Thanksgiving

Ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday next Thursday, we took a moment to pause and reflect on the little things we are grateful for this year; moments that you may blink and miss amidst the daily grind that is life. Our perspectives are shaped by diverse experiences, such as the daily commute through Central Park with its beautiful views, childhood friendships, passing a chicken coop on the way to the office, tennis matches, the memory of a community aquarium that once thrived in Bed-Stuy, and sunsets. Always sunsets! We are thankful for these daily joys and look forward to celebrating other small moments together in the year to come.  We will be off next week but wanted to wish you and your loved ones a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Photos: 1. Sunset in New Hampshire, 2. Tennis and Sunsets, 3. Central Park, 4. Childhood Friendship, 5. Bed-Stuy Chicken Coop, 6. Brooklyn Views, 7. Bed-Stuy Aquarium, 8. Jogging Route in Miami

Memorial Day Weekend

As we unofficially kick off summer and head into the long Memorial Day weekend, wanderlust has set in. We look forward to whiling away our weekend at the Venetian Pool in Miami. Built in a former rock quarry in 1924, this freshwater marvel beckons amidst tropical trees, coral rocks, grottos, and waterfalls, transporting us to a Mediterranean get away. Wherever your travels or staycations lead you, we hope everyone has the opportunity to unplug and relax. Have a good Memorial Day! 

Holidays in Miami

As people around the world celebrate Hanukkah, menorahs are lit daily. For over twenty years, Miami Beach artist Roger Abramson’s (@roger.abramson) Menorah and Dreidel made entirely of seashells have become a staple to celebrate the Festival of Lights on iconic Lincoln Road in South Beach. These beautiful sculptures are made up of seashells collected by the artist, who notes his art “represents respect, freedom, family and democracy.”

Happy Hanukkah!

World Cup Fever Pitch

World Cup fever has broken out around the world as Qatar hosts the 2022 FIFA World Cup! For the next few weeks, the world is united and tuned into what most people around the globe commonly know as football and we in the US call soccer. Television network “Peacock” has brought fans and spectators together in New York and now Miami with a three-story responsive soccer ball featuring the voice of Telemundo’s Andrés Cantor, the Argentinian American sports broadcasting legend “whose breathtaking goal calls capture the ‘spirit’ of soccer”. Mr. Cantor’s  “Gooooooooooooooooooolllllllll!!!” calls that resonated through Rockefeller Center are now filling Wynwood Market Place as fans gather together to cheer on their favorite teams.   Frankly, we are a bit torn on who to root for this Friday as the US takes on the UK…do we have to choose? Go Teams!

Wynwood Walls

The Wynwood Walls in Miami were originally conceived by the late real estate developer Tony Goldman, who was looking to transform the warehouse district of Wynwood. He came up with a simple idea, he explained at the time: “Wynwood’s large stock of warehouse buildings, all with no windows, would be my giant canvases to bring to them the greatest street art ever seen in one place.” Since their inception in 2009, over fifty artists from sixteen countries have covered over 80,000 square feet of walls. We were able to visit the walls before our return to New York, and were blown away by the talent of the artists. We were lucky enough to see some artists in action as well. As part of the world famous Art Basel show going on this week in Miami Beach, Wynwood Walls invited artists to work on installations live for spectators. As Goldman once said about the walls: “The project has truly evolved into what my friend Jeffrey Deitch calls a ‘Museum of the Streets.’”

Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels

We are in sunny and warm Miami (sorry, rest of country with crazy snowstorms and weather) for the Thanksgiving Holiday and came across this massive public artwork installation by artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, who are known for their large-scale installations in city settings. Located in downtown Miami, Dropped Bowl with Scattered Slices and Peels captures a moment when a bowl of orange slices and peels drops to the ground and shatters. The artwork includes bowl fragments in cast concrete, peels in steel plate, and orange sections in reinforced cast resin all with an overall weight of over 124,000 lbs. With the oranges and bright colors, Dropped Bowl certainly captures one aspect of Miami. And, depending on how your holiday is going, it might be an accurate representation of Thanksgiving for some people (not ours, thankfully). Whatever the case, we wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving Weekend!

Gone But Not Forgotten

Damien Hirst's Gone but not Forgotten is the gilded skeleton of a three-metre tall woolly mammoth currently on display in the garden of the Faena Hotel Miami Beach. The sculpture, which I saw recently when I was in Miami to see some tennis, was originally auctioned in support of amfAR, an organization dedicated to using innovative research to end the global AIDS epidemic. Hirst said of the sculpture: "The mammoth comes from a time and place that we cannot ever fully understand. Despite its scientific reality, it has attained an almost mythical status and I wanted to play with these ideas of legend, history and science by gilding the skeleton and placing it within a monolithic gold tank. It's such an absolute expression of mortality, but I've decorated it to the point where it's become something else, I've pitched everything I can against death to create something more hopeful, it is gone but not forgotten."