The Kendall Art Center (KAC), founded by Cuban entrepreneur and collector Leonardo Rodríguez, opened its doors to the public on the evening of July 15, 2016, with an exhibition of works from his personal collection. From its inception, the center has strived to provide its community with top-tier artistic experiences. To this end, it developed a carefully curated program of events and exhibitions aimed at enhancing the aesthetic awareness of its residents and promoting the cultivation and development of the visual arts, particularly in South Florida.
Over its six years, KAC showcased the work of dozens of established and mid-career artists, with a particular focus on emerging local artists or those newly arrived in the United States who lacked exhibition spaces to launch or advance their careers. The KAC always kept its doors open for them.
The consistency, curatorial seriousness, careful selection of works, and coherence in its programs quickly made it an inspiring artistic hub, an active participant in the Miami-Dade County art community, and one of its finest cultural offerings. As a cultural center, it closed with an impressive record of 76 exhibitions, many of which were produced in other museums and cultural spaces in Florida and other states across the Union.
When Leonardo Rodríguez first presented his collection to the public, it included only four women out of a total of fifty artists, representing just eight percent of the total. Both he and the Exhibition Committee were aware that art created by women was underrepresented. Seven years later, in June 2023, the collection, now part of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Americas, featured works by 47 women artists out of a total of 225 artists, nearly 21 percent of the total. A year later, in June 2024, this number rose to 63 women out of 264 artists, accounting for 24.24 percent.
While it is important to note the numerical increase of women artists in the collection—because this can be seen as merely a quantitative detail—it is crucial to highlight the framework that made this possible and the efforts that have been undertaken to support it. In the early months of 2017, the Women in the Arts program was conceived, driven by the fervent work of María Baños (1965 - 2024) —Leonardo Rodríguez’s life partner. Baños was adamant about developing projects that exclusively showcased art created by women artists and facilitating the inclusion of new female voices into the collection.
From the very beginning, the program received support and attention from many women curators, artists, and cultural promoters such as Carol Damian, Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig, Janet Batet, Gabriela Azcuy, Hortensia Montero, Isabel M. Pérez, among many others. These curators, specialists, and art historians closely followed the work of many of these artists and documented every detail of their narratives. In a relatively short period, they have managed to position these artists on the contemporary art map of the state and, in some cases, across the entire United States.
Thus, on March 10, 2017, the Kendall Art Center presented Poems to the public, a series of three simultaneous exhibitions marking the official launch of its Women in the Arts Program: Blooming, a solo exhibition by Lisyanet Rodríguez (1987); Fugacious, a posthumous tribute to Gina Pellón, featuring five of her works accompanied by pieces from Ana María Sarlat, Ivonne Ferrer, and Laura Luna; and Being, showcasing works by Sandra Ramos, Ana Albertina Delgado, and Marlys Fuego. Although none of the three exhibitions explicitly expressed feminist positions, they shared an intimate communion of spontaneous gender discourses with a highly poetic charge.
A year later, in August 2018, also within the Women in the Arts Program, three exhibitions were inaugurated: Captivity Forces by Milena Martínez Pedrosa, curated by Odette Artiles; Intersectionality by Angela Alés; and Broken Roots by Aimée Pérez. Starting in 2019, on January 25, Art Attack, a solo exhibition by Ivonne Ferrer, was inaugurated. On June 21, two simultaneous exhibitions were presented to the public: Resina ámbar by the renowned Cuban artist Zaida del Río and Death Mask of Fertile Crone by the American artist Allison Kotzig. At the end of the year, the Cuban artist based in Costa Rica, Aimée Joaristi, presented Pubic Manifesto, a feminist action with political and cultural dimensions based on the dramaturgy of performance as a cultural gesture of protest, affirmation, and empowerment of the female voice.
In May 2020, the first edition of the book Women Artists in the Rodriguez Collection was presented, accompanied by an exhibition of 21 artists, 18 of whom were active at that time, including notable creators such as Amelia Peláez, Antonia Eiriz, and Lolo Soldevilla. At the same event, two other exhibitions were inaugurated: Monumental, a solo exhibition by Lia Galletti, and Dressed of Waters by Gina Pellón. In January 2021, the Kendall Art Center presented Women in the Arts outside its space with another collective exhibition at the Edward E. and Jane B. Ford Gallery at The Museum of Arts & Sciences (MOAS) in Daytona Beach, Florida. In June, the first completely international collective exhibition of women artists, Seeds of Connections, took place in collaboration with Florida International University (FIU) and Miami International University of Art & Design. The exhibition included watercolors, sculptures, and fiber artworks by Dianna Grace, Karla Kantorovich, Leka, and Evelyn Politzer and was curated by Paola Sierra and Arasay Vázquez.
In March 2022, the Kendall Art Center proposed a third installment of its program by inviting the Cuban artist residing in New York, Gladys Triana. In November, as part of the inaugural ceremony of the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Americas, Women in the Arts presented Subverting Materials, an exhibition curated by Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig in collaboration with the Fiber Artists Miami Association (FAMA) and World Textile Art (WTA). This exhibition, composed of pieces by nine artists, was also part of several textile art exhibitions and installations in the city of Miami during October and November under the title Threading the City, sponsored by Florida Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Again in March 2023, the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Americas, through its program, paid tribute to the Cuban artist Carmen Herrera in a collective exhibition featuring 26 women artists residing both in Cuba and the United States, most of whose works became part of its permanent collection. As the cultural policy of the emerging museum has become more clearly defined, collective exhibitions composed of women artists have increased, as well as solo exhibitions of artists invited for the occasion.
Following the memorable A mí me manda Carmen, MoCA-Americas presented An Exercise of Polygamy, a performance by the Cuban artist Cirenaica Moreira; Body Language, the first solo exhibition in the United States by Venezuelan artist Nurit Birnbaum; the Ciconia project by Venezuelan artist and promoter Carola Bravo; In Full Bloom, by young Cuban artist Gabriela Martínez; American Heartbeats, a collective exhibition featuring artists from across the Americas; and the magnificent project Exaggerations of History by Chilean artist Carolina V. García (Apia), a series about women from past centuries who left an ephemeral mark that does not correspond to the importance they had in the art history of their time.
