Above: Reproduction “Mamá quiere menga, menga de su Nkombo,” by Jose Bedia, 1988, installed at Hialeah Park. Photo courtesy city of Hialeah.

Mari Robles is the deputy director of education and public programs for PAMM.

With a new year comes a new resolution for Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). This winter, the museum joins the efforts of Detroit Institute of Arts, Akron Art Museum and Philadelphia Museum of Art to bring art into the community with Inside|Out. Through the next six months, PAMM will bring high-quality reproductions of art from the museum’s permanent collection to the Miami-Dade communities of Hialeah, Homestead and West End. These 30 reproductions will travel to each of the communities through the end of summer.

Taking advantage of Miami’s year-round sunny weather, we selected four parks in those communities for these pop-up exhibitions: Hialeah Park, Hammocks Community Park, Losner Park and Olympic Park. Bringing art to the park not only encourages residents to explore the green spaces in their neighborhood, but gives them a chance to enjoy masterpieces in the presence of nature – an important design element in our own building’s architecture.

Reproduction of “Pink Wave,” by Ed Clark, 2006 installed at Hialeah Park. Photo courtesy city of Hialeah.

With Miami being one of the most diverse cities in the country, it was important to us to make sure the selected artworks selected are as diverse and relevant as the communities themselves. Most of these neighborhoods have high populations of people of Latin American and Caribbean descent, so we made sure to include works by artists from those regions including Fernando Botero, Carlos Alfonzo and José Bedia. We also took the setting into consideration and chose works that would be enhanced by the parks’ lush landscapes and historic architecture.

We are excited to kick off PAMM Inside|Out and extend our outreach initiatives beyond the walls of the museum directly into the community. One of our goals is to introduce the museum to new audiences and engage them with the museum’s collection in their own backyard. By complementing the installations with related programming, like art-making and bike tours, we hope to spark a dialogue and broaden residents’ notions of art and museums.

Through this program, we also hope to bring a sense of pride in the community and in the collection, encouraging residents to visit PAMM and explore all the exhibitions on view. We are even hosting a free community weekend at the museum during Labor Day weekend to give residents from these neighborhoods a chance to see some of the artwork reproductions from their communities on PAMM’s gallery walls.

This is our first year of Inside|Out, an idea conceived by the Detroit Institute of Arts seven years ago, and where it has been embraced by the community. Knight Foundation, meanwhile, is funding its expansion to cities around the country.

With this being our first year involved with Inside|Out, we look forward to seeing how the Miami version of this project evolves and influences the lives of South Florida’s residents. We hope to expand the program and eventually bring art to every South Florida community.