MIAMI BEACH, FLA.- The Bass has announced the appointment of James Voorhies as the new Curator of the Miami Beach based contemporary art museum.
As Curator for The Bass, Voorhies will be responsible for strengthening the museum’s commitment to artistic innovation and its connections to audiences. To do so, he will help envision the new facilities, curate long-term and temporary exhibitions, oversee design and production of publications, organize artist commissions, develop public programs, and manage the permanent collection.
“I’m honored to be invited to join The Bass’s team and work with Silvia Karman Cubiñá at such an exciting moment in the museum’s history, contributing to the incredible vitality in arts and culture in Miami,” said Voorhies. “I look forward to working with everyone to advance the institution’s long commitment to supporting artists while helping to further strengthen its connections with audiences in the region and internationally.”
“Mr. Voorhies joins The Bass at an exciting time,” said Silvia Karman Cubiñá, Executive Director & Chief Curator. “Following the $20 million Miami Beach G.O. Bond measure, the museum plans to update Pritzker Prize-winning architect Arata Isozaki’s original 1995 building concept by adding a new exhibition wing. Also, the museum seeks to grow the exhibition program by focusing on the intersections of art and technology. It is a new era for The Bass as we approach our 60th anniversary as Miami Beach’s home for contemporary art.”
Voorhies brings two decades of curatorial, educational, and leadership experience in the visual arts to his new role as Curator at The Bass. He comes to the museum after serving as Executive Director of the Tony Smith Foundation in New York City where he initiated a collaboration with MIT Press to publish the Tony Smith Catalogue Raisonné Project.
Prior to his time with the Tony Smith Foundation, as Dean of Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco his accomplishments included initiating a partnership with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, temporarily embedding CCA’s curatorial and educational programs within that institution.
Before that post, he held the endowed directorship of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, where he curated twenty exhibitions, produced over fifty public programs, and edited two books. Voorhies organized solo exhibitions with Simon Fujiwara, Shahryar Nashat, and Lorraine O’Grady, worked with numerous artists, including Martin Beck, Ulla von Brandenburg, Phil Collins, Josiah McElheny, R. H. Quaytman, Martha Rosler, and Kerry Tribe, and lectured for Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies and Graduate School of Design.
Voorhies taught art history and critical theory in Visual and Performing Arts at Bennington College from 2010 to 2013 and served as Director of Exhibitions at Columbus College of Art and Design from 2006 to 2011. Early in his career, he worked as an administrator in curatorial departments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum.
Among his writings and books, Voorhies is the author of Postsensual Aesthetics: On the Logic of the Curatorial, which will be published by MIT Press in February 2023. His book Beyond Objecthood: The Exhibition as a Critical Form since 1968 was published by MIT Press in 2017. He holds a PhD in modern and contemporary art history from the Ohio State University.
