Oolite Arts launches Oolite Arts Conversations, a new public platform for contemporary art dialogue, with the inaugural 2026 season featuring leading international art world figures such as Antoni Miralda, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Ralph Rugoff, and Cuauhtémoc Medina.
Oolite Arts is proud to launch Oolite Arts Conversations, a dynamic new platform dedicated to convening leading artists, curators and museum professionals from across today’s contemporary art world. Conceived as a space for critical exchange and direct engagement, the series expands beyond the traditional lecture format to become an active platform for discussion and dialogue that is attuned to how contemporary art circulates today across institutions, publics, and global networks. By fostering rigorous, meaningful and direct discussion, Oolite Arts Conversations reinforce Miami’s position as a vital site within ongoing national and international conversations shaping the field.
Oolite Arts Conversations sit at the center of Oolite Arts’ broader commitment to artist development, education, and civic engagement. Anchored in Oolite Arts’ mission to support artists and advance the knowledge and practice of contemporary visual arts, the series reflects the organization’s longstanding role within Miami’s cultural landscape. Founded in 1984 as ArtCenter/South Florida, Oolite Arts has served as a cornerstone of the city’s creative community—empowering artists through studio residencies, exhibitions, education, and public programs. In this context, Oolite Arts Conversations ensure that dialogue remains integral to the institution’s role as both a platform for artists and a catalyst within the cultural life of Miami and South Florida.
In this spirit, the 2026 edition of Oolite Arts Conversations brings together a wide range of artists, curators, museum directors, and scholars whose work has been pivotal to both Miami’s cultural formation and contemporary discourse more broadly. Collectively, participants will draw on decades of experience in shaping and participating in major international exhibitions and biennials, offering bold global perspectives—many grounded in deep ties to Miami—that spark vital dialogue at the intersection of local insight and international discourse.
“Dialogue is central to contemporary art and integral to our mission at Oolite Arts,” says Rina Carvajal, Senior Director of Programs at Oolite Arts and organizer of Oolite Arts Conversations. “This series establishes a platform in Miami for rigorous exchange, bringing forward some of the most compelling perspectives shaping the field today.”
The season opens on May 7 with a conversation honoring Antoni Miralda, the Barcelona-born artist whose practice long unfolded between Miami and Barcelona and who has, since the 1960s, redefined food as a powerful artistic, social, and political medium. Recipient of Spain’s prestigious Velázquez Prize for Visual Arts in 2018, Miralda is known for his large-scale, research-driven projects—from Honeymoon Project to FoodCultura—that have positioned ritual, culinary, and public celebration as tools for examining colonial histories and global exchange. Miralda will be joined by artist and public art advocate César Trasobares, a central figure in shaping Miami’s civic art infrastructure and a long-time collaborator on Miralda’s culture initiatives, and by anthropologist Stephan Palmié, whose scholarship on Afro-Caribbean cultures situates food within broader Atlantic histories of migration and meaning, as seen in his role as co-author of the project Maggi Galaxy. Together, these participants will reflect on Miralda’s singular impact on Miami as both laboratory and crossroads. Antoni Miralda career includes participation in major international platforms such as documenta VI (1977), the XVII São Paulo Biennial (1983), the 44th Venice Biennial (1990), as well as major retrospectives at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia (IVAM), and the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).
On June 25, Oolite Arts Conversations will celebrate Edouard Duval-Carrié, the Haiti-born, Miami-based artist whose luminous paintings and installations have become foundational to Caribbean and diasporic discourse in the United States. A key figure in advancing Haitian art internationally, Duval-Carrié participated in Haiti’s first national pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) and was named a Chevalier of France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2014). Duval-Carrié’s work excavates histories of revolution and exile, Vodou cosmologies, and colonial afterlives, mobilizing Haiti’s intellectual and spiritual traditions as living frameworks for the present. His work was included in documenta XV (2022) as part of the Atis Rezistans / Ghetto Biennale constellation. Most recently, Duval-Carrié has been invited to participate in the 61st Venice Biennial (2026), further affirming his stature as a leading voice connecting Haiti’s revolutionary histories to contemporary global art debates. The artist will be joined in conversation by Guillermina De Ferrari, a Guggenheim Fellow and distinguished scholar of Caribbean literature and visual cultures, whose research-driven curatorial practice bridges archives, memory, and contemporary art and who is the author of Vulnerable States: Bodies of Memory in Contemporary Caribbean Fiction (University of Virginia Press, 2007) and the forthcoming Broken Tropics: Contingency in Contemporary Caribbean Art. De Ferrari’s curatorial and academic work includes directing the Center for Visual Cultures at University of Wisconsin–Madison (2014–2018), while through publications, exhibitions and symposia she has advanced critical frameworks for understanding Caribbean and Haitian cultural production within broader transnational and postcolonial debates.
On October 29, the Oolite Arts Conversations will welcome Ralph Rugoff, Director of London’s Hayward Gallery and Artistic Director of the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. Known for exhibitions that challenge fixed narratives and foreground art’s critical agency, Rugoff brings decades of curatorial leadership across Europe and the Americas, alongside an influential career as a writer and cultural strategist. Since 2006 he has led the Hayward Gallery’s ambitious program of major thematic exhibitions and landmark surveys, expanding its international reach through touring projects and public commissions. Earlier, he directed the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (2000–2006) and has published widely as a critic and essayist in leading international art and news outlets. In addition, Rugoff also served as Guest Curator of the XIII Biennale de Lyon (2015).
On November 12, the season will conclude with Cuauhtémoc Medina, one of the most influential curators, critics, and art historians of his generation. A long-time researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Medina has combined rigorous scholarship with ambitious curatorial practice over more than three decades. He served as the first Associate Curator of Latin American Art at Tate Modern (2002–2008) and later as Chief Curator of Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) from 2013 to 2024, where he led numerous exhibitions examining the historical and political stakes of contemporary art. Internationally, Medina has curated major biennial platforms including Manifesta 9 (2012) and the 12th Shanghai Biennale (2018). He also served as curator of the Mexican Pavilion featuring Teresa Margolles at the LIII Venice Biennial (2009). Across these roles—as curator, critic, and historian—Medina consistently positions art as a site of historical inquiry and civic debate, making him a vital interlocutor for artists and institutions navigating the intersection of aesthetics and politics today.
Collectively, these speakers embody the expanded vision of Oolite Arts Conversations: a space where artistic practice, scholarship, and institutional leadership converge in public dialogue. In doing so, the series affirms Miami and South Florida as an active site for generating cutting-edge contemporary thought, reinforcing Oolite Arts’ role as both a platform for artists and a catalyst within the region’s cultural life.
Oolite Arts Conversations are organized by Rina Carvajal, Senior Director of Programs at Oolite Arts. It is made possible by the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; The City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council; the Mayor and City Commissioners of Miami Beach. State of Florida; Department of State; Division of Arts and Culture; and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture.
About Oolite Arts
The mission of Oolite Arts is to support artists and advance the knowledge and practice of contemporary visual arts and culture in South Florida. Oolite Arts creates opportunities for experimentation and innovation and encourages the exchange of ideas across cultures through residencies, exhibitions, public programs, education and outreach.
WHAT: Oolite Arts Conversations: Inaugural 2026 Season
WHEN:
- May 7: Antoni Miralda in conversation with César Trasobares and Stephan Palmié
- June 25: Edouard Duval-Carrié in conversation with Guillermina De Ferrari
- October 29: Ralph Rugoff
- November 12: Cuauhtémoc Medina
WHERE: Proscenium Theatre, Little Haiti Cultural Complex
212 NE 59th Terrace, Miami, FL 33137
Hours: 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Admission: Free
Free On-Site Parking
Accessibility: The venue is wheelchair accessible.
For media inquiries please contact: Claudia DoCampo, Director of Communications and Marketing, [email protected], (305) 746-2250
