Miami devotes a park to graffiti art
A tour group walks through the Wynwood Walls gallery as they make their way through Miami's Design District in search of the city's best graffiti art, all while on a Vespa. (Jun. 30, 2011) Credit: AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee
Beyond Miami's endless stretch of beachfront condos and restaurant-lined avenues, in what was once a desolate warehouse district, street art and graffiti have been elevated to a new level in a park named Wynwood Walls.
Often called the Museum of the Streets, this urban gallery featuring murals by renowned artists from all over the world has no admission fee.
Its creator, real estate maven Tony Goldman, had an epiphany after visiting midtown Miami's Wynwood neighborhood with his son, Joey, in 2005. Back then, it was dotted with windowless warehouses, loading docks and vacant lots.
Goldman already had established a reputation for targeting depressed urban areas and changing them. He had a hand in the transformation of Manhattan's Upper West Side, the Wall Street Financial District and SoHo -- as well as Center City in Philadelphia and South Beach in Miami Beach.
Wynwood presented another opportunity.
"My vision was to basically create a new paradigm for public art," Goldman says. "Street art is the telegraph of the streets. It presents to the eyes the artists, the culture of the community."
His mission: Take an underappreciated genre -- graffiti and street art -- and elevate it to a new art form for the public to enjoy for free.
WHAT YOU'LL SEE
Wynwood Walls debuted during Art Basel 2009 -- Miami's premier arts festival. That year, it unveiled a dozen murals. It now has 34 by such artists as Kenny Scharf (United States), Nunca (Brazil), Shepard Fairey (United States), Aiko (Japan), Ryan McGinness (United States) and Stelios Faitakis (Greece). Goldman says about 100,000 people visit the park (on NW Second Avenue between 25th and 26th streets) each year.
It feels like an open-air museum, without "the stuffiness of a gallery," as Goldman puts it. One year after Wynwood Walls debuted, Goldman added Wynwood Doors in a lot next to it to create more painting surfaces and attract even more artists.
Wynwood Doors contains 176 feet of roll-up storefront gates. The exteriors of the doors were "bombed" or "tagged" by well-known graffiti writers. When the gates are down, it has the appearance of a desolate street, but when the doors are up, you see the "faces of Wynwood." Among them is a bearded man -- a striking, red-toned portrait of Henry Flagler, the oil and railroad tycoon credited with bringing the railroad to Miami, done by artist Gaia of New York.
A few doors from the Flagler portrait was the image of a young boy in a serious martial-arts pose, created by another New Yorker, Phase 2, who is considered among the pioneers of the subway graffiti art movement.
Goldman says new murals debut every year in conjunction with Art Basel. He is heavily invested in Wynwood and its transformation; his company bought 20 properties, all industrial sites, in the neighborhood and owns two restaurants -- Joey's, which churns out Italian entrees and thin-crust pizzas, and the art-filled Wynwood Kitchen and Bar.
IF YOU GO
Wynwood Walls, Miami
OPEN Noon-10 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday (until midnight second Saturday of each month in conjunction with Wynwood Gallery Walk).
ADMISSION Free
