MIAMI, FLORIDA.- TIME magazine art critic and historian, Robert Hughes will be the keynote speaker during a weekend of festivities leading up to the groundbreaking ceremony for the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University next month.

The renowned art historian will delve into art, life, love, rage, impotence, and death in the context of his new book Goya.  Hughes will bring the Spanish master to life at 8 p.m. on Fri. Nov. 14, in room 100 of the Green Library at FIU-University Park, 11200 SW 8th Street.

Hughes has been TIME magazine’s art critic since 1970. Best known for his books The Shock of the New, The Fatal Shore, and Barcelona, his work also includes monographs on painters Lucien Freud and Frank Auerbach, The Culture of Complaint, Nothing if Not Critical, and Heaven and Hell in Western Art. He is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the Jewett Mather Award (in 1982 and 1985), the Order of Australia (1992), and The Sunday Times Writer of the Year in 2002.

“Hughes will set the tone for a weekend that many of us have been waiting for a very long time,” said FIU Art Museum director Dahlia Morgan. “It has been my dream and passion of over 20 years to see a museum of international acclaim and significance on the FIU campus. We are closer than ever.”

The groundbreaking is scheduled to take place on site on Sun, Nov. 16 at 4 p.m. across from the Wertheim Performing Arts Center at FIU-University Park. The ceremony will be followed by a private reception at the University House.

Designed by Yann Weymouth, AIA, currently senior vice president and director of design for Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum (HOK) and the former chief of design for Paris’s Grand Louvre Project, the 40,000-square-foot, $12million Frost Museum will be built on a lakeside site on the Avenue of the Arts -- a mall that will connect the Frost Museum, the Wertheim Performing Arts Center, and the Management and Advanced Research Center (MARC) on University Park.
The Frost Museum is expected to be completed by the fall of 2005 and will house FIU’s permanent art collection and its program of temporary exhibitions and lectures, art scholarship and conservation.

The Museum is being named after the Frosts in appreciation for their generous contribution and continued support for FIU and the arts throughout the years. Dr. Phillip Frost, who is chairman of IVAX Corporation, is a former member of the FIU Board of Trustees and the FIU Foundation Board. In 1993, FIU presented Phillip Frost with an honorary degree for his many contributions in medicine, business, and community service. Patricia Frost, a retired public school principal, is a current member of FIU’s Board of Trustees and the FIU Foundation Board. She works closely with FIU’s College of Education, has served as an adjunct professor at FIU, was honored with FIU’s Outstanding Educator of the Year award, and was presented an honorary degree in 2002.  
“Phillip and I find it especially gratifying to contribute to the growth of a vital cultural institution serving not only the University, but also the entire South Florida community,” said Patricia Frost. Both, Hughes’ lecture and the Museum’s groundbreaking, are free of charge and open to the public.