The Bass Museum recently announced that Philippe Vergné-who runs museums from Marseille to Minneapolis to Los Angeles and, as of 2019, Porto's Serralves-will soon arrive in Miami Beach as the first artistic director and general manager of the center. He starts in October, sharing the leadership of the museum with the executive director Silvia Karman Cubiñá in a role that they both named in the months of discussion. He's inheriting a revolutionary downtown, with the Johnston Marklee expansion on the way and Art Basel Miami Beach two blocks from his door. We caught up to hear more about his new gig.
He described this step as a return to trapping after many years of running the centers, saying he wants to find out “if he still has it.” I guess that's kind of a joke, but after thirty years and several administrations, why would you want to go back to babysitting?
Well, it's only kind of a joke. In the end this is my favorite. Dialogue with artists, accompanying their vision, learning from them. I never stopped filming, I had to do it less in the director's role. Years ago I learned from my friend and colleague Adam Weinberg when he was the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, that even as a director you never stop sorting.
Being a director allowed me to have a different impact on the center, it allowed me to give opportunities to the new generation of guards, which was very important to me because when I was a young guard I benefited from people who trusted me. I was impressed by the challenge of being a director, but remember, I have been director of very important institutions. They were all artists-oriented institutions, where the director's role is different because he does not lose direct contact with the artists. In Europe especially, the director's role is also the art director, unlike in US institutions where it's often different, so I've been able to manage a lot over the last few years.
Eighteen months ago, I curated a show at Serralves with eight artists titled “Evidence of Essentials,” and I realized that I was missing that curatorial role. I'm 60 years old now, and I want to do that, hopefully, I can do it well.
A new position, developed with Silvia Karman Cubiñá, whom you have known for years. How do you think the artistic director and main curator job separates you from working?
I see it as a partnership. The other is about building an institution. Another is about institutional planning. It is about the synchronization of performance, desires and motivation. Credit to Silvia Cubiñá and her board for shaping this new position at The Bass through our discussions. He and I were talking about where we are in our professional lives right now, and he was telling me that he wanted to be a facility architect, and I told him that I wanted to be a guard more, so I think that's where it really started. He really likes to build a center and he said he might be ready to give up paying, and I really like to think about the program and selection, and I might be ready to give up part of the center. It was as spontaneous as that conversation.
Then we got into the nitty-gritty of it, trying to figure out what it means to work in this relationship. It means that in the end, being involved in exhibitions, shopping, similar programs and education, all in collaboration with Silvia, relieves some of that pressure for her. Meanwhile, Bass plans an ambitious expansion, and I know how all-consuming that is as a director: the center has to grow, through fundraising, organizing, and maybe expanding the board, and correspondingly, the program has to grow alongside the center. That's how I see this conversation and collaboration happening.
When we started the conversation, I did not know that the architects of the extension would be Johnston Marklee, whom I know well from my years in Los Angeles, and also because Mark Lee had visited Porto to see the work of Álvaro Siza, the architect of the Serralves Museum, so everything came together. It's a new way for the museum and me and Silvia, so we're going to try it.
You and Silvia have identified a shared passion as Haegue Yang, whose Bass catalog you co-edited, along with Allora and Calzadilla. What do those artists tell us about the kind of program you want to build here, and how should the taste of a great curator reshape the direction of the institution?
It would be premature to name names yet. But if I look at the history of the program and Silvia's vision and my own work, I can say that it may be with the joy of comfort and confrontation, of thinking about the museum as something that lasts every two years. An ongoing and recurring group show. Personal taste is like having a saying. You have it, you name it, you fight it, you own it.
I look at the show and the conversations I had with Silvia, even before she was in Bass, and we have a common ground. I remember seeing the wonderful show Allora & Calzadilla organized, and it was amazing. There is one artist, penciled in the upcoming project, that I worked with at Serralves, who is based around the world and works in sound styling with a lot of musical experimentation and performance, which you also see in the experimentation of Haegue Yang from Korea. You have musicians from Puerto Rico, Korea, Paris, the Middle East—that gives you a sense of the values we share. I think programmatically, we might be in a comfort zone, and what we need to do is challenge, and that's where the conversation will be rich and important.
I saw it not long ago in Porto at the opening of the Duerckheim Collection at the Serralves Foundation, a refined European institution set in 45 hectares of rich nature. It's a big change from there to Miami. What are the challenges of the Miami audience program?
However, both areas have unique settings and natural environments, Art Deco architecture, Pritzker prize expansion and growing ambitions. Challenges… are a privilege. For me, the center is the artists, commitment to the center is to the artists. Both places are very different, of course—different locations, structures and cultural contexts—but I tend to see those differences less as obstacles and more as opportunities. My main commitment has always been to the artists, and the role of the center is to serve them in a meaningful way within their specific context. To do that well, I have to be there.
Traveling between cities has always been part of my learning process. Each transition—Marseille to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to New York, New York to Los Angeles and then to Porto—has involved significant cultural differences. Again, getting out of my comfort zone is important to me. For Miami, that means recognizing its particular strengths—its diversity, its internationality, its seasonality, and reacting to them without reducing them to the norm. He created the program by listening to the artists, the audience and the city itself.
I have always admired my colleagues who spent decades in the same institution, forming a deep memory of the institution. My path has always been nomadic, and that has shaped my approach to programming. Each move was an opportunity to learn again, to readjust. But what remains constant, no matter where I am, is the same: the center is there for artists. If you stay focused on that, the differences between the areas become less difficult and more doable.
He has worked in senior roles in an incredible number of institutions: Walker Art Center, Dia Art Foundation, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and now Serralves. Which of these jobs would you say had the most impact on your development? Where did you study the most?
Everything. From my first museum in Marseille to Serralves, this stacks up. I learned a lot from all of them. Different courses at each institution. They all share one status: artists and visitors. They are the ones that connect and communicate and are the chemistry between and across institutions.
He has overseen expansion before, in Serralves through the wing of Álvaro Siza and is returning to Marseille, and he said the new building form gives the center a new purpose. The Johnston Marklee expansion is already underway at Bass. Have you thought about the new machines that might open up in that facility?
I would actually frame that differently. I don't think the expansion gives the center a new purpose, whether it's a museum, a library, or a concert hall. It's more that the extension allows the existing purpose to grow. If you look at why cultural institutions expand, they rarely change direction. It is because the mission itself is developing and deepening, and the structure is no longer equipped to support that growth. Need is not intellectual; it is usable. Programs expand, collections grow, audiences change and the institution needs space to respond.
That was really my experience with previous projects: as the exhibitions became more ambitious, as the collections required more care and visibility, and as the public programs expanded, the limitations of the existing structure became clear. The mission remained the same, but its appearance required more space. I see the same trend in Bass. The expansion will support a growing program of exhibits, a growing collection, and an increased emphasis on community and visitors. It creates conditions for the museum to do more, but it does not change its main purpose. The work remains the same; the power to see it is the one that increases.
Bass resides in Collins Park, two blocks from Art Basel Miami Beach every December. Will it empower you or scare you to be in the shadow of the loudest art show in the country?
In a very sunny area, shade is the best place. We are part of the ecology, and it is changing. There are many museums that I can study in the private sector. When I was a student, and even now, galleries are often where I first meet artists. If you look at how major galleries have embraced spaces, archives, publishing, education and similar programs, there's a lot to take from that model. I'm thinking, too, of Art Basel—how conversations and lectures became such a visible, important part of the show. When Sam Keller introduced that, it marked a real evolution.
Yes, the scale of everything is important, but that comes with the territory. Art galleries have, in many ways, become institutions in their own right. I wouldn't say they are like museums, but they work like their private sector counterparts. And there is value in that. Every time I visit a show, if I walk away and find a few artists I don't know or come across ideas I didn't think of, then something meaningful has happened.
I used to think too much about the separation between museums and the market, as if they didn't work together. Now I see it as a relationship with necessary boundaries, like any healthy partnership. Ultimately, if the goal is to serve artists and audiences, we need to find ways to do it more collaboratively.
Many Art Conversations
