Photo: Aventura Mall
Louise Bourgeois’s Eye Benches are among the impressive works of art at Miami’s Aventura Mall.
When Suzanne was a toddler, I loved going to the mall, Eastview Mall in Victor, New York, so she could run around. Even today, I may go to a mall for my walk when the weather is bad. But on the whole, I avoid the typically oppressive atmosphere of malls. This one in Miami would have to be an exception. It’s a real art gallery.
Alexandra Peers writes at Architectural Digest, “About a dozen years ago, [real-estate developer Jackie Soffer] began buying artworks for the 2.8-million square-foot Aventura Mall, one of the largest in America. …
“A few malls have art, a very few have good art, but almost none have the button-pushers and immersive installations that the Aventura Mall features. Artists on view include pioneers or buzzy contemporary players like Louise Bourgeois, Wendell Castle, Lawrence Weiner, Julian Opie, and Daniel Arsham. There’s a 93-foot-long slide by artist Carsten Höller, who had another one in London’s Tate Modern museum.
“At first glance, it all seems highly unlikely, but — much like Steve Wynn’s groundbreaking Bellagio Hotel, which signaled to a certain set that the luxury property in Las Vegas had Picassos — the art immediately and wordlessly brands the shopping center.
” ‘Mall has slightly negative connotations,’ Soffer notes, but in Aventura, given its size, longevity (it opened in 1983 and has expanded repeatedly since), and events program, it means to be ‘a real community center.’ Plus, the art is an audience attraction — and great selfie bait.
“[Soffer] concedes that there’s also a popular and much-photographed ‘Love’ sculpture on New York’s Sixth Avenue, near the Museum of Modern Art. But she brags happily, ‘That’s red and blue. Ours is a red, blue, and green artist’s proof!’
“Not all the mall’s retail-art mash-ups go smoothly, of course. One October, sculptures by Ugo Rondinone, a series of Easter Island–style heads atop a plinth of weathered wood, were installed in a gloomy corridor. A few weeks later, a store tenant asked when the Halloween decorations were being taken down. He found them ‘scary,’ given their tucked-away locale. It was a classic case of bad placement, laughs Soffer, who adds that the works have been moved to a wide-open area and are quite popular now. …
“Perhaps the biggest surprise of having the art collection in the mall, says Soffer, has been the unexpected number of adults, rather than kids, who want to take pictures with the pieces. An outdoor fountain of spouting bronze gorillas and animals by The Haas Brothers is, if anything, even more popular when bad weather forces the mall to turn off the water—because fans can get much closer to the figures.”
See more of the art here.
Photo: Leo Diaz/ Aventura Mall
Carsten Höller’s Aventura Slide Tower.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
I think I read that malls have fallen on hard times now ordering on line has become popular. Might as well give them a little snap and pizzazz so that people will come. After all, a lot of materials went into building those malls.
Empty and haunted, many of them.
Phew! Time to repurpose them.
Isn’t it interesting, the life cycle of the mall concept? I remember SO clearly when we drove two hours to the first big mall near us, in Albany–what a thrill! And now they are mostly just grim (that’s my word of the day!) The folks in Miami are creative problem solvers! But does that mall still have upscale stores?
Good question. The website suggests they are holding on to a lot of brands: https://aventuramall.com/shops/.
HUH, this is so timely! I just returned from Aventura mall and saw these art stones, but had no idea why they were there. To tell you the truth I was admiring the collection of unusual self-named stores that Aventura offered to visitors (first-time visitors like me). I thought they were quite diverse in their repertoire…My head was spinning from the variety, but most of all I was surprised by the “farm market” in the middle of the mall that offered the diversity of healthy foods. I am pleasantly surprised to say the least.
What a coincidence! Glad to hear about the fresh foods!