By Sue Arrowsmith, Miami Dade College

With generous support from Terra Group and Bacardi, which now celebrates its 150^th anniversary, Miami Dade College’s Museum of Art + Design presents an evocative, retrospective exhibition spanning three decades of creative collaboration between award-winning fashion designer Isabel Toledo and her husband, artist Ruben Toledo. TOLEDO/TOLEDO: Full Circle will take place at MDC’s Freedom Tower, the landmark Mediterranean Revival building in the heart of Miami where they both arrived as political refugees from Cuba in the 1960’s. The exhibition opens November 9 and runs through January 26, 2013.

30+ years of creative partnership by Isabel and Ruben Toledo will be on display at MDC’s Freedom Tower starting Nov. 9The exhibition showcases more than 30 years of archival Isabel Toledo designs on mannequins created by Ruben Toledo, a selection of his legendary watercolors, illustrations and sculptures, as well as a filmography of their careers, spanning from rare footage of the young Toledo’s at the start of their rise in New York’s exciting artistic underground of the 1980’s, to designing the iconic lemon grass lace ensemble worn by First Lady Michelle Obama to the historic Inauguration of her husband Barack Obama 2009.

In keeping with their lifelong commitment to education, the Toledos will offer a program to students of Miami’s art and design schools on November 9 at the Wolfson Auditorium. In addition, Isabel Toledo will present her new book, Roots of Style: Weaving Together Life, Love, and Fashion (Penguin Publishing), during the college’s Miami Book Fair International on November 11.

Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday, from noon-5pm.  For more information, please contact MDC’s Museum of Art + Design at 305-237-7700, or e-mail [email protected].