The nationally acclaimed artist Mira Lehr, celebrated as “the Godmother of Miami’s Art Scene,” has been selected for several prominent exhibitions, art fairs, events and launches during the eagerly awaited return of Art Basel Season this year in Miami, USA.
Sixty years ago, when the pioneer eco-feminist artist co-founded one of America’s first-ever co-ops for women artists in 1961, it was hard to imagine during that male-dominated era how powerfully Lehr’s career would continue to take flight six decades later ― as such a force of nature.
At the bold age of 87, she is creating more new art than ever before. The demand for Lehr’s work is evident in the lineup of shows, museum acquisitions, commissions, and major events leading up to Miami Art Week 2021.
International recognition of Lehr’s artistic trajectory rises to even greater heights this year ― Skira Editore, one of the world’s leading publishers of art books, will host a private invitation-only event during Art Basel Miami Beach to announce the new, 420-page book Mira Lehr: Arc of Nature, the Complete Monograph by Skira.
Festival-goers who attend the U.S. premiere of the Art with Me festival will come face to face with a new activation of Lehr’s creative vision in a dramatic setting right on the beach. The festival has chosen Lehr’s large-scale Mangrove Labyrinth sculptures for this year’s tribal gathering.
The Deering Estate has chosen Lehr for its season opener, with the new solo exhibition Mira Lehr: Regenerative Rhythms. Curated by Melissa Diaz, the show features all new works by Lehr created in 2021 that have never before been exhibited.
One of Lehr’s recent museum acquisitions is a monumental installation that will be exhibited for visitors to the art fairs front-and-center at a prime location in the heart of South Beach ― Sacred Dreams by Mira Lehr is comprised of 183 aerial sculptures.
It was gifted to the Jewish Museum of Florida on Miami Beach during the pandemic closure by the collector Dr. Robert Feldman, and is now on view as a permanent museum installation. A detail of this ceiling installation is the cover of the new Skira book about Mira Lehr.
Art With Me is an immersive festival that combines art, music, workshops, wellness, and cultural experiences into multiple day-into-night journeys that are curated to inspire change through creative encounters.
The festival will travel from Tulum, Mexico to debut in Miami from November 26-28 at historic Virginia Key Beach Park.
A select roster of leading visual artists and sculptors are invited, alongside headline musicians and DJs who will perform on three beachfront stages.
Mira Lehr’s large-scale Mangrove Labyrinth sculptures will be featured, among the giant art installations chosen by the festival organizers to exhibit.
“I am thrilled that my Mangrove Labyrinth sculptures will be enjoyed by the festival-goers at Art With Me, in the beautiful setting along the ocean’s edge,” said Mira Lehr.
“Mangroves are the great protectors of our planet’s ecosystem. They protect against flooding, holding back erosion and guarding the shoreline. Visitors to the Festival will feel like they are walking inside the root systems, and this emphasizes their guardian status,” adds Lehr.
The installation consists of six commanding sculptures, each constructed from twisted marine ropes that have been stiffened with steel rods, coated with resin and finished off with fire.
Rising from the floor to tower eight feet above the ground, this thicket of abstracted mangroves is meant to enfold viewers and evoke what it feels like to be within the dense tangle of roots that characterize actual mangrove forests. The festival is pricing Mira Lehr’s Mangrove Labyrinth at $275,000.
Lehr’s new works have also been selected to debut during the INK Miami Art Fair. Flying Horse Editions recently chose Mira Lehr for their 2021 visiting artist residency, and the new works she created there will be featured during Art Basel week at the Flying Horse Editions Suite at the INK Miami Art Fair.
“These new works by Mira Lehr, never exhibited before, resonate in our post-quarantine pandemic period. Prodding us to consider our relationship with nature,” said Melissa Diaz, the Deering Estate’s Museum Curator.
“In the quietude of the long months of 2020, when much of the world was remaining indoors, the natural world appeared to undergo a regenerative effect. The flourishing plant and wildlife helped provide humanity a renewed sense of hope at the resilience of our planet. Through her six decades long commitment to the growth of the Miami art community, Lehr has become an icon of feminist and environmental art. The urgency of a single, vertical drip in Lehr’s paintings speaks to the intensity with which we face ourselves in this Covid world,” adds Diaz.
This exhibition includes a selection of works that reflect Lehr’s ongoing dialogue with the power and unbounded quality of the natural world.
Mira Lehr’s solo and group exhibitions number more than 300. She is a graduate of Vassar College (1956) with a degree in Art History, under the mentorship of Linda Nochlin, the renowned feminist art historian.
Lehr has been collected by major institutions across the U.S., including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art (Washington), the Getty Museum Research Center (Los Angeles), the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the Perez Art Museum Miami, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (NY), the Margulies Collection, the Mennello Museum of American Art, MOCA North Miami, the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, and the Orlando Museum of Art.