The Life of Riley
Terence Riley Begins New Job as Chief Curator of Miami Art Museum

By Steve Mayo

	The Miami Art Museum on Flagler Street in Downtown Miami    Photo: Steve Mayo

There’s a new Riley in town, and he’s doing more listening than talking these days. By now he probably knows where most of the light switches are and is starting to put names with faces along with the other things to be learned within the first week or so of starting any new position.

Miami Art Museum has a new curator and his name is Terence Riley.

And while getting acquainted with the museum’s current facility, Riley also has to plan for the new one to be built at Museum Park, next to the American Airlines Arena, where the other Riley works, running a pro basketball team.

Knowing where the light switches are in the museum is one thing, but building a $200-million, 125,000 square-foot new facility and helping direct one of the world’s hottest art scenes right now are quite a bit more. But Terence Riley comes to Miami Art Museum loaded with experience gained as an architect and, since 1992, as part of the curatorial staff at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. During his tenure with the Museum of Modern Art he helped steer the museum through an expansion that opened last year.

Among the list of things to do this year at Miami Art Museum is to hire an architect.  Riley is qualified for that job but he’s not considering it and he does plan to be involved with finding the right person for the job.

A building does not a museum make, a fact of which Riley is keenly aware. Building a  state-of the-art facility and amassing the collection to fill it is one thing; getting people to visit and understand the work is another.

“Everything has to happen at once,” Riley says.  “Bridging the gap between awareness of contemporary and modern art is that it requires a certain amount of commitment on the part of the viewer. And for that commitment there’s a certain reward.

	Terence Riley, the new chief curator of the Miami Art Museum

Riley comes to Miami at a crucial time in the city’s emergence as an art center, and he brings an impressive list of credentials to his post. Named the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA in 2002 after serving as a chief curator for 10 years, Riley played a key role in the completion of major expansion efforts at the museum.  He was involved in the planning, design, fund-raising, and ultimately the successful launching of MoMA’s expanded and renovated 630,000 square foot facility, which opened to international acclaim a year ago.  Riley began his museum career in 1989 while teaching at Columbia University.  He directed the conversion of a historic building to become the university’s Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, and subsequently served as the Gallery’s first director.  In 1991, he became a curator in the department of architecture and design at MoMA and was appointed its chief curator the following year.

In addition to strengthening the museum’s permanent collection and planning and executing important exhibitions on architecture and design, he has for many years served on the committee that develops the museum’s overall exhibition schedule in all media.

In 2002, he co-organized a symposium on Latin American architecture from 1929-1964. Co-sponsored by The Museum of Modern Art and the Parsons School of Design, the symposium brought together key figures from the United States and Latin America. He also worked with an international panel as well as various local leaders as a member of the jury that selected the architects for the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires, Argentina, one of the most successful museums of its kind. 

Riley is a professional member of the American Institute of Architects, a trustee of the Fundació Mies van der Rohe in Barcelona, Spain, and an advisory board member of the Parsons Graduate School of Design.  He has taught at Harvard University and Columbia University. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1978 with a degree in architecture, and has a master’s degree in architecture and urban planning from Columbia University.   He has worked as an architect in the United States and abroad. 

Riley has spent a great deal of time in Miami and recently finished building a home here.  He is committed to giving people in Miami a way into art.

“The difficult thing is to reduce the number of barriers that exists between art and the public itself,” Riley says.  “The current building is inaccessible looking. Up a flight of stairs, inside a solid stone building that looks more like the courthouse. I think that’s half the battle to get people to approach the art itself and a building can help do that. What I think would be a success is creating the kind of feeling in people that they have a right to be there.”

While the concept of the museum started centuries ago as a collection of oddities which included contents that varied according to the means and interests of their owners—physicians collected anatomical specimens; merchants bought rarities from far-flung trading posts; artists gathered prints, drawings and casts of ancient sculpture—it wasn’t really meant for the public, according to the University of California’s department of the History of Art and Architecture. The University of California system, which includes 10 campuses, boasts of a collection of objects rivaled only by the Smithsonian Institute.

	The Miami Art Museum on Flagler Street in Downtown Miami    Photo: Steve Mayo

Over the years the museum’s objective has changed to include not only housing art and artifacts but to advances public knowledge and appreciation of art, architecture and design, and enhances the cultural experience of the residents and visitors to South Florida, which Miami Art Museum set out to do when it opened in 1996.  Since then Miami’s art community has developed into one to watch and most recently experienced a wave of momentum that Riley has watched.

“Art Basel Miami Beach has been a spark,” he says.  “People talk about how great it is. But when you talk about how important the art fair has been, it’s only one week a year. The museum and other institutions have to look at being better year round. Miami is indeed about to catch a wave.”

Since accepting the position, Riley has been making the transition and focusing on the community he’s watched develop from afar.