cooper hewitt triennial home 2635230

The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has opened "Making Home," the seventh installment of its Triennial, featuring 25 newly commissioned projects that explore the concept of home through memory, construction, and rupture. Co-curated by Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Christina L. De León, and Michelle Joan Wilkinson, the exhibition is organized across three themes—Going Home, Seeking Home, and Building Home—and marks the first partnership between Cooper Hewitt and another Smithsonian museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The show is on view through August 10.

video game leo castaneda 2026 whitney biennial 1234775440

The Whitney Museum of American Art has announced that Leo Castañeda’s video game, Camoflux Recall Grotto, will be featured in the 2026 Whitney Biennial. Ahead of the exhibition's opening, the work is already accessible to the public online, allowing users to engage with a hand-painted digital environment inspired by the Amazon and the Everglades. The game emphasizes "mutualism" and environmental care, tasking players with cultivating "cyberflora" through a meditative, non-violent gameplay loop.

'Enchanting Story of Orchids' at Museum of Everglades heads list of 39 exhibitions at Southwest Florida museums in February

Southwest Florida museums are hosting 39 exhibitions throughout February, with four new openings, three closings, and 32 continuing shows. The lineup includes 'Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration' at the Sarasota Art Museum, featuring 100 rare posters from the 1920s and 1930s, as well as solo exhibitions by artists Selina Román and Molly Hatch at the same venue.

department of homeland security thomas kinkade 2664233

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a painting by the late artist Thomas Kinkade titled *Morning Pledge* on social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and X, with the caption “Protect the Homeland.” The painting depicts an idealized American small town with midcentury cars, a schoolhouse, and an American flag. Kinkade, known for mass-producing sentimental, conservative scenes and dubbed the “painter of light,” was widely dismissed by the mainstream art world as kitschy. The DHS post coincided with the opening of a new ICE detention center in the Florida Everglades, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” built to imprison immigrant detainees, and with the passage of a controversial bill expanding ICE funding while cutting healthcare and food benefits.

Miami Advice: Mikhaile Solomon on the immersive Artists in Residence in Everglades programme

Mikhaile Solomon, founder of Prizm art fair, discusses the Artists in Residence in Everglades (Airie) program, which has hosted around 200 artists over 25 years. Founded in 2001 by artist Donna Marxer and park ranger Alan Scott, Airie invites about 14 artists per year to live and work for one month in Everglades National Park, producing work that responds to the subtropical wilderness. The program's exhibitions have traveled to venues like the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the Venice Biennale, with recent projects including Miami-based artist Germane Barnes' sound installations.

Marco Island Center for the Arts and Miami museum exchange exhibitions that feature Latinx art and artists

The Marco Island Center for the Arts and the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art of the Americas (MoCAA) are exchanging exhibitions focused on Latinx art and artists. The Marco Island Center is currently hosting works by 15 contemporary artists from Latin America and the Caribbean, including Ivonne Ferrer, Ruben Torres Llorca, and Luis Cruz Azaceta, on view through July 1. In exchange, MoCAA will present "Marco to Miami" from June 20 to July 20, featuring 14 artists from Collier County.

Ecological fables set in the Everglades: Kat Lyons stages first US institutional solo show at Marquez Art Projects

Kat Lyons has opened her first US institutional solo show, "Full Earth," at Marquez Art Projects (MAP) in Allapattah, Miami. The exhibition features newly commissioned large-scale oil paintings that draw on the ecology, history, and mythology of the Florida Everglades, blending personal narrative with environmental commentary. Lyons, who rarely depicts humans, instead populates her canvases with native and invasive animal species, using them as protagonists in visual fables that explore humanity's relationship with nature.

Quilts by local artist stitch together pieces of Miami

Miami International Airport has opened a new art exhibition titled "Curious Geometries" at the Gate D31 Gallery, featuring large-scale quilted artworks by local textile artist Regina Durante Jestrow. The exhibition, on view until March 9, 2026, showcases sewn compositions and free-form art quilts made from repurposed fabrics sourced from various Miami locations, including the airport itself. Jestrow employs improvisational dyeing and piecing techniques inspired by Gee's Bend quilters, Anni Albers, Rosie Lee Tompkins, and Gego, blending organic geometry with tropical color palettes to explore the relationship between craft and fine art.

Naples, Marco Island, Everglades CVB pays tribute to local Hispanic cultures in a year-long celebration

The Naples, Marco Island, Everglades Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) has launched ¡ARTE VIVA!, a yearlong celebration honoring the Hispanic cultures that make up nearly 30% of the region's population. The 2025-2026 season includes Día de los Muertos events at venues like the Marco Island Center for the Arts, Naples Botanical Garden, and Artis—Naples, featuring Calaveras sculptures by Ricardo Soltero, photography by Lizette Morales, and performances by Ballet Folklorica Jaliscience. Visual arts highlights include a Joan Miró exhibition at Naples Art Institute, a permanent collection show at The Baker Museum, and a public art installation by Michelle Tricca at Lipman Farms. Musical programming features Gulfshore Opera's Carmen, Latin Grammy nominee Leslie Cartaya, and Opera Naples Festival under Ramón Tebar.

CULTIVATING A VIRTUAL GARDEN LEO CASTANEDA'S NEW INTERACTIVE DIGITAL WORK

CULTIVATING A VIRTUAL GARDEN LEO CASTANEDA S NEW INTERACTIVE DIGITAL WORK

The Whitney Museum of American Art has launched a new interactive digital artwork titled 'Camoflux Recall Grotto' by artist Leo Castañeda. Commissioned for the Whitney Biennial 2026, the web-based game invites players to cultivate a garden within a surreal, primordial landscape inspired by the Amazon and the Everglades, blending organic and technical infrastructures.

A haunting portrait of the Everglades appears in Miami

Artist Isabelle Brourman, known for courtroom sketches of high-profile figures like Donald Trump and Johnny Depp, has unveiled a new painting titled "No Rest for the Wicked" (2025). The work synthesizes her observations from documenting the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in courtrooms across the country, incorporating imagery from the Everglades and the detention facility nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz in southwest Florida. The painting is featured in the exhibition "The Body is the Body," curated by Simon Brewer and Nathalie Martin at the Rice Hotel, a renovated former hotel in downtown Miami now used as an art studio and exhibition space.

‘People didn’t believe it was real’: Indigenous artists push to shut the Everglades migrant-detention facility Alligator Alcatraz

Miccosukee and Seminole artists, culture-bearers, and youth organizers are protesting the opening of a migrant-detention facility nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Big Cypress National Preserve, Florida. In July, a communal action coordinated with the collective Unidos Immokalee included ceremony, dance, sign-making, and distribution of supplies, with participants like Kendal Osceola and Maeanna Osceola speaking out against the facility, which they see as colonial violence on ancestral lands. The facility, run by Florida’s Division of Emergency Management in partnership with the US Department of Homeland Security, opened on 3 July and has faced legal challenges, including a temporary halt to construction by a federal judge in August, though a September appeals panel stayed the shutdown order.

Artists protest Alligator Alcatraz at Scope Art Show

At the Scope Art Show in Miami, Amnesty International has presented an installation titled "Cruelty Is Their Point—But Another World is Possible" featuring works by artists Agua Dulce Gloriosa and Clarence James. The project protests the notorious migrant-detention facility in the Everglades nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz, which opened in July 2025 and is operated by Florida’s Division of Emergency Management in partnership with the US Department of Homeland Security. The installation includes an altar-like piece by Dulce Gloriosa and a collage by James, and invites fairgoers to sign a petition demanding the facility's closure.