The Museum of Contemporary Art of the Americas and the Fine Arts Ceramic Center will participate in the 2025 edition of DIVERSEartPB alongside the Danubiana Museum from Bratislava, the Boca Raton Museum from Florida, Culture Nomad Seoul from Korea, and ReflectSpace & Library Arts and Culture Glendale, based in Glendale, California. Under the thoughtful curatorship of Marisa Caichiolo, the event underscores the transformative power of art to connect humanity and inspire a more harmonious and interconnected world. Art possesses a unique transformative power, acting as a catalyst for global change and unity. It resonates on a higher frequency, fostering profound connections with individuals and inspiring collaborative efforts toward a brighter future. Through diverse forms of artistic expression, art transcends the boundaries of nationality, culture, and language, nurturing deeper bonds among us all. This vision lies at the heart of the ongoing work carried out by MoCA-Americas and FACC.
Ajustados al tema central y la visión de la atinada curaduría de Marisa Caichiolo, el Museo y el Centro de Cerámica presentarán a la comunidad artística de Palm Beach su fascinante colección de platos, probablemente, una de las más grandes de su tipo en todos los Estados Unidos. Through its Fine Arts Ceramic Center, adjacent to the museum itself, dozens of artists have produced remarkable works that have been exhibited in numerous cultural institutions across the United States.
This collection is organized into three primary groups. The first consists of original ceramic plates, all unique and quite possibly among the largest collections of its kind in the country. The second group features murals composed of individually painted tiles. The third includes standalone sculptures and installations.
The plates have been created primarily by Cuban artists, and more recently (2023–2024) by artists from across the continent. This particular collection has garnered the greatest interest and recognition among specialists and enthusiasts, with nearly a thousand plates created by just over a hundred artists. Each piece is unique, hand-painted, and fired at the Fine Art Ceramic Center workshop.
The plate collection includes works by renowned artists, both nationally and internationally, including Gustavo Acosta, José Bedia, Carlos Cárdenas, Humberto Castro, Carlos Estévez, Ivonne Ferrer, José Franco, Lia Galletti, Aimée García, Carlos Luna, Milena Martínez Pedrosa, Rigoberto Mena, Amelia Peláez, Esterio Segura, Alfredo Sosabravo, Rubén Torres Llorca, among many others. To date, a total of 97 artists have contributed to this collection, with most creating between four and twelve unique, original pieces.
The center was established in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the dual aim of promoting the use of ancestral ceramic techniques among Cuban artists associated with the Rodríguez Collection, and providing them with the opportunity to create small-scale pieces that could be easily sold amid the difficult circumstances of isolation and economic stagnation caused by the COVID crisis. In May of that year, collector Leonardo Rodríguez, founder of the Kendall Art Center—now the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Americas—invited fifty artists who were regularly collaborating with the center to produce these ceramic works, primarily plates. This initiative also sought to explore the creative potential of ceramics, pushing beyond its traditional utilitarian and decorative roles.
This initial call resulted in the production of dozens of valuable works. Despite the great heterogeneity among the first group of creators, they all shared one common trait: they were primarily painters working on canvas. They faced both the opportunity and the challenge of transferring their art to a new medium, using materials and pigments that were largely unfamiliar to them, and which behaved very differently on raw clay.
The mere production of nearly half a thousand artistic ceramic plates at that time drew the attention of artists and specialists alike to the need to preserve a tradition that, while not critically endangered, is increasingly neglected by new generations of artists.
This collection of works was first exhibited at the Kendall Art Center in November 2020. The exhibition, titled Fine Arts on the Plate, opened on Friday, November 27, and was attended by nearly 200 people, including artists, family members, and art enthusiasts from across Miami-Dade County. This event can be considered the founding act of the Fine Arts Ceramic Center.
This collection, which continues to grow year after year, is regularly exhibited in various spaces beyond our institution. For instance, the exhibition Artists Set the Table opened to the public on Sunday, February 19, 2023, at Pinecrest Garden Art and Recreation Park, showcasing a selection of one hundred plates. Beyond the Plate was presented for the second time at the Museum of Arts & Sciences in Daytona on May 7, 2022, following its debut on November 5, 2021, at the Sidney Berne & Davis Art Center under the title Fine Arts on the Plate.
