The Bass Museum in Miami Beach has appointed Philippe Vergne as the museum’s inaugural artistic director and chief curator. The French-born museum director joins the Miami Beach institution from a seven-year stint as the director at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, where he led the institution's expansion with its Álvaro Siza Wing, inaugurated in 2024.
“The Bass and Serralves have many similarities, such as both being Art Deco buildings and having extensions designed by Pritzker-winning architects,” Vergne tells The Art Newspaper, referring in the Bass Museum’s case to Pritzker Prize-winning architect Arata Isozaki’s 1995 concept for the institution's campus in Collins Park.
After decades of executive roles at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Dia Art Foundation in New York and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Vergne says his latest move reflects his current priority, which is to be more active as a curator. “It became clear to me that I reached a moment where I want to prioritise working with artists and communities,” he says.
Vergne’s past curatorial accolades include co-organising the 2006 edition of the Whitney Biennial with Chrissie Iles and curating solo exhibitions of artists including Kara Walker, Yves Klein and Mike Kelley at different institutions.
The moment is also right for Bass Museum, where Vergne will succeed former chief curator James Voorhies. The conversations between Vergne and the museum’s executive director Silvia Karman Cubiñá, who are old friends, started over a phone call and, after a few months of back-and-forth, the museum decided to craft a new position which also spans the artistic director role. “We’ve developed this job description for Philippe in an organic way because he has a long history of working on artist commissions and oversee projects from scratch,” Karman Cubiñá says.
Vergne sees ample synchrony between his and Karman Cubiñá’s visions for the Bass. “We are both fans and champions of similar artists,” he says, citing as an example the Puerto Rico-based artist duo Allora & Calzadilla, which is featured in the Bass’scollection and was the subject of an exhibition at the Serralves in 2023. Vergne was also invited to co-edit the catalogue for the Bass’s Haegue Yang exhibition, In the Cone of Uncertainty(2019-20).
View of The Bass and Sylvie Fleury's Eternity Now (2015) from Collins Park
Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy The Bass, Miami Beach
Vergne’s move to the Bass coincides with a critical moment for the institution, which has a staff of just under 40 people. The museum is in the early stages of an expansion that will turn a 22,000-sq.-ft parking lot into new permanent collection galleries, an outdoor patio and an event space. In April, the museum selected the Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee to design the new pavilion, which will be funded in part through $20.1m in city-issued funds as part of a municipal bond authorised by local voters in 2022.
“I’ve been privileged to accumulate over the years the chance to rub shoulders with great practitioners, mentors and architects in different expansions, including my first director role at the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Marseille in 1992,” he Vergne says. “A new architectural form gives an institution a new mission and I am happy to be able to continue this experience.”
The Bass’s current exhibitions include a survey of Jack Pierson’s photography and a presentation of Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s 2006 film piece Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (until 19 July) timed to coincide with the 2026 Fifa World Cup. Vergne will start in his new role on 1 October, just two months before the museum becomes a compulsory art-world destination during Art Basel Miami Beach, held two blocks away each December.
