{"id":64026,"date":"2025-11-29T00:49:28","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T00:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/64026\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T00:49:28","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T00:49:28","slug":"gallerist-anthony-spinello-has-shown-miami-is-more-than-miami-art-week-for-20-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/64026\/","title":{"rendered":"Gallerist Anthony Spinello Has Shown Miami Is More Than Miami Art Week for 20 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art Market<\/p>\n

\"\"\"Nereida<\/p>\n

Portrait of Anthony Spinello. Photo by Elliot & Erick Jime\u0301nez. Courtesy of Spinello Projects.<\/p>\n

Anthony Spinello is making things personal for his Miami gallery\u2019s 20th-anniversary exhibition<\/a>: He\u2019s showcasing his own collection. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to be more intentional [than typical anniversary exhibitions] and to tell a story,\u201d Spinello told me on a video call. When he talked to Artsy from his car, wearing sunglasses and a sleeveless shirt, the dealer was in a reflective mood. \u201cStarting with my collection adds an interesting layer, because it speaks to the intimate relationships I have with my artists,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

Spinello is an established Miami tastemaker whose gallery, Spinello Projects<\/a>, has become a reliable conduit for many of the city\u2019s most exciting artists. Since founding the gallery in his early 20s, he has built an intersectional program that foregrounds queer artists and other marginalized perspectives. <\/p>\n

\"Marlon\"Bernadette<\/p>\n

The anniversary exhibition represents the fruition of that vision: Spinello has curated a kind of living record of Miami\u2019s art scene over the past two decades, as seen through his idiosyncratic eye. \u201cEach work in my collection is a memory,\u201d he said. Some 15 artists are featured in the show, including early works from Spinello\u2019s personal archive by the likes of Farley Aguilar<\/a>, alongside new works by roster artists such as Esai Alfredo<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A consistent and vociferous champion of Miami-based artists, Spinello has been at the forefront of Miami\u2019s ascent to a nationally relevant cultural force. <\/p>\n

When he moved to Miami in 2003, the city\u2019s contemporary art scene was at a formative moment. The year prior, Art Basel Miami Beach<\/a>\u2014the largest art fair in America\u2014debuted, playing a key and instant role in transforming the city into a contemporary art destination. New galleries, artist-run spaces, and design studios emerged across areas such as the Design District and Wynwood Arts District, which were launched that year. Spinello recalls a time of \u201ca lot of space to experiment and produce, and things were affordable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Installation view of \u201cChanges: Reflections on Time & Space\u201d at Spinello Projects in Miami, 2025. Photo by Zachary Balber. Courtesy of Spinello Projects.<\/p>\n

Born in Brooklyn, Spinello moved to Miami\u2019s Wynwood neighborhood after graduating from the School of Visual Arts and Design, renting a loft above Liquid Blue Gallery. The now-shuttered space was an early incubator of the city\u2019s early 2000s contemporary art scene, and Spinello ended up running it after offering an unfiltered critique of a show to its owner, Jeff Morr.<\/p>\n

After asking his mother for advice, he determined that he \u201cliked the idea of working with artists,\u201d but needed to \u201cstart from scratch,\u201d and began building a program with about $3,000 in cash, several credit cards, and a Craigslist ad seeking artists. When Liquid Blue shut, Spinello wasn\u2019t ready to leave Miami. He opened his first space in 2005 in his apartment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Agustina Woodgate, Changes, 2000\u201304. Photo by Zachary Balber. Courtesy of Spinello Projects.<\/p>\n

One of the first artists to get in touch with Spinello was Miami-based Argentine artist Agustina Woodgate<\/a>, whom Spinello first showed at Liquid Blue. Her set of 24 monoprints, Changes (2005), became the first piece he personally collected and is on view at the gallery\u2019s current show. <\/p>\n

The partnership blossomed: Woodgate was the first artist he presented at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2012 and was one of two from the gallery to present at the 2019 Whitney Biennial alongside Eddie Arroyo<\/a>. The pair are two of a raft of artists that Spinello has forged long and fruitful relationships with over the years. Artists he championed at the gallery include Artsy Vanguard 2021<\/a> alum Reginald O\u2019Neal<\/a> and 71-year-old artist Nereida Garcia-Ferraz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Installation view of \u201cChanges: Reflections on Time & Space\u201d at Spinello Projects in Miami, 2025. Photo by Zachary Balber. Courtesy of Spinello Projects.<\/p>\n

Throughout his career, Spinello has rarely bitten off more than he can chew. \u201cThis business, my career, was going to be a marathon, not a sprint,\u201d he recalled thinking to himself when he moved to the Miami Arts District in 2008 (the gallery returned to Wynwood in 2019). <\/p>\n

\u201cI knew if I delivered quality and consistency, [success] would come,\u201d he said. \u201cCreating something that resonated with the audience, building community, creating family, breaking bread\u2014that\u2019s what was important. Still is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Esa\u00ed<\/p>\n

Indeed, as Spinello matured as a gallerist, so did the art scene around him. \u201cMiami grew up,\u201d he told me, pointing to the rise of institutions such as the P\u00e9rez Art Museum Miami<\/a>, ICA Miami<\/a>, and residency programs that connect the city to the global art world by mounting ambitious exhibitions of international artists and projects.<\/p>\n

And while Miami\u2019s December calendar has grown into arguably the U.S. art market\u2019s most important art week and draws visitors around the world, Spinello touts the city\u2019s year-round relevance. \u201cPeople are actually coming to Miami, and they are coming to the galleries,\u201d he explained. That shift, he said, became clearer during the pandemic, when many local collectors began paying attention to the bubbling scene that was already around them. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Portrait of Anthony Spinello with a work by Sinisa Kukec. Courtesy of Spinello Projects. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re seeing different neighborhoods, engaging differently.\u2026It\u2019s not just about what\u2019s going on at the fairs,\u201d he emphasized. More artists, too, are choosing the city as a base. \u201cA lot of artists are coming to Miami for studio spaces,\u201d he said, pointing to names such as sculptor Kennedy Yanko<\/a>. Miami is no longer a seasonal destination but a cultural engine, with artists and collectors investing in the city year-round.<\/p>\n

But the most meaningful measure of Miami\u2019s evolution for Spinello is personal. \u201cThe community became my family,\u201d he said. \u201cI grew up with Miami. I grew up with my artists.\u201d <\/p>\n

As for the next 20 years, he jokes about retirement but doesn\u2019t come across as someone ready to step back. \u201cI\u2019m investing in artists in a city that has invested in me,\u201d he said. And the exhibition\u2019s message is clear: The story of Spinello Projects is inseparable from the story of Miami\u2019s art scene. Whatever its next chapter, Spinello is likely to have a part in writing it. <\/p>\n

MR<\/p>\n

\"MR\"<\/p>\n

Maxwell Rabb<\/p>\n

Maxwell Rabb (Max) is a writer. Before joining Artsy in October 2023, he obtained an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from the University of Georgia. Outside of Artsy, his bylines include the Washington Post, i-D, and the Chicago Reader. He lives in New York City, by way of Atlanta, New Orleans, and Chicago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art Market Portrait of Anthony Spinello. Photo by Elliot & Erick Jime\u0301nez. Courtesy of Spinello Projects. Anthony Spinello…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[38294,38295,123,125,124,36473],"class_list":{"0":"post-64026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-gallery-scene-spotlights","9":"tag-maxwell-rabb","10":"tag-miami","11":"tag-miami-headlines","12":"tag-miami-news","13":"tag-spinello-projects"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}