72 REPORTING THE ARTS II

traddling Biscayne Boulevard, on a con-struction site alongside I-395, the sleeksteel ribs of Cesar Pelli’s inspiring Miami

Performing Arts Center of greater Miami (PAC)started to take shape in October 2003. It was—and remains—a potent symbol of the disconnectbetween Miami’s dreams for the arts and theirscruffy reality.

This is a city of flamboyant, fleshy opulence,where Latin rock stars cruise South Beach,urbane patrons attend the excellent Miami CityBallet, and wealthy collectors drop millions atArt Basel Miami Beach, since 2002 the local out-post of the most prestigious contemporary artfair in the world.

Yet Miami also has the lowest median house-hold income of any major city in the nation, apopulation 59 percent foreign-born and anurban center that feels like a shabby small town.Miami’s immigrants—from countries includingCuba, Brazil, Ecuador, and the DominicanRepublic—live in a checkerboard of neighbor-hood enclaves, making it nearly impossible tomount citywide support for anything, nevermind the arts. But Miami’s fledgling city-artsbudget is less than $1 million, anyway, and theFlorida State legislature slashed arts funding lastyear from $29 to $6 million. Tourism, the palm-

lined city’s next-biggest industry after develop-ment, still has not fully recovered fromSeptember 11.

In spite of all this, Miami is forging aheadwith PAC. The new Children’s Museum went upin 2003, and there are plans for a $175 millionMiami Art Museum. If all this sounds slightlycontradictory, it is—until you realize that inMiami, the name of the game is real estate. Artslovers and city planners fervently hope the centerwill spawn an arts district that will have a domi-no effect on nearby Wynnwood, the DesignDistrict—where the South Beach crowd goes toflee the tourists—and, eventually, downtownitself.

It’s a beautiful vision. But it may be slightlypremature. Two years after PAC broke ground in2001, one of its major tenants-to-be, the FloridaPhilharmonic, went bankrupt. Its anchor tenant,the Concert Association of Florida, has been inthe red for two years. Meanwhile, the arts cen-ter’s budget has ballooned from $132 million to$344 million, and its opening has been delayeduntil 2006. Even that date isn’t firm.Nevertheless, declares Concert Associationimpresario Judy Drucker, “we need it desperate-ly. One of the biggest problems in the past is thatwe haven’t had decent theaters.” Two huge con-

Miami, Florida

S “I go to cities

and art fairs all

over the world,

and the level of

activities here is

extraordinary.

I have never

seen anything

like it.”Milton Esterow

editor

ARTnews

Pho

togr

aph

cour

tesy

of t

he C

onve

nti

on a

nd

Vis

itor

s B

urea

u of

Mia

mi.

NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM 73

private spaces in the Design District. Miami’s theater scene emerged as a player

last year as well, after the New Theatre pre-miered Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz’sAnna in the Tropics, which won a Pulitzer andwent on to Broadway. The graceful old CoconutGrove Playhouse puts up original productionsand hosts touring Broadway shows. Actor’sPlayhouse, on Coral Gables’s Miracle Mile, offersoriginal musicals and revivals and, come sum-mer, Miami theater lovers enjoy Teatro Avante’sInternational Hispanic Theatre Festival.

In a city that is 66 percent Hispanic, it’s notsurprising that Latin pop rules. Miami’s Latin-dominated entertainment industry generated$2.5 billion in 1999, and the city hosts all themajor Latin music awards shows. It is also theheadquarters for the Latin American divisions ofnearly all the multinational recording labels, aswell as for such networks as Mexico’s Televisaand North America’s Univision and Telemundo.

Oddly, though, the live-music scene is, well,pretty dead. Recent signs of life have been

cert halls—2,480 seats for ballet and opera;2,200 seats for orchestra concerts—plus themuch-needed 200-seat Studio Theater shouldhelp.

The big question, though, is, can they fill theseats? Maybe. One future tenant—the NewWorld Symphony, a youth academy led by SanFrancisco maestro Michael Tilson Thomas—isenormously popular and fabulously endowed,though another, the Florida Grand Opera, is rou-tinely described as “mediocre.”

Demographic shifts have played a decisiverole in the decline of Miami’s classical musicscene. Only 12 percent of the city’s population iswhite and non-Hispanic and, says Drucker, theJewish middle class, which once patronized clas-sical music, has long since moved away. “We havea great Hispanic community here now that hasnot been brought up with classical music,” sheexplains. “They have been brought up with bal-let, though.”

This may explain why, in the middle of arecession, Miami City Ballet managed to mounta capital campaign for a new headquarters andfinish a substantial 2003-04 season with a sur-plus. Of course, the company—led by formerNew York City Ballet star Edward Villella—isworld-class, and dance of all kinds flourishes inMiami, including Maximum Dance Ballet andfestivals of international ballet companies andAfro-Cuban and Brazilian dance.

But Miami’s strongest suit by far is the visualarts. Since 2002, the city has hosted Art BaselMiami Beach, and it is also home to two of themost remarkable private showcases of contem-porary art in the world—the Rubell FamilyCollection and the Margulies Collection at theWarehouse—both in the Design District. NorthMiami’s Museum of Contemporary Art has awell-deserved reputation for cutting-edge shows.The city and surrounding area are peppered withhip museums such as South Beach’s Wolfsonian,which showcases decorative and propagandaarts, and the nearby Bass Museum, recentlyexpanded by architect Arata Isozaki. The galleryscene is red-hot, too, particularly for Latin artistssuch as José Bedia and Hernan Bas. “I go tocities and art fairs all over the world,” ARTnewseditor Milton Esterow told The Miami Herald,“and the level of activities here is extraordinary. Ihave never seen anything like it.”

Architecture is also strong, with the contin-ued success of the flamboyant Arquitectonica,which designed the Children’s Museum, andDuany Plater-Zyberk, whose new urbanisminfluenced the progressive zoning of public and

The Miami Herald

74 REPORTING THE ARTS II

observed at clubs such as the Design District’sI/O and Little Havana’s Hoy como Ayer, andlocal artists like Bacilos, Trick Daddy andDashboard Confessional have broken out nation-ally. But Miami is by and large a deejay dancetown, where people watch for celebrities likeJennifer Lopez and Colombian rock star CarlosVives—not the band. An exception would beMiami’s festivals and fairs—such as TrinidadianCarnival and Miami Carnival—a popular anti-dote to the city’s cultural fragmentation.

But how do you sell concert tickets at aparade? How does art thrive in a city where qual-ity arts groups are young, scant and scatteredand there is not much of a tradition of giving?Michael Spring, director of Miami-DadeCounty’s Department of Cultural Affairs, notesthat county arts nonprofits have exploded from100 to 1100 in the last 20 years, and thinks PACand the arts district are the right first step.Spring says, “Florida is trying to change its imageas simply being a vacation destination into amore sophisticated place, where tourism, high-tech business and international business shouldcome and live.”

He has some cause for optimism. His budget

has tripled in seven years, to $12.5 million. Thecity finally formed an arts council in late 2002.And whereas groups used to start up optimisti-cally, then fail after a couple of years, cutting-edge performance programs at the Miami LightProject and Miami-Dade County College’sCultural Del Lobo have survived hard times.

Still, one has to wonder if Miami has the cartbefore the horse. The Miami Art Museum owns amere 189 paintings. “Isn’t [a central museum] anineteenth-century idea for an industrial city?”says Museum of Contemporary Art DirectorBonnie Clearwater. “This is a twenty-first-centu-ry city in a postindustrial age.” Indeed, whentransnational corporations are making cell-phone calls from Miami neighborhoods to suchcountries as Spain, Argentina and the Antilles,the Miami arts community may be applying amodern paradigm to a postmodern reality.

Back in 1998, a mysterious archeological sitecalled the Miami Circle was unearthed by acondo developer at the mouth of the MiamiRiver. After spending $26.7 million on the exca-vation of the Native American structure, no onecould agree on how to display it, so it wasreburied. One hopes the same fate does notawait the steel struts of the Miami PerformingArts Center.

By Paul de Barros

“Florida is try-

ing to change

its image as

simply being a

vacation

destination into

a more

sophisticated

place, where

tourism,

high-tech busi-

ness and

international

business should

come and live.” Michael Spring

director

Miami-Dade County’s

Department of

Cultural Affairs

Herald’s format rather than content. The paper discontinued itsstand-alone advertising sections, folding ad pages into editorial sec-tions. Thus the Herald beefed up the pagination of its A&L section, itsWeekend A&E supplement and its sports. Tropical Life was the onlyA&L section among the metropolitan newspapers we monitored toassign more than 10 percent of it pages to full-page ads. This meansthat Tropical Life did not increase its newshole in proportion to itspagination. Indeed, its listings were actually smaller than in the dailyLiving & Arts section of 1998, with large shrinkage in the space for thedaily TV grid and for its accompanying journalism.

Instead, the Herald allocated more resources to music and theperforming arts. The number of music articles doubled, though noneof the increase was accounted for by reviews, which remainedunchanged in 2003. As for the performing arts, the Herald’s boostrepresented a change from outstandingly low to merely normal—except for dance, a field in which the Herald became a leader.—AT

Tropical Life has arrived on the Miami scene, a daily tabloid arts-and-lifestyles supplement that bucks the trend in our study. Whilemost other newspapers have focused on weekend coverage and cutback on the daily, The Miami Herald not only increased the paginationof its daily section as a proportion of the overall newspaper but alsoincreased its daily newshole for articles.

The Herald was also one of only three metropolitan newspapersto increase its arts-and-culture story count. The Herald’s increase wasby far the greatest. Since 1998 almost every newspaper we studied hasshrunk the average length of its arts-and-culture articles. At theHerald, Tropical Life’s tabloid format led to a larger than averagereduction. So the Herald’s arts-and-culture journalism newsholeshrank slightly, and its newshole for listings remained stable. TheWeekend A&E supplement switched from articles to listings: The for-mer’s newshole was cut back; the latter’s volume doubled.

Much of the makeover embodied by Tropical Life was in the

76 REPORTING THE ARTS II

Tropical Life. Space is reserved Monday forweekend reviews, while weekday arts coveragehas increased at the Herald overall since 1998.However, articles do tend to be shorter, and thefact that they are obscured by covers about absand eczema increases the perception that thearts have disappeared. “People don’t open it,”says rock critic Evelyn McDonnell, who notes adramatic decline in e-mail reader responsesince the redesign. “They see what’s on thecover, and five days a week it has nothing to dowith arts and culture.”

A more frequent complaint is that reviewsas such are no longer valued. While the numberof reviews has remained constant since 1998,they comprise a smaller percentage of thepaper’s music coverage. Less than 20 percent ofthe Herald’s music-performance stories lastOctober constituted reviews, compared to 34percent five years ago. This is intentional, how-ever. “We’re a news features department,”asserts deputy features editor Joan Chrissos.“Most of us came from the news side. We havethe mantra of trying to get on the front page.”

Understandably, this philosophy does notplease arts organizations. “It’s a complete disas-ter,” says Judy Drucker, whose ConcertAssociation presents classical music stars. “Wejust got a wonderful new critic, whom I adore.And they stop him.”

Drucker has a point. When the Herald’sclassical music critic died, the paper hired areplacement, then promptly recast him as a“culture critic.” Now that its dance writer hasmoved to Latin popular music full-time, thepaper has no dedicated staffer for dance, classi-cal music or visual arts. Arts coverage mean-while lost a general-assignment position, andthe responsibilities of a major features editor,who left last fall, were reassigned to existingstaff. These are just a few of the staffing anom-alies at a paper where features and newsreporters are regularly enlisted to cover the arts.The paper had more than 70 different peoplewriting about the arts last October, yet neitherthe architecture nor visual arts critic is a staffer.

One result of such chronic understaffing isstrikingly low morale. Two reporters character-ized the Herald as “not a happy place” wherewriters are “overworked and underpaid.” SaysHamersly: “I don’t think you could ever behappy with the staff level at a corporate-ownednewspaper.”

The corporation he’s referring to is KnightRidder, which moved its headquarters from

Last September, The Miami Herald rolled outTropical Life, a splashy new daily tabloid thatfolds arts coverage into features. The new sec-tion is typical of a paper skilled at finding inno-vative and resourceful solutions for tight budgets and a confusingly fluid community.

True, Tropical Life may give the casual read-er the impression that frothy gossip and flesh-baring models—male and female—are moreimportant than probing arts stories. But take astep back. What other U.S. daily has bilingualcritics covering Latin popular music, SouthAmerican soaps and Spanish-language theater;a nationally respected freelancer who appearsregularly on the architecture beat; and a moviecritic who lives in New York City? And whatother daily places arts stories in nearly everysection of the paper, linking arts to neighbor-hoods, real estate, small business, ethnic identi-ty and urban personalities? That goes for page1, too, which recently featured in-depth storieson Art Basel Miami Beach and cop surveillanceof hip-hop groups.

At the Herald, the arts don’t just cozy up tofeatures, they’re tight with the news, too.

Tropical Life, which takes its name from aprevious Sunday section, has a core theme eachday. Arts gets the cover Friday and Sunday;other days it’s people, health, fashion, food andreligion. Because of press requirements, the sec-tion reverts to a broadsheet Saturday andSunday. Friday offers mostly film reviews, usingstar ratings; fizzy, clever columns about celebri-ties, clubs, dating and deejays; reviews of videogames and DVDs; and an extensive listings sec-tion. Copy is short and snappy, “smart boxes”and story summaries abound, and the layout is clean, precise and readable. Sunday is moreleisurely, with longer features and book and tel-evision reviews.

Not surprisingly, Tropical Life is aimed atyouth. “Young people have been oriented by TVand Web pages for a quick read,” says featureseditor Kendall Hamersly. “That doesn’t neces-sarily mean sophomoric or simplistic, but stuffyou can get quickly.”

Some arts advocates and Herald criticsthemselves complain that the new format hascut into arts coverage. In truth, culture stories—with cover teasers—appear almost every day in

Arts Coverage in Miami:A Critical View

“We’re a

news features

department.

Most of us came

from the news

side. We have

the mantra of

trying to get on

the front page.”Joan Chrissos

deputy features editor

The Miami Herald

NATIONAL ARTS JOURNALISM PROGRAM 77

Miami to San Jose, Calif., in 1998, a major blowto a Pulitzer Prize-winning paper that was oncethe company flagship. Since then, in spite ofbrand-name columnists like Dave Barry, CarlHiassen and Leonard Pitts Jr., the Herald’s sta-tus has plummeted. Then there’s its circulation,down from 342,029 in 1998 to 325,032 in 2003on the daily and 470,393 to 447,326 Sundays. “Iwould love to have a bigger arts section,” sayspublisher Alberto Ibargüen, who is passionatelyinvolved in the Miami arts scene. “Newspapersare community institutions, and I absolutelybelieve in the arts as community builders. But inthe real world, I think we balance our role in thecommunity and our obligation to shareholdersbetter than most. I make no apology for it. We’restill putting out a quality and enthusiastic page.”

Not everyone agrees. “Part of the problemwith the print media here is that it’s episodic,”says Miami-Dade County’s Department ofCultural Affairs Director Michael Spring.“There isn’t a vision guiding the coverage. TheHerald stumbles on stories but doesn’t connectthe dots.” Hamersly responds, “That’s probablya legitimate criticism. The downside of having acapable art critic who is stretched very thin isthat the time to do a step-back piece isn’t there.”

Do readers have alternatives? Not many.Miami is a one-newspaper town, unless youcount the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, which,ambitiously, just changed its name to SouthFlorida Sun-Sentinel and increased daily circu-lation. This year the Sentinel collected two artsnominations at the Sunshine State Awards,whereas the Herald got none.

For Spanish speakers, the editorially sepa-

rate El Nuevo Herald—popular with the Cuban-exile community and by no means a translationof the English-language Herald—offers qualityin-depth reviews of Latin arts, as does the origi-nal Spanish-language daily, Diario LasAmericas. The alternative weekly Miami NewTimes has published irreverent, in-depth storieson the flailing Miami Performing Arts Centerand the fledging Miami Art Museum. Its puta-tive competitor, Street, the Herald’s faux-altweekly, appears to be merely a cynical ploy tograb advertising dollars.

Miami radio is mostly barren when it comesto cultural affairs, except for public radio’sWLRN 91.3, which features South Florida ArtsBeat, a one-hour show offering live performanc-es as well as informative interviews. WRLN-TVoffers the comparable half-hour show Art Street.

In his 1983 groundbreaking book ImaginedCommunities, political scientist BenedictAnderson theorized that newspapers helpedestablish the modern nation-state by definingthe public sphere, both physically—“I live in thiscity”—and ethnically—“I am Indonesian.”Looked at this way, expecting a newspaper tofulfill that role in a transnational, transculturalcity like Miami is perhaps an anachronism. “Itall moves very quickly,” says features editorEnrique Fernandez. “It never stays put. Try to find Cubans in Little Havana. Where is Little Haiti? Everybody’s now living in Broward County.”

Wherever Miami is, Fernandez and theHerald are hoping that, at the very least, it isunanimously in love with Tropical Life. Thatmay be the best they can wish for.

By Paul de Barros

“Part of the

problem with

the print media

here is that it’s

episodic. There

isn’t a vision

guiding the

coverage.

The Herald

stumbles on

stories but

doesn’t connect

the dots.”Michael Spring

director

Miami-Dade County’s

Department of

Cultural Affairs