The first artist commission of 2026 and the second of Season Eight draws us closer to touch, nature, and the alchemy of color. Save the date!
Join us on Earth Day for Hello Whale, a thought-provoking short documentary that follows Season Five commissioned artist Michele Oka Doner during her time at the Alaska Whale Foundation.
How can art and collecting can serve as tools for truth-telling, memory, and cultural reclamation?
Inspired by artist Isaac Julien’s Vagabondia (2000) on view at The Bass Museum, join us for a panel conversation that considers the evolving responsibility of individuals and communities in the cultural stewardship of inclusive narratives.
In addition to the talk, guests will be invited to reflect on how shared experience and cultural memory is recorded in our very own neighborhoods. Together, we’ll examine how our stories contribute to a broader, more expansive historical record, and how these memories can be preserved for future generations.
Sir Isaac Julien (b. 1960), KBE RA, is a British artist and filmmaker who has devoted his four-decade career to expanding the possibilities of the moving image. Coming to prominence in 1980s London, his work—spanning film, video, and photography—combines poetic visual storytelling with critical explorations of cultural memory and the dispersion of Black individuals and communities throughout the diaspora. His films unsettle histories shaped by institutions and mainstream narratives, foregrounding voices and perspectives that are often overlooked.
Vagabondia (2000), a two-screen film installation that recently entered The Bass’s collection, brings these concerns into sharp focus. Set within London’s Sir John Soane’s Museum—founded in 1837 and known for its densely layered displays—the film follows a conservator as she moves through rooms filled with objects collected in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, during the height of the British Empire. As she navigates the museum, her path becomes increasingly surreal: ghostly figures begin to appear, interrupting the quiet order of the galleries and drawing attention to the colonial legacies embedded within the institution. These apparitions are not simply echoes of the past; they mark the presence of lives and narratives omitted from the histories the museum preserves and presents.
Among the apparitions that appear along the conservator’s path, one figure stands apart: a “vagabond” dressed in 18th-century attire, who moves through the museum with theatrical defiance. He appears most notably in a room dedicated to William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress (1732-34)—a cautionary tale of moral decline that reflects the Enlightenment values of reason, discipline, and progress central to the Soane’s founding mission. The vagabond’s presence feels deliberately out of place—alive rather than ghostly, expressive rather than instructive. He doesn’t haunt the space so much as animate it, exposing the tensions between the museum’s displays and the colonial legacies they obscure.
In Vagabondia, the Soane Museum is treated as both subject and stage. Choreographed sequences by Javier De Frutos—performed by the vagabond and the ghostly apparitions alike—mirror and respond to the conservator’s movements. They animate the museum’s rooms and unsettle their sense of order. Julien’s camera moves through these spaces with quiet precision, collapsing the boundaries between the physical and the psychological, the archival and the imaginary, the past and the present. What emerges is a reframing that invites viewers to think critically about what museums make visible, and what they conceal.
Layered into these scenes is a Creole-language narration, which accompanies the conservator on her journey through the museum. Shaped by centuries of colonialism and displacement, Creole reflects the concept of métissage—the blending of cultures, languages, and histories that emerges from colonial encounter and diaspora. This concept is central to Vagabondia, informing both what the film expresses and how it unfolds. Within the Soane Museum’s neoclassical halls, emblematic of colonial power, the presence of Creole disrupts expectation: a language once excluded from the institution now fills its galleries, giving voice to realities that have long been unheard.
Rather than seeking resolution, Julien opens space for reflection. Through this film, he asks: Who decides what is remembered? Whose absence shapes the story we see? Within this atmosphere of ambiguity, history becomes unstable and subject to revision, resistance, and reimagining.
At The Bass, the installation’s red-walled gallery amplifies these themes. The saturated color heightens the theatricality of the space and deepens the film’s focus on visibility, power, and performance. Here, Vagabondia becomes a site of encounter, where the viewer, like the conservator, is invited to look more closely and question the narratives preserved by cultural institutions—and the many stories left out of view.
Issac Julien: Vagabondia is curated by Claudia Mattos, Associate Curator of New Media Art. Vagabondia is a gift of Rosa and Carlos de La Cruz.
The 2026 National YoungArts Week exhibition welcomes us into the vibrant inner worlds of brave young designers, photographers, and visual artists. Curated by Commissioner’s Dejha Carrington, the works encourage us to pull up a chair and share our stories across generations and geographies—and that’s exactly what we plan to do.
On Thursday, January 29 at 6 PM, join us for a private tour of the YoungArts Gallery with Carrington, before entering the beloved Jewel Box. There, at 7 PM, guests can savor inspired cocktails from Tito’s Handmade Vodka, and are warmly invited to channel their inner artists in a drawing session led by our dear friends at Raw Figs.
Jewel Box at YoungArts
Cover image: Kennedy Longmore, Dear Diary, 36 x 48 inches (2025). Courtesy of YoungArts
Rumba party bus, but make it public art. Join us for a top-down tour on wheels, hopping from one location to another and learning about the artists and works that help shape Miami’s visual culture.
From our art tour at Soho Pool House to art-making with Nicole Combeau at The Kampong, we've been dropping hints all season... Save the date for our first membership reveal of Season Eight—you don’t want to miss it.
We invite you into that which frightens us, an exhibition and conversation at Primary with Miami-based artists David Correa, Genesis Moreno, Richard Moreno, and Season Seven commissioned artist Luna Palazzolo-Daboul, moderated by cultural worker and practitioner Esther Park.
Kick-off Miami Art Week with élan at The Carter Project. Back by popular demand, let's celebrate each other and our community who show up for Miami all year round.
Experience Miami Art Week as a portal to artists, ideas, and community with our roster of dedicated Commissioner events. Featuring panel discussions, gatherings, and tours above land and below, our 2025 program makes space for people to connect around art anywhere.
Join us in Fort Lauderdale for a day of exhibitions, private collections, and conversations on who’s determining what’s hot and what’s not in the art world.
Join us for Sun and Stitch: Anthotype Printing & Stab Binding with artist Nicole Combeau—a hands-on, three-hour workshop that blends alternative photography and bookmaking traditions.
We invite you to experiment with anthotype printing, using botanicals and ready-made negatives to create two unique sun prints. Once dried, these prints will be bound into personalized artist books using a traditional Japanese stab binding technique.
Together, we’ll also explore the history of “kitchen” and camera-less photography and look at how local artists—such as Amanda Linares, Onajide Shabaka, and Season Six commissioned artist Antonia Wright—have incorporated these practices into their work.
This workshop will be led by Combeau, a Miami-based Colombian-American artist and educator. Her practice draws on family, ritual, and resilience, creating images and intergenerational programs that reflect on how memory and connection endure across time. Through teaching, Combeau brings together photography and community practice to explore how care sustains and connects us all.
Image: Nicole Combeau, Untitled (Xiomara, Neria, and Cecilia), 2024
The good folks at Miami Pool House, along with artists Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, Juan Luis Matos, and Lauren Shapiro, invite you to a creatives’ meet-up at the inspired Edgewater hideaway.
Open to past, current, and future Commissioner members, as well as Soho’s community and invited guests, come join us for an evening of libations and discovery at the Pool House. The program will kick off with a warm introduction in the Cottage before visiting the Club Dining Room and Loft. Together, we’ll hop from one space to another, meeting the artists and connecting over their works on view.
Part guided art tour, part self-directed exploration, come for a cocktail and stay for the company—and the art collection, too!
Street and lot parking available. Soho House RSVP is essential.
Artwork by Philip Smith and Juan Luis Matos, courtesy of Soho House. Thumbnail image by Alejandro Piñeiro Bello.
Welcome to the interior worlds of two remarkable artists creating across mediums and references. Each with their own distinct and expansive painterly vocabulary, who better to guide us through their solo exhibitions than the artists themselves?
Join us for back-to-back artist-led tours through the wildly different and symbiotic worlds of Philip Smith and Vickie Pierre.
Vickie Pierre: The Maiden is The Warrior is the first solo exhibition by Brooklyn-born, South Florida-based artist Vickie Pierre. We’ll explore over 40 works, including immersive installations and collages that explore memory, identity, and Pierre’s Haitian heritage through a blend of the ornamental and the surreal. This meditative show curated by Adeze Wilford, transforms the gallery into a space of resilience and cultural interconnectivity.
Philip Smith: Magnetic Fields is a five-decade career survey of the Season Four commissioned artist. With over 50 works that traverse metaphysical themes through a unique pictographic language, from enigmatic early drawings to his monumental new Energy Painting, this exhibition offers a vibrant visual feast and an intellectual journey into Smith’s spiritually charged artistic world.
Follow the signs in the interior world of Philip Smith. In celebration of his solo exhibition and career survey, Magnetic Fields, at Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (MOCA), we invite you into the private home studio of the legendary artist. Commissioned in Season Four, Smith is known for his pioneering work with the Pictures Generation movement.
“All of us live miraculous lives, whether we know it or not.”
— Philip Smith, Season Four Artist
With the seminal 1977 exhibition PICTURES, Smith, along with other emerging artists of the time such as Robert Longo, Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman, helped shift the way we see art today. Journey with the formidable storyteller through his move to New York, artistic practice, and unusual trajectory as a bestselling writer and celebrated visual artist.
This invitation is for Collector members and is limited capacity, first come, first serve. RSVP at hello@commissioner.us. Private address will be shared the day before the event.
Photo by Oriol Tarridas, courtesy of the artist.
Presented by the inaugural Season art fair, the panel Who is the Art World For? invites a critical examination of access, equity, and power within the structures of the contemporary art world.
Through the perspectives of gallerists and cultural workers, the conversation will interrogate who benefits from existing systems and remains excluded. Topics will include gatekeeping in institutions and markets, the role of education and social capital, and emerging strategies for building a more inclusive and accountable art ecosystem. Panelists will reflect on how the art world might be reimagined to better serve its publics.
Moderator
Dejha Carrington — Arts Worker; Co-founder, Commissioner
Panelists
Allison Glenn — Curator 2026 Toronto Biennial and Artistic Director-at-Large, The Shepherd
Akua Hill — Director of Arts & Culture, Gilbert Family Foundation
Christian Rattemeyer — Director, Arts & Rec
Access to Talks is included with admission to the fair.
Commissioner returns to the Motor City this fall for the inaugural Season art fair.
Join us for a members art trip from September 25 to 27 to celebrate Season, a new international art fair at the iconic Michigan Central Station, along with all the hyperlocal, intimate, and people-centered programming you’ve come to expect from us.
Season features a vibrant mix of Detroit and U.S.-based artists and galleries, complemented by a robust series of talks and Off Season—a collection of citywide cultural events presented in partnership with Detroit Art Week. As a Commissioner, you can also look forward to a curated twist on the program, including studio visits, collector home tours, and unfiltered moments with the creatives shaping the city.
Your contribution of $900 includes:
Access to Season and Talks, including the panel conversation Who Is the Art World For?, moderated by our very own co-founder Dejha Carrington
Curator and artist-led tours
Home and artist studio visits
Commissioner community dinner (other meals not included)
Special events
Transport to main locations leaving from Siren Hotel
Programming begins on Thursday, September 25 at 2 PM and runs through the evening of Saturday, September 27 (3 days). This trip is open to approximately 10 participants on a first-come, first-served basis. In addition to covering VIP passes, admissions, and most logistics-related fees, your contribution helps compensate all participating artists and on-the-ground organizers who generously welcome our group and plan our visit. By contributing, you also support our broader mission of bringing people together through the arts.
Please note that while airfare and accommodations are not included in your non-refundable contribution, we have reserved a room block at our host hotel, The Siren, specifically for Commissioner members. Details are provided below. Rooms will be held until August 31 or until they sell out—secure your reservation soon.
Rainbow Village is a housing development in Overtown. Built in the 1970s, the pale gold residential community has been home to many Black families in Miami’s history, including artist Reginald O’Neal’s family. It’s the place where his mother first met his father, and where he had his very first kiss.
Now, Rainbow Village is being torn down for something new. O’Neal wondered: how could he commemorate a place that’s held many generations of families through waves of gentrification and five major hurricanes? How do we grieve home?
It starts with remembering.
Join us for our first-ever community commission, a collective memory-keeping project. Expanding Commissioner’s annual membership model, we invite you to participate with a one-time contribution of $450. Your participation not only secures a signed and numbered edition by O’Neal for yourself, but also helps make a work available for a former resident of Rainbow Village—someone directly attached to or displaced from this housing community.
In the spirit of surprise and delight—liberating both supporters and artists from tradition and expectations—O’Neal’s work will be unveiled at an inspired gathering featuring special guest artists Arsimmer McCoy and Nadege Green. With music, food, and a pop-up reading nook curated in collaboration with Black Miami-Dade, we’re creating a space to celebrate and share memory with the people from Rainbow Village and Overtown.
Can’t make orientation in-person on September 8 at Soho Pool House? Join us for a virtual Lunch & Learn on Zoom.
From understanding the program’s origins and mission to what you can expect throughout the season, we’ll provide essential information to help you get the most from your membership. It’s the ideal opportunity to ask questions and connect with our team.
How does the program work? How do I get information about events? What can we look forward to?
Every fall, we kick off Commissioner with an orientation. Join us at Soho's Miami Pool House for an evening celebrating the start of Season Eight, surrounded by the artwork of commissioned artists including Morel Doucet, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Cornelius Tulloch, and Typoe. From understanding the program’s origins and mission to what you can expect throughout the season, we’ll provide essential information to help you get the most from your membership. Both educational and social, it’s also the ideal opportunity to ask questions and connect with fellow members and our team.
While all Season Eight members are invited to join, we especially recommend it for new members.
In a season defined by challenging and reimagining systems, we’re excited to announce that Edouard Duval-Carrié is our fourth and final commissioned artist of Season Seven.
Join us for a conversation about collecting as memory work with contemporary artist Reginald O’Neal and community historian Nadege Green, moderated by Commissioner Co-Founder Dejha Carrington.
Seven years ago, we asked folks to participate in a social experiment—to be nimble, take a risk, and move differently and outside traditional art market norms. Now Miami’s longest-running crowdfunding art program, Commissioner has brought together more than 600 visionaries to commission artists and build community through the arts. By interrogating notions of ownership and dismantling preconceptions around collecting, we have made possible what we can’t do alone. But, to what end?
Following the panel and audience Q&A, Reginald will introduce his monumental sculpture, “The Cellist”, featured in the exhibition Mirror of the Mind. There will also be an opportunity to meet El Espacio 23 artists-in-residence Carla Chaim (Brazil) and Los Bravu (Spain) and Curatorial resident and scholar Odette Casamayor-Cisneros.
This special evening celebrating seven seasons of community collaboration is open to current and past members, alum, and conspirators.
Get the most out of your visit to NADA NY 2025 with a curated tour by Commissioner and Komal Kehar.
On the occasion of the 11th edition of NADA New York, join Commissioner and NADA members for an intimate workshop at Komal Kehar’s East Village boutique Common Things.
Led by Miami-based artist Addison Wolff, we will examine the queer symbolism of violets in the poetry of Sappho and the malleability of identity and time. We’ll explore the textural optical paintings of the artist, represented by NADA Member, Baker—Hall and in a special collaboration with Commissioner.
At the workshop, Addison will teach members how to generate hand-taped optical moiré effects on top of limited-edition prints, embedded with lines of poetry from Sappho, creating a palimpsest documenting queer cultural objects and personal histories. An immersive approach to unmasking the layers of the artist’s process, expect to sculpt layers of textural paint and discuss the use of coded color in queer culture. Plus, leave the workshop with a personalized work of art while creating a shared history.
To participate in the workshop, please email us at hello@commissioner.us. Spaces are limited and first come, first serve.
Baker—Hall will present a solo exhibition of Addison Wolff at NADA New York. The gallery is part of the fair’s guided tour program led by Komal Kehar and Commissioner. Everything is connected.
About Addison Wolff
Addison Wolff born in Winter Park, Florida; lives and works in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Addison received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana (2010). Addison’s practice explores issues of self-identity, intimacy, and interiority. Themes of transformation, transcendence, time, and fluidity are explored through non-objective compositions of broken color, collage, layering, erasure, and optical effects, on canvas and hand-built, hollow ceramic forms. Selected solo exhibitions include: “at the Baths,” NSU Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, (2025); “lOOking,” Baker- Hall Gallery, Miami, Florida, (2025); “Addison Wolff,” The Frank C. Ortis Gallery, Pembroke Pines, Florida, (2022). Selected group exhibitions include: “Young, Fresh, Different | Miami,” Zilberman Gallery, Miami, Florida, (2024); “South Florida Cultural Consortium Exhibition,” MOCA North Miami, North Miami, Florida, (2023); “Mes del Orgullo Gay,” Mexican Cultural Institute, Miami, Florida, (2022). Addison has received the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship Award (2022), Broward County Cultural Division, Artist Innovation Grant (2023), and Artist Support Grant (2022). They have works in the NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL; Broward County Cultural Division; and Boca Raton Innovation Center collections.
Presented in collaboration with AIRIE, join us for an exhibition, lunch and slough slog through the Cypress Dome in the Everglades.
Luna Palazzolo-Daboul is our third commissioned artist of Season Seven! Join us to unveil her new work and celebrate our artist community at Tunnel Projects—the Little Havana-based underground plaza, exhibition space, and residency.
Cornelius Tulloch is the first commissioned artist of 2025 and our second of Season Seven.
Join us for a one-two in West Palm Beach. We’ll start with a curated visit of Beth De Woody’s collection at The Bunker Artspace; and follow with a lunch, talk, and tour of Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing at The Norton Museum of Art.
Join us for drinks and conversation at Cathy Leff’s private home and delight in her collection of decorative, design, fine arts—and taxidermy.
We invite you into the overlooked and underknown art spaces of Downtown Miami at Rice Hotel and Miami-Dade Public Library.
Behold The Annex: The Wolfsonian—Florida International University’s seldom-seen art storage, a portal through time.
Miami Art Week is here and we have a plan.
Kick-off Miami Art Week with élan at The Carter Project. Back by popular demand, let's celebrate each other and our community who show up for Miami all year round.
Join us for an intimate artist talk with Amani Lewis on the closing weekend of their breakthrough exhibition, CHAPTER 1, The Mind in Chaos Meets the God of Clarity, at Mindy Solomon Gallery.
