MIAMI, FLA.- Pérez Art Museum Miami announced a number of significant acquisitions from eleven artists for the museum's permanent collection. Among the new artworks are a hanging installation by Teresita Fernández—gifted by Rosa and Carlos De La Cruz—which will be included in the artist’s upcoming retrospective at PAMM in October 2019, and will be the first large-scale sculptural installation of Fernández’s in the museum’s collection; a new painting by Derek Fordjour that depicts an African American tennis player, gifted by Allison and Laurence Berg and Stephanie and Leon Vahn; Barthélémy Toguo’s monumental oil painting that depicts the brutal history of the Rwandan genocide—gifted by Jorge M. Pérez—which furthers the museum’s dedication to African American art; and a monumental installation of unspun wool by Cecilia Vicuña, purchased with funds provided by PAMM’s Collectors Council.

The new acquisitions include works by artists Maria Berrio, Carlos Estévez, Teresita Fernández, Derek Fordjour, Abbas Kiarostami, Hun Kyu Kim, Pierre Malphettes, Christina Pettersson, Anastasia Samoylova, Barthélémy Toguo, and Cecilia Vicuña.

“Through the support of our donors and the Collectors Council, we are able to expand PAMM’s collection with the work of these exceptionally talented artists,” said PAMM Director Franklin Sirmans.

These new acquisitions exemplify PAMM’s continued dedication to diversifying its collection, by presenting artwork by historically underrepresented artists, including the U.S. Latino experience, the African diaspora, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Notable works include:

New works purchased by PAMM’s Collector Council:

• Cecilia Vicuña’s Quipu Gut, 2017, a monumental installation of crimson-dyed, unspun wool, which was shown at documenta 14 in 2017

• Maria Berrio’s patterned watercolor painting on Japanese paper, Anemochory, 2019

Gifts and museum purchases:

• Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo’s monumental oil painting, Rwanda 1994, which depicts the brutal history of the Rwandan genocide and crimes

• Derek Fordjour’s painting Worst to Be First, 2019, which refers to the notion of “firsts” as markers of societal achievement

• Sleepers (2001), the rare, first video work by the late Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami — who was known for his critically acclaimed feature films such as Close-Up (1990) and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) — which was presented at the 49th Venice Biennial in 2001

• Untitled (Crawl Space), a major large-scale installation by Teresita Fernández that will be on view in her upcoming exhibition at PAMM, Teresita Fernández: Elemental, opening October 18, 2019, and will be the first large-scale sculptural installation of Fernández’s in PAMM’s collection

• Anastasia Samoylova’s Floodzone series of photographs, in which the Russian-born, Miami-based artist documented dozens of Florida communities at risk from rising sea levels