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A Private Art Collection’s Mission To Help the Homeless

The Margulies Collection values art collecting and giving to the community, equally.
Anselm Kiefer, Die Erdzeitalter, 2014, Two gouache and charcoal works on photographic paper and canvas and one sculpture, Dimensions Variable, © Anselm Kiefer. Photo © White Cube (Jon Lowe)

The mission of most private art collections is to collect great works for the personal purpose of decorating residencies and office spaces. However the public mission of art collector Martin Margulies’ and his Margulies Collection at the Warehouse in Miami, Florida, is to use art as a means to help others. The ever-expanding 35-year-old collection’s focus on arts education and supporting Lotus Village homeless shelter highlights the potential of the blue chip art market to be used to engage in social practices that help people in real and measurable ways.

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“The Mission of the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse is two fold. We are an educational facility open to the public with historically significant exhibitions of contemporary art. We have educational programing such as tours and guest speakers designed for our international audience of people studying the arts,” explains the collection's longtime curator Katherine Hinds to The Creators Project. “The parallel mission of the Margulies Warehouse is our charitable activities, which are dedicated to raising funds and awareness for homelessness, hunger, and other problems affecting the poor and disenfranchised populations in our community.”

Anselm Kiefer, Geheimnis der Farne, 2007, Margulies Collection Version 2015, Installation of 48 pictures and two concrete sculptures Clay, argile, ferns, emulsion and concrete © Anselm Kiefer. Photo © White Cube (Jon Lowe), Credit line: Collection Martin Z. Margulies

The collection's social mission is unique in that all of the fees collected from book sales, admission, and special events go directly to Lotus Village, a homeless shelter that supports women and children. “We are in the process of breaking ground on a new five-story building that will house over 400 women, youth, and children,” says Hinds. The expanded Lotus Village will include a holistic health and wellness center, daycare, job training, and an arts lab. The collection's social practice extends to art education that allow students from Florida Atlantic University and women living in Lotus Village to familiarizes themselves with the Margulies collection. During the annual Art Basel Miami Beach students and women from the shelter serve as docents and guards in the galleries.

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Equally as important as the charitble mission of the Margulies Warehouse is maintaining the highest level of curation and collecting of art to share with the communit at large. The permanent collection houses notable works by artists Ron Bladen, Michael Heizer, Willem de Kooning, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and Kehinde Wiley. Currently on view at the collection is an Anselm Kiefer solo show of newly acquired paintings, sculpture, and installation and a Susan Philipsz sound installation. “Sound Art is a whole new genre for us.  It was very exciting to go into a whole new area, and we have done that many times with video art, photography, and installation art,” notes Hinds. “Our first consideration is the art,” adds Hinds. “We look for seminal works by important and influential artists to acquire and it is important that the new works fit into the established rhythm of our existing collection and permanent installations.”

Installation view of the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, Donald Judd, Untitled, 1979 Cor-Ten Steel, 48 x 119 x 119 inches

Newly acquired Anselm Kiefer and Susan Philipsz works are currently on view at the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse. For more information, click here.

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