PAMM revisits the making of Surrounded Islands

Pérez Art Museum Miami has opened a documentary exhibition about Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Surrounded Islands. Beginning October 4, the show uses archival material and artworks to revisit the 1983 Biscayne Bay project on its thirty-fifth anniversary.

This is an exhibition about the earlier installation, not a new wrapping of the islands. That distinction is part of its appeal: visitors can examine the planning and documentation behind a temporary work whose public image has outlasted its physical presence.

The anniversary also connects with the history of PAMM’s predecessor institution, the Center for Fine Arts. Together, those histories invite a broader look at how Miami’s cultural identity has developed. A short-lived intervention in the bay and a museum with a continuing program operate on different timescales, yet both can change how a city understands its surroundings. The exhibition brings those relationships back into view.