This season, Miami Art Museum will kick off a season dedicated to exploring the culture of vinyl records within the history of contemporary art with The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, a mixed media group exhibition on view at MAM from March 18 to June 10, 2012. Bringing together artists from around the world who have worked with records as their subject or medium, this ground‐breaking exhibition examines the record’s transformative power from the 1960s to the present. The exhibition’s Miami presentation is supported by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of its Knight Arts Challenge, a five-year, $40 million initiative to bring South Florida together through the arts.

Featuring sound work, sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, video and performance, The Record incorporates a comprehensive range of artistic styles and media, combining audio with visual and fine art with popular culture. The exhibition takes a highly international and inter‐generational approach, featuring 99 works by 41 artists, including rising stars in the contemporary art world (William Cordova, Robin Rhode, Dario Robleto), outsider artists (Mingering Mike) and established artists (Ed Ruscha, Carrie Mae Weems). It includes several artists whose work will be shown in a U.S. museum for the first time (Kevin Ei‐ichi deForest, Jeroen Diepenmaat, Taiyo Kimura, Lyota Yagi).

“Vinyl records belong to the category of objects that have managed to play particularly significant roles in cultural history. They have established themselves firmly within the cultural consciousness, across generational and geographic boundaries,” says MAM Associate Curator Rene Morales. “This exhibition is an homage to a technology that has enriched our lives, expressed through the work of diverse artists who share a deep love for vinyl.”

The Record includes a wide range of works, such as a hybrid violin and record player, Viophonograph, a seminal work by Laurie Anderson; David Byrne's original life‐sized Polaroid photomontage used for the cover of the 1978 Talking Heads album More Songs About Buildings and Food; a monumental column of vinyl records by Cordova; and an early work by Robleto, who transformed Billie Holiday records into hand‐painted buttons through an alchemic process. Works by Christian Marclay, who has made art with records for 30 years, include his early and rarely seen Recycled Records as well as his most recent record video, Looking for Love. Museum visitors will also be able to listen to a series of guest curated album crates, with music selected by leading music and art figures.

According to Trevor Schoonmaker, who organized The Record as curator of contemporary art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, this exhibition “imagines the record as a lens through which artists view the world, and demonstrates art’s singular ability to reveal the extraordinary, the elemental power of everyday objects by transforming them into something new.”

With support from Knight Foundation, MAM is organizing a robust schedule of public programs to accompany the exhibition. The museum has assembled an advisory committee of key figures in Miami’s music and cultural scene to produce a season’s worth of programs and events exploring the intersection between visual art and music in Miami. Activities will include “On the Record” programs taking place on‐site at MAM, while “Off the Record” programs will comprise programs taking place at locations throughout Miami Dade County. These “On the Record” and “Off the Record” programs will consist of performances by DJs, panel discussions on the history of record‐making in Miami, record swaps, a traditional Soundclash DJ battle, and more. The advisory committee members, under the direction of programs coordinator, Esther Park, are:

• Jourdan Binder | Owner of The Workshop Collective, LLC

• Mario Cader‐Frech | VP, Public Affairs, The Americas; Viacom

• P. Scott Cunningham | Founder of O, Miami

• Michael Genovese | Artist

• Bruno del Granado | President of RM Entertainment Group

• Nicolas Lobo | Artist

• Aramis Lorie | Promoter and Founder of Poplife; Owner of Grand Central

• Daniel Milewski | Artist and Owner of Lester's

• Laura Quinlan | President of Rhythm Foundation

• Lauren Reskin | Owner of Sweat Records

• Leighton Walsh | DJ and member of Jamaica’s Black Chiney Sound System

• Andrew Yeomanson | DJ Le Spam of Spam Allstars

“The exhibition reaches beyond the walls of the museum, to engage audiences in music and the visual arts as they connect over their love of record albums,” said Dennis Scholl, Knight Foundation’s vice president/arts.

In an unprecedented partnership, Miami Art Museum has been named an official cultural partner for this year’s Winter Music Conference (WMC), the annual international weeklong music conference set in South Florida since 1985 and one of the longest and most important conferences for electronic and dance music in the world. As an official WMC 2012 event, The Record exhibition, including the opening reception on Saturday, March 17, 2012, will be free to all WMC badge holders. For more information on WMC, visit www.wintermusicconference.com.

For more information about The Record and the schedule of related programming and events, visit miamiartmuseum.org.