By Fran Robbins

Until its film culture took off in the 1970’s, Australians admitted to suffering from what they called “the cultural cringe.” When comparing Australia to America and especially to England, Australians found themselves lacking cultural venues and fine arts intellectuals, and they felt that lack keenly.

Long an area tourists visited in order to burn on the beach and ogle models, Miami and its environs suffered from the same malady: a lack of a fine arts culture and, many say, a lack of any desire to pursue it. Visitors to Miami did not come for its artistic offerings. It remained a place to visit strictly for the beachgoing and the sportfishing. Whatever arts community was available remained an afterthought.

Happily, that is no longer the case. With the establishment of the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, straddling Biscayne Boulevard between 13th and 14th streets, South Florida has an exquisite venue with which to showcase its fragmented but burgeoning arts community. As South Florida has gained in prestige and influence nationally and internationally as the gateway to the Americas and the model city for the 21st Century, its scattered arts community, too, has slowly gained in strength and diversity.



So, Miami has in the new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts what Manhattan has in Lincoln Center and what Washington, D.C. has in The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts—a multi-venue operation that will bring together the most noteworthy in South Florida’s fine arts performances and exhibits.

“Considering that we have been presenting in theaters that are not up to the standard for our great productions, operas, ballets, and concerts, for so many years with so many heartaches and such frustration, this is something that just comes from heaven,” says Judy Drucker, the President and CEO of the Concert Association of Florida.

In typical South Florida fashion, the road to the Center was long and circuitous. In the mid 1980’s, leaders from five arts groups agreed that South Florida required a centralized space for its performing arts community. Unlike older cities in the Northeast and Midwest, South Florida is a web of suburbs and lacks a city center. Exhibits and performances are scattered over the entirety of Miami-Dade and Broward counties, which also deal with the challenge of a dodgy mass-transit system. With a performing arts center located centrally, patrons would no longer have to engage in long drive times or find themselves lost in unknown neighborhoods.

In addition, Miami’s demographics have become increasingly divergent, encouraging more groups of various cultures. Also, an arts center would act as a tax-revenue enhancer, aiding in urban revitalization and job creation—something South Florida needs desperately as it deals with the challenge of being the nation’s third-poorest major city. But, most important, an arts center would allow Miami to take its place on the international stage as a player in the art world, a place where the finest artists of any stripe could come, sure in the knowledge that their work would be appreciated by an educated audience.

By 1991, the five arts organizations had formed the fundraising arm of the project and nearly six acres of land in downtown Miami—some of them the site of the beloved but abandoned SEARS Tower—had been donated by SEARS and Knight Ridder. Two years later, the County Commission started the Performing Arts Center Trust, thus creating the biggest public-private partnership in county history.

The complex, designed by the architect Cesar Pelli, comprises several different buildings and has cost nearly $450 million, which were raised through both public and private fundraising. Miami-Dade County’s initial investment in the late 1990’s was $210 million, and the original goal of private fundraisers was to amass approximately $48 million more. Making use of the county’s hotel and motel tax, the Center’s fundraising organization has been able to overcome ballooning construction costs, which have been attributed mainly to the increase in the cost of construction materials nationwide.

The nearly half a billion dollars raised has purchased Pelli’s futuristic and angular design. In acknowledging Miami’s early architecture, an Art Deco tower has been preserved. That half-billion has also purchased the 2,400-seat Sanford and Dolores Ziff Ballet Opera House and the Carlin Banquet Hall within; the 2,200-seat Carnival Concert Hall with its soaring, acoustically perfect ceiling; the 200-seat black-box Studio Theater; the 57,000-square-foot Plaza for the Arts; and the Peacock Education Center with its 8,200 square feet of workshop / classroom space.

Four of the five original art groups there at the beginning of this challenge are still engaged as it nears its completion. The Carnival Center for the Performing Arts will be home to four resident companies: Concert Association of Florida, headed by Drucker; New World Symphony, helmed by Artistic Director Michael Tilson Thomas; the 65-year-old Florida Grand Opera; and Miami City Ballet, which is under the direction of Founding Artistic Director/CEO Edward Villella. The fifth group, the Florida Philharmonic, disbanded several years ago due to financial troubles, but the Cleveland Orchestra has agreed to perform in its stead each winter starting in 2007.

In keeping with South Florida’s diversity, the Center aims to provide virtually everything to everybody. The Grand Opening Weekend, October 5 through October 8, for example, will offer performances by all four resident companies. The Inauguration at the Carnival Concert Hall will showcase Grammy-Award winner Gloria Estefan along with a number of other popular artists. The next evening, Concert Association of Florida and New World Symphony will partner to offer a program of classical and contemporary music. Grammy Award-winning Maxim Vengerov, a classical violin virtuoso, and soprano Measha Brueggergosman will perform. The following evening sees the Florida Grand Opera and Miami City Ballet present Act II of Puccini’s La Bohème with Patricia Racette, and Act III of The Sleeping Beauty. And the last day will be filled with the sounds of non-traditional music. Gospel, jazz, soul, hip-hop, samba, and more will be performed in free concerts all day until midnight.

That diversity of offerings should go far in rebutting any complaints about the Center. Early concerns circled around the question as to whether this project was an appropriate use of tax dollars. South Florida had then, as it has now, high levels of Central and Latin American and Caribbean immigration, which typically brings in immigrants with lower educational and trades skills. Thus, South Florida could put tax monies toward better schools, transportation, housing, and medical care. Another concern was that the Center would be a haven strictly for the elite.

But in encouraging local talent to perform in its halls, the Center is fostering community involvement on all levels—from the biggest opera to the smallest reggae group. The chance to perform at the Center will encourage education across the board, and studies have shown, time and again, that students exposed to the arts typically do better in their other studies than those who are not.

In addition, to encourage the participation of all members of the community, the Center will subsidize some programs to reduce ticket prices. For example, New World Symphony will perform mostly at its traditional home base of Miami Beach’s Lincoln Theater, where certain tickets may be had for free.

In essence, the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts will allow South Florida to bring in the finest talent globally while encouraging and educating the best talent locally. Tax revenues will increase, easing the overall financial burden the county faces, and all cultural and artistic groups are being welcomed to the table, both as performers and as audience members. The Carnival Center for the Performing Arts is proof that South Florida has always had the artistic and financial wherewithal to accomplish what many thought impossible.

Carnival Center for the Performing Arts
1300 Biscayne Blvd.
Miami, FL 33132
www.miamipac.org