[Narrator] "Art Loft" is brought to you by the Friends of South Florida PBS.

"Art Loft."

It's the pulse of what's happening across the South Florida art scene.

In this episode, fired arts and soothing sounds.

We meet a fired arts collection so big, they built a museum.

We profiled two artists using ceramics to educate and share their stories.

And we catch up with the soothing sounds of Brazilian Voices, a vocal group spreading peace and healing one song at a time.

A rebirth of sorts in Hollywood as the Wiener Museum of Decorative Arts opens its doors in a new location.

Here, we learn about the depth of the WMODA collection and what it took to haul all that glass.

Arthur Wiener, he actually started by collecting Royal Doulton wares.

He started in the 1960s when he was just a new law graduate and he was visiting London.

And he came across a Royal Doulton character jug of Merlin the Magician.

So we like to say that Merlin cast a spell on Arthur because he went on to collect Royal Doulton character jugs and Toby jugs.

Then he moved to Royal Doulton figures.

Then he moved to the art pottery.

He amassed the biggest collection of art pottery of Royal Doulton probably in the world before he then moved on to all the other treasures that you see here at WMODA.

Hi, I'm Louise Irvine.

I'm the executive director and curator of the Wiener Museum of Decorative Arts.

We just recently reopened a museum in Hollywood, Florida.

And it came about because our founder and benefactor, Arthur Wiener, became passionate about glass for his private collection, and then decided that he wanted to share with the public and invite them in to see all aspects of his collection, which is very diverse.

People are going to learn all about the fired arts, which we like to use that name to talk about the beautiful ceramics and glass that we have here at the museum.

The museum really celebrates British ceramic art, South African ceramic art, and also American studio glass, particularly the work of Dale Chihuly, who's one of the great stars of our exhibition here and, of course, I'm surrounded by here in our hot glass gallery.

Something about glass, particularly in Florida, it really does resonate with the public here.

And I'd say it's one of the biggest draws that we have for WMODA, is the glass collection.

And Chihuly, he really has revolutionized the way we think about glass.

We're not really thinking anymore about even a glass of wine or a glass of water.

We're thinking about how glass can be art.

And he pushed out all the boundaries to make these monumental pieces, and he brought a new organic field to the glass art, creating all these amazing forms inspired by nature, flowers, gardens, the sea up in the Pacific Northwest.

And he also worked on a scale that was unprecedented at the time.

And he's taught so many other people to work with him, collaborate with him, but also to follow in his footsteps.

So really, through his teaching, through his practice, there's a whole really successful American studio glass movement.

Because of the interest in the different design movements, we're sort of focused in the gallery.

Once you leave the hot glass gallery, it's into the Art Nouveau movement and the Art Deco movement.

He comes really from the 1800s right up to the present day in his interest.

Very eager to support artists working in the media that he enjoys today, as well as the historical artists.

And to that end, he became fascinated with studio pottery in South Africa called Ardmore, which was started 40 years ago, making amazing safari animals out of clay.

And Arthur became really enthusiastic.

And when he becomes enthusiastic, the collection grows pretty quickly.

And we have an amazing collection from Ardmore in South Africa, with all these unique pieces that have turned up, uplifting a whole community in a remote part of South Africa because of their involvement in ceramic art.

And now that's even grown because now they're involved in textile design and wallpaper design and silk scarfs with Hermes.

So it's really been an extraordinary journey that we've all participated thanks to Arthur's enthusiasm for all of these different areas.

Now they're making furniture and poofs and pillows.

So because of that, we created a design shop, an Ardmore design shop here at the museum.

We brought everything from our previous museum, but it all looked quite differently there than it does here.

We've only just reopened here in Hollywood.

And it's been very exciting, very gratifying, because we've had a long closure.

As we got the place ready, we had to pack up many, many thousands of objects in order to make the move.

And so we've been essentially at the cull phase.

Very close to it all, chipping away to get open.

And really, to have the public come in and enjoy it now has been phenomenal.

It's been just really encouraging and inspiring to see their reaction to it all.

It's made all of our hard work worthwhile.

It was a whole team operation.

I mean, we're very fortunate to have an amazing small team, but very, very talented group of people here at the museum, who all pulled their resources in terms of cataloging the pieces for inventory purposes, for packing them.

We trained people how to pack.

We got specialist people in to help us learn how to pack the pieces.

And then for some of the monumental pieces, including the Chihuly, we had a specialist packing team came.

But then came the time to move, and we had an 18wheeler moving backwards and forwards between our home in Dania Beach to our home here.

And that took the whole month of April in order to accommodate that move with pallets of our collection.

So it was an extraordinary operation and one that was thankfully acknowledged by the Museums Association.

Gave us an award for this move.

And moving all the objects was recognized as being quite a feat.

Enormous feat.

Because we're in this design district, I looked at interpreting the collection in a different way.

And it's really reflecting the main design eras of the 1800s and 1900s So we have a Regency gallery, where we're featuring our Wedgewood collection.

We've got Victorian, where we're featuring all the beautiful ceramics made by Royal Doulton and Minton and the great Victorian manufacturers in Britain.

Then we have Art Nouveau, which is predominantly featuring European makers.

Beautiful maidens in flowing gowns that were such a feature of the Art Nouveau movement.

But the big star right now is our Art Deco gallery, where we've got all the flappers, vamps, and divas of the Roaring '20s.

And we've done that because 1925 was when the Paris exhibition, the big world's fair, launched the whole new Art Deco movement.

And now we're coming into 2025.

You're going to hear a lot about Art Deco through the following year.

And so we brought out all of our dancers and movie stars from the '20s and '30s, who were portrayed in porcelain by European makers.

We really followed the design trends from the sort of 1800s to the present day and displayed the collection along those lines.

We've tried from day one to create a platform for emerging artists in our community and also the more experienced as well.

We sell their work through the museum shop, but we've also had solo exhibitions featuring their work.

One of the people we've worked with who was a star of the "Blown Away" Netflix program is Rob Stern.

And Arthur, again, met Rob and became very interested in his work.

We have lots of his amazing stars and leaves and even his stiletto shoes, which was one of his recent excursions in glass art.

We work also with Chelsea Russo, who's a fused glass artist.

And she does classes here at the museum, and she teaches people how to work with glass.

We started to work more with programs that would appeal to families with children.

We started our scavenger hunts.

So we have had lots of scavenger hunts around the museum.

Currently, in our new space we're featuring dragons.

You can come and spot all the ceramic dragons hiding in their layers.

People are sometimes scared at the idea of children in a museum of ceramics and glass with all the breakables, but we found that they can be very respectful once they're shown what the ropes are and just how to be careful surrounded by all these precious pieces.

And we love exposing the kids to that.

They respond to the color.

From a very young age, kids are fascinated by the color.

And they love the little people in the Deco galleries and so on.

They love seeing all the little figures, the sort of Barbie dolls of the '20s or whatever.

We will build up to integrating much more into the schools programs.

We've also had some of our potters in the community teaching them how to throw on the potter's wheel.

We're not your granny's china closet.

We're really trying to be something that shows how important these were.

They were either part of your home in the interior decoration of the time.

We're looking and exploring all different aspects of the history.

Fortunately, we have that liberty to do that and to tell the stories, which we hope people are going to enjoy.

Arthur, I don't think he'll ever stop as long as he takes breath.

It's his passion.

He's a voracious, passionate collector, and he loves it all.

He loves the beauty of it, but now with the museum, he has the ability to think of it as a legacy that he can now share with all other people that maybe wouldn't necessarily be exposed to what he's been fortunate enough to enjoy.

So that's really become the motivating factor now about having the museum and keeping that going and keeping it alive.

And he has plans for an even bigger museum down the road and the cultural arts complex as well It’s going to be quite something.

Watch this space as WMODA develops.

[Narrator] Commissioner, the local arts group connecting people new to collecting directly with local artists, is in its seventh season of community building.

Here, we meet Commissioner artist Joel Gaitan, a ceramicist blending forgotten tongues and erased cultures.

Vessels for me represent big bodies.

This is why I personify them.

I like to highlight this culture of these bodies.

'Cause if you really notice that, like, people praise these naked big bodies when they're in a museum, outside of a museum, there's a different conversation happening.

I don't really like to sketch my works because I'll get very disappointed when I'm creating it, because the clay takes its own direction, in a way.

So this is a stacked piece built on top of each other.

I wanted the piece just to be the legs and kind of flat up, up, up, up, and then two heads.

But the piece itself was getting really heavy.

So the butt and the belly is a mistake of the clay having too much weight.

But it ended up working out together, and I was able to create the second piece of it.

But then it brings me back to the topic of, like, clay taking its own form.

There's something bigger than me when it comes to creating these works.

And I've seen it.

I witnessed it within my own work.

You know, it's hard to explain, but I feel like sometimes when the work is done itself, I look back at it and I don't know how I created it.

It's like this trance that you get into when you're just creating all these works.

I love the concept of a piece being in a space and just taking up the space.

And I want them to take up space 'cause I want them to represent these untold stories of queer culture and oppressed people.

Besides being inspired by the Meso-American, pre-Columbian works, these pieces for me are also inspired a lot by the ballroom culture of New York City.

Divas that just come in very bedazzled.

They have these hairstyles.

And it's like, when they're on display in the space, they're also, like, in competition within their self to see who's more bedazzled, who has the best fit, the best look, the best hair.

Thinking about this whole concept of folklore stories and storytelling, there's a story that's been made, and we have followed it for years and years and years.

Anthropologists have decided based on their studies what these pieces were, their purpose, their function, et cetera.

But with these works specifically, I want to create my own folklore and stories.

I make them my own characters and my own stories and my own creatures.

And I put them together in these works because now they have a different conversation and story.

I'm living through things.

I'm meeting people that inspire me to create things.

It’s just like rewriting storytelling that has been passed on for years.

Community is very important for artists as well.

It's just, you know, it's the only way.

You need your community, you know, to flourish.

We get to help each other, and we go through the same dilemma/problems, and we get to find a resolution together.

What's exciting about Commissioner, they get to have a piece of what defines me.

[Narrator] The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami offers thought-provoking exhibitions that reflect the diverse communities it serves, and it offers an array of art experiences.

Recently, Brazilian environmental artist and ceramicist Beatrice Chachamovits invited MOCA NoMi visitors to help build a more resilient coral reef.

There was a definite moment in my life where everything changed, and it brought me to the ocean.

I remember when I was 19 years old, I was taken by this stranger to see the coral reef.

And once we reached the point where he wanted to show me, we went inside this tiny little cave.

After one second, I was blown away, mesmerized by the shimmering colors of the sun revealing the corals.

This cave was 360 covered with corals.

And when I came out of this cave, I asked myself, "Why isn't anyone talking about that?"

My name is Beatrice Chachamovits.

I'm an environmental artist based here in Miami, Florida.

My exhibition, "Into the Great Dying: Roles We Play," is the last exhibition of a trilogy of works that I've been doing for the past year.

this trilogy is a journey to talk about what is happening underwater with coral reefs and what is the responsibility of our society and ourselves in regards to it.

So I came with the idea for this show with the need of uplifting my work.

I wanted to give a hopeful message, because my previous works were a lot about destruction and decay.

But I realized that in the era that we're living in, echo anxiety is something really real, and it's affecting people, including myself.

And because of that, I wanted to make a work that would counterbalance that and would give some hope about how communities can come together.

Ceramics have been my main medium for quite some time.

And I feel like the idea of clay brings about this fragility and also this resilience of nature itself.

Because it can break, but it also can withstand time beyond a lifespan.

I know art can only go so far.

So it's really important to me to align myself with organizations where we can, together, create the mission of people falling in love with the ocean.

With that, I have a bigger impact on what my work is about and how I can reach into people and plant the seed of love.

Artists and creatives, to me, we are architects of the future.

And the future that I wanna help build is a future where we came together with nature.

It's a future where we understand that we are nature itself and we can't survive without it.

We need it to replenish our soul.

So it's deeper than just not being connected to it.

It's the understanding and being a part of a planet that functions together.

And that is the most beautiful thing that I can ever imagine.

[Narrator] Giving hope with the gift of song.

From schools to assisted living facilities to hospitals and cancer centers, Brazilian Voices brings the bossa nova to a host of audiences.

And they say the unmistakable gentle rhythm does more than just create a sense of calm.

There was a big need of music in places that we thought that there was no music.

Sometimes people in hospitals, they cannot go to a theater or listen to music.

And we found out, "Wow, they cannot."

It's the first time they heard some music.

We slowly noticed that people really wanted and they were so happy to hear music in hospital settings.

♪ Ah ♪ A main characteristic of the bossa nova is a breathy way of singing.

This breathy way of singing also makes a group of people, let's say a choir or a vocal group like Brazilian Voices, blend.

It's easier to blend when people... You saw us singing here, how we sing softly.

The blending of the voices are, you know, very easy.

The voices blend together.

We are not soloist singer singing.

We are blending together into one.

And this also, I think this is very responsible for how people feel in healthcare settings about bossa nova.

In the beginning, you can imagine nobody needs a group of Brazilians, you know, going to a hospital or cancer center.

We had to really prove that by going in a small ensemble, singing very soft bossa nova, which bossa nova was born from joyful experiences in Brazil, right?

Talks about nature, the waves, the ocean, the flowers.

So we really need to get together this repertoire.

And it's more on someone that would be ready with the protocols.

Hospital protocols, HIPAA compliance.

So little by little, we feel that it was big steps.

It was not like, "Okay, we are gonna perform in a hospital."

And here we are now.

When we're right there in front of a patient, there's a lot of fears, there's a lot of sorrows.

There's a lot.

We feel the songs that will bring resilience, but also recognize the fears, the pain that they're going through.

It's not that we're singing and kind of isolating.

You know what I mean?

The part of the pain and the sorrow is one.

We recognize your pain.

We know what you're going through, but maybe you'd like to play with us.

How about some shaker?

It’s inviting them to come.

We don't invade them, but we invite them.

And bossa nova is just perfect for the kind of action.

I think music has a way of ministering to your soul.

And every time I go in for this, you know, scans or whatever, I always want music.

And when I came today for my infusion and I heard the ladies singing out in the hall, it was beautiful.

I mean, I wanted to stop and listen.

And I think if they were singing in this room now, it would give me comfort, give me peace, and take your mind away from what's happening and what's going on in your life.

♪ Ba, ya, badum, ba, ya, ba, da, ba, da, ba ♪ ♪ Ba, ya, badum ♪ When we're building a repertoire, we always thinking about reducing stress, because music has already a lot of, you know, research about reducing stress.

And also, songs that we feel that are joyful, but not too hyper.

We understand that the happy chemicals that the brain releases, endorphins, dopamine, oxytocin, we already know all those.

We have plenty of our researchers to prove that, right?

But to bring that into action and applying that to repertoire, to arrangements.

The arrangements that Brazilian Voices does, most of them are made by Beatriz Malnic.

She's very careful how she's gonna make those harmonies to feel so organic, so natural, and so complex at the same time.

♪ Ya, ba, de, de, ta, ma ♪ ♪ Ba, ya, badum, ba, ya, ba, da, ba, da, ba ♪ I would say that 98% of the patients and staff totally are responding positivity to the action because they know even if for three minutes... Because we don't engage in dialogue, right?

It's different than music therapy, artists in residence.

They know that in that very moment, they might have, like, three minutes just to allow themselves to relax, to acceptance, and to play and ride there the happy chemicals.

There's a lot of release of happy chemicals, a lot of engagement that kind of is reducing perceived pain.

[Beatriz] Bossa nova is a genre that's really good for healthcare settings.

You hear the notes, and you can reproduce the notes.

But when you hear harmony, you cannot reproduce harmonies.

So it's really embracing.

People really feel embraced by the harmony.

♪ Ba, ya, badum, ba, ya, ba, da, ba, da, ba ♪ We are a group now of 32 singers.

Only a smaller group goes to hospitals, right?

But we perform also in theaters, in different venues.

We had the pleasure of performing two songs with Guilherme Arantes, which he is a great Brazilian composer.

He invited us to perform in Carnegie Hall.

We performed two songs there.

Check the box.

He was amazing.

And also YoYo Ma.

He was so kind, and he invited us to perform "Girl from Ipanema" with us in one of the events here to support our local community as well.

And was such a dream to be able to get to know his wonderful soul.

♪ I think I could make it now, the rain is gone ♪ Once a year, we do this audition open to our community.

We invite people from different countries, different language, Americans.

We have Americans as well, from New York, from California.

They just wanna learn and be able to have this platform very organized to go to the community and serve the community.

The level of commitment these singers have, it's just unbelievable.

Brazilian Voices put together this methodology that really helps them to understand not only selfexpression, how to walk in this environment, but also the projection, harmonies, songs, repertoire.

There's a specific repertoire that we bring to the arts and healing program, right?

It usually takes six months to one year for the singers to be able to master the repertoire and learn how to walk the walk in the hospitals.

♪ I can see all obstacles in my way ♪ The community in the medical venues right now are just unbelievable.

We receive so much support from the nurses, from the doctors and patients because they know music is medicine.

♪ Such shiny day ♪ ♪ It's gonna be a bright, bright, bright, such shiny day ♪ [Narrator] "Art Loft" is on Instagram, @artloftsfl.

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