The Bass Museum recently announced that Philippe Vergné—who has directed museums from Marseille to Minneapolis to Los Angeles and, as of 2019, Porto’s Serralves—would soon arrive in Miami Beach as the institution’s first artistic director and chief curator. He starts in October, sharing leadership of the museum with the executive director Silvia Karman Cubiña in a role the two invented over months of conversations. He inherits an institution in the midst of transformation, with a Johnston Marklee expansion down the street and Art Basel Miami Beach two blocks from his door. We caught up with him to hear more about his new gig.
You’ve described the move as a return to curation after years of running institutions, saying you want to find out if you’ve “still got it”. I suppose this is kind of a joke, but after three decades and several directorships, why do you want to go back to practical curatorial work?
Well, it’s just kind of a joke. After all, this is what I like best. Dialogue with artists, accompanying their vision, learning from them. I never stopped curating, I just had to do it less as a director. Years ago I learned from my friend and colleague Adam Weinberg when he was director of the Whitney Museum of American Art that even as a director you don’t stop curating.
Being a director allowed me to have a different impact on an institution, allowing me to give opportunities to a new generation of curators, which for me was very important because when I was a younger curator I benefited from people who believed in me. I was intrigued by the challenge of being a principal, but mind you, I have been principals of institutions that are very special. All have been institutions centered on the artist, where the role of the director is different because they never lose direct contact with the artists. Especially in Europe, the director’s role is also artistic director, unlike American institutions where there is often a difference, so I have been able to curate a lot over the last few years.
Eighteen months ago I curated an exhibition in Serralves with eight artists entitled “Material Evidence” and realized that I missed that curatorial role. Now I’m 60 years old and I want to do what I hope I know how to do well.
The position is new, developed with Silvia Karman Cubiñá, whom you have known for years. How do you imagine the responsibilities of artistic director and chief curator that are shared between you in practice?
I see it as a partnership. One is about building an institution. The other has to do with the programming of an institution. It is about the synchronization of operations, aspirations and inspirations. It is a credit to Silvia Cubiñá and her board for forming this new position at The Bass through our conversations. She and I were talking about where we are in our professional lives now, and she was telling me that she wanted to be more of an institution builder, and I told her that I want to be more of a curator, so I think that’s where it really started. She really likes building an institution and said she might be ready to give up curating, and I really like thinking about a program and curating, and I might be ready to give up the institutional part. It really was as spontaneous as that conversation.
Then we got down to the nitty-gritty, trying to figure out what it means to work in this partnership. After all, this means being involved in exhibitions, acquisitions, side programs and education, all in partnership with Silvia, which relieves some of the pressure on her. Meanwhile, Bass is planning an ambitious expansion, and I know how comprehensive that is as director: the institution must grow, through fundraising, planning, and possibly board growth, and in parallel, the program must grow along with the institution. This is how I see this dialogue and partnership happening.
When we started the conversation, I was not aware that the architects for the expansion would be Johnston Marklee, whom I know well from my years in Los Angeles, and also because Mark Lee came to visit Porto to see the work of Álvaro Siza, the architect of the Serralves Museum, so it all comes together. It’s a new path for the museum and for Silvia and me, so we’re going to experiment with it.
You and Silvia have noted shared enthusiasms such as Haegue Yang, whose Bass catalog you co-edited, and Allora and Calzadilla. What do these particular artists tell us about the kind of program you want to build here, and how much a chief curator’s personal taste should reshape the direction of an institution?
It would still be premature to name names. But if I look at the history of Silvia’s program and vision and my work, I would say that it can be about the joy of comfort and confrontation, of thinking about the museum as a permanent biennial. An ongoing and ever-evolving group exhibition. Personal taste is a bit like having an accent. You have it, you compose with it, you fight with it, you own it.
I look at the program and the conversations I had with Silvia, even before she was in Bas, and we have a common language. I remember seeing a fantastic exhibition of Allora & Calzadilla that she organized, and it was amazing. There is an artist, penciled in the upcoming program, that I worked with at Serralves, who is internationally based and works in a sound installation style with a lot of experimentation and musical performance, which you also see in the experimentation of Haegue Yang who comes from Korea. You have artists from Puerto Rico, Korea, Paris, the Middle East—it gives you a sense of the values we share. I think in terms of the program, we may be in the comfort zone, and what we need to do is challenge that, and that’s where the conversation will become rich and important.
I saw you not long ago in Porto for the opening of the Duerckheim Collection at the Serralves Foundation, a refined European institution set in 45 hectares of generous nature. It’s quite a dramatic change to go from that to Miami. What are the challenges of programming for a Miami audience?
Well, both places have unique environments and natural settings, Art Deco architecture, Pritzker Prize expansions, and growing ambitions. Challenges… are a privilege. For me, the institution is the artists and the commitment to the institution is to the artists. Both countries are very different, of course – different geographies, architecture and cultural contexts – but I tend to see those differences less as obstacles and more as opportunities. My primary commitment is always to the artists, and the role of the institution is to serve them meaningfully within its specific context. To do this well, I need to be present.
Moving between cities has always been part of how I’ve learned. Each transition—Marseilles to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to New York, New York to Los Angeles, and then to Porto—has involved sharp cultural contrasts. Again, being out of my comfort zone is important to me. In Miami, that means recognizing its particular energy—its diversity, its internationalism, its seasonality—and responding to it without reducing it to a stereotype. You build a program by listening to the artists, the public and the city itself.
I have always admired colleagues who spend decades in an institution, building deep institutional memory. My path has been more nomadic, and this has shaped the way I approach programming. Every move has been a chance to learn again, to recalibrate. But the constant, wherever I am, is the same: the institution exists for artists. If you stay grounded in this, the differences between countries become less about difficulty and more about opportunity.
You have served in senior roles at an impressive 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 contributed the most to your development? Where did you learn more?
All of them. From my first museum in Marseille to Serralves, this is cumulative. I have learned a lot from all of them. Different lessons in each institution. They all share one dimension: artists and visitors. They are what connect and bond and are the chemistry between and in all institutions.
You’ve overseen expansions before, in Serralves with the Álvaro Siza wing and back in Marseille, and you’ve said that a new architectural form gives an institution a new mission. Johnston Marklee’s expansion is already underway at Bass. Have you thought about the new missions that could open up for that institution?
I would actually frame it a little differently. I do not think that an expansion gives an institution a new mission, be it a museum, a library or a concert hall. It is more than an extension allows the existing mission to grow. If you look at why cultural institutions expand, it’s rarely because they’re changing direction. This is because the mission itself is evolving and deepening, and the building is no longer equipped to support that growth. Need is not conceptual; it is practical. Programs expand, collections grow, audiences change, and the institution needs the space to respond.
This was certainly my experience with past projects: as exhibitions became more ambitious, as collections required greater care and visibility, and as public programming expanded, the limitations of the existing structure became clear. The mission remained stable, but its expression required more space. I see the same trajectory in Bas. The expansion will support a growing exhibition program, an evolving collection and an increased emphasis on community and visitor engagement. It creates the conditions for the museum to do more, but does not change its core purpose. The mission remains the same; the ability to realize it is what expands.
Bass sits in Collins Park, two blocks from Art Basel Miami Beach every December. Will being in the shadow of the country’s loudest art fair excite or terrify you?
In a place with a lot of sun, the shade is a very good place. We are part of an ecology, and it is changing. Museums can learn a lot from the private sector. When I was a student, and even now, galleries are often where I meet artists for the first time. If you look at how mainstream galleries have embraced properties, archives, publications, education and parallel programming, there’s a lot to take from that model. I think, too, of Art Basel—how talk and conversation became such a visible, integral part of the fair. When Sam Keller introduced it, it marked a true evolution.
Of course, the scale of it all is important, but that comes with the territory. Art fairs have, in many ways, become institutions in their own right. I wouldn’t say they resemble museums, but they function as a kind of counterpart to the private sector. And that has value. Whenever I visit a fair, if I leave having discovered some artists I didn’t know or came across ideas I hadn’t considered, then something meaningful has happened.
I used to think more of a separation between museums and the market, as if they didn’t work together. Now I see it more as a relationship with necessary boundaries, like any healthy partnership. Ultimately, if the goal is to serve artists and audiences, then we need to find ways to work together more closely.
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