The Bass Museum of Art
- Architect
- Arata Isozaki
- Year
- 1963
- City
- Miami, FL
The Bass Museum of Art occupies a building in Miami Beach's South Beach that started out as the city's public library. In 1963, Viennese Jewish immigrants John Bass and Johanna Redlich bequeathed more than 500 works — Old Master paintings, textiles, and sculpture — to the City of Miami Beach, on condition that a museum stay open to the public in perpetuity. The city spent $160,000 converting the former library, and the Bass opened its doors on April 7, 1964, as the only municipally operated art gallery in South Florida at the time. John Bass directed the museum himself until his death in 1978.
the building
A library turned museum. The museum's home was originally the Miami Beach Public Library. The city spent $160,000 renovating the structure before it reopened as an art museum in 1964, giving South Florida its first municipally run gallery.
the architect
Arata Isozaki, the Japanese architect and Pritzker Prize laureate, is the architect on record for the Bass Museum of Art.
significance
When it opened in 1964, the Bass was the only municipally operated art gallery in South Florida, a distinction that traces to the Bass family's 1963 bequest of more than 500 works, given on condition that the museum remain open to the public in perpetuity.
nearby
- The Plymouth Hotel
- Liberty Arms Hotel
- Governor Hotel
- The Vanderbilt Hotel
- Greystone Hotel
- Roney Plaza Hotel