Once a year, the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale puts together a show featuring the work of some of its instructors. This year, the show had some competition in the form of Hurricane Frances, whose impending arrival forced the cancellation of the scheduled September 3 opening. But like the rest…

If you’ve visited any of South Florida’s major museums in the past few years — and if you haven’t, I don’t even know how to begin chastising you — you’ve seen them. Maybe you haven’t paid attention to them, but you’ve seen them. I call them “Incidental Pleasures” — works…

My first visit to Art on the Edge Gallery & Design Center started inauspiciously. I got lost (my fault) and wandered around Oakland Park until I swallowed my male pride and called for directions. Sure enough, the gallery was right where one of the owners, Geri Konstantin, had indicated, a…

Only a year or so ago, the Museum of Art (MoA) in Fort Lauderdale seemed a lost cause. With dwindling revenues, a leadership crisis, and increasingly lackluster shows, the museum was beginning to seem at best troubled, at worst culturally marginalized — a white elephant in the middle of downtown…

The show’s title — “All You Can Eat: New Work by Sue Irion, Gavin Perry, and Mette Tommerup” — makes it sound like an aesthetic buffet of rich dishes for an art-hungry audience. But the exhibition, now at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, is far from a lavish…

There it is on a wall at the far end of the first floor of the Boca Raton Museum of Art — “the picture.” It has been described as one of the most memorable photographs ever made. In it, a faintly androgynous Afghan girl of perhaps 11 or 12, clad…

Do birds have any idea what extraordinary creatures they are? How could they not? No other animals are capable of flight and song. Just watch a bird in flight sometime and focus on how it luxuriates in its seemingly effortless ability to defy gravity. Or listen to a bird sing…

Maybe it was that name, shimmering with possibilities: “Othoniel: Crystal Palace.” I envisioned some magical environment out of, say, Lothlórien, home of the tree elves in The Lord of the Rings. Or something as droll and pixilated as some of the settings in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or The Wizard…

The lettering on the wall at the top of the grand staircase at Fort Lauderdale’s Museum of Art (MoA) says it all: “Ansel Adams & Clyde Butcher.” It’s a match made in nature lover heaven, an inspired pairing of American photographers that prompts contrasts as well as comparisons. The California-based…

It’s easy to miss the relatively new Embler Art Gallery, on the northwest corner of SE 13th Avenue and Las Olas Boulevard. It’s a small space in a larger building, with a color scheme — a warm mustardy yellow with white trim — that’s popular along the boulevard, including at…

Maybe it’s fitting that my reactions to “Michael Joo” are split right down the middle. By most accounts (including the artist’s), Joo’s work has a great deal to do with dichotomies. His current exhibition, on display at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art (PBICA) in Lake Worth, certainly seems…

Maybe it’s leftover vibes from the highly successful “Saint Peter and the Vatican: The Legacy of the Popes.” Maybe it’s the presence of a new executive director. Whatever the reason, “Enrique Martínez Celaya Celaya: The October Cycle 2000-2002” is the best exhibition at Fort Lauderdale’s Museum of Art (MoA) in…

Painter David Maxwell is sitting in the spacious backyard at his Miramar duplex (one of his daughters lives in the front half) when I arrive for a visit on a perfect South Florida Sunday morning. He and his wife of 33 years, Mary, have just returned from their customary weekend…

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about “Embracing the Present: The UBS PaineWebber Art Collection,” a show at Fort Lauderdale’s Museum of Art (MoA). Now comes “Return to Realism: Contemporary Art from the UBS Art Collection,” a similar but superior exhibition at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. (The…

When my editor suggested I pay a visit to the Museum of Lifestyle and Fashion History in Delray Beach to see a show called “Hats, Handbags & Gloves: From Past to Present,” my first reaction was, more or less, “You’re kidding, right?” My second reaction was that of any sane…

The gallery at ArtServe is hardly the most hospitable display space in Broward County. It’s housed in a branch of the Broward County Library, sandwiched between the library and ArtServe’s offices and other facilities. One end of the gallery is just a few feet from busy Sunrise Boulevard, where the…

It’s a sure sign that “the season” is in full throttle when art fairs start springing up on the streets of South Florida. Having not attended one of these in a while, I took in the 16th-annual Las Olas Art Fair on Saturday, January 3. It’s too late for you…

It’s fitting that the young American artist Inka Essenhigh has a series of paintings called “People that do weird things to their bodies,” because the artist herself, who was born in Pennsylvania in 1969, does some extremely weird things to the bodies of the people in her pictures. To say…

When I bought my first few pieces of Haitian art a dozen or so years ago, I knew zilch about Haitian art. What I learned very quickly, however, is that it can be addictive. Now I know considerably more about Haitian art, and my home is filled with it: 16…

If you’ve never visited the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) Fishing Hall of Fame and Museum, you should, even if you’re not a fishing enthusiast. Earlier this year, I took some visiting relatives, outdoorsy types, and was pleasantly surprised. I already knew the architecture was striking — you can see…

One of the first things you may notice upon entering the Schmidt Center Gallery at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton is a grand piano in the far left corner of the gallery. On it sits a small placard reading “Attention Patrons: This Piano Is Not Part of the Exhibition.”…