an integrative, multidisciplinary approach. The Miami team is working on data-driven planning and scenario tools for integrated decision making using the Urban Living Lab (ULL) approach based at Florida International University’s MBUS Studio. The team is identifying a data and mapping a baseline for the cities of Miami Beach and South Miami and developing a framework for testing and analyzing models using different carbon-neutral and resilient scenarios.
Thomas Spiegelhalter is the professor for Sustainable and Resilient Architecture and Co-Director of the Structures and Environmental Technologies Lab at the FIU, and the principal investigator for the CRUNCH Miami research project.
Info: crunch.fiu.edu.
Exhibit info: miamicad.org
HistoryMiami LECTURE / Defining Moments in South Florida History Class with Dr. Paul George.
May 25 -Jun 29. Tuesdays 6:00 PM — 7:30 PM. Via Zoom.
Join HistoryMiami Museum’s Resident Historian, Dr. Paul George, for virtual classes covering a variety of historical topics. Each class includes a lecture, discussion, and virtual tour of some of South Florida’s neighborhoods.
Participant will have access to recordings of sessions on-demand.
Info: miamihistory.org
