(Courtesy of HistoryMiami Museum)
A neon shrimp sign from Jumbo’s – a classic soul food joint and desegregation landmark in Liberty City that closed in 2014 – is on display at “It’s a Miami Thing: Highlights from Our Collection” in HistoryMiami.
“Someone once referred to HistoryMiami Museum as Miami-Dade County’s attic,” said Paul S. George, who has been the museum’s resident historian for more than three decades.
This “attic” is filled with all things Miami. Now, with the museum in its 81st year of collecting and Miami celebrating its 125th anniversary of incorporation on July 28, HistoryMiami’s curators have combed through their vast stash to present “It’s a Miami Thing: Highlights from Our Collection.”
“The core idea behind the exhibition, as the subtitle suggests, is to feature highlights of our extensive archival and objects collections,” said Michael Knoll, the museum’s director of curatorial affairs and chief curator.
These items help “tell the stories of our community,” he said, and reflect the uniqueness of the city – they “help make Miami, well, Miami.”
The exhibition opened with a community celebration on July 29 and will remain on display through Jan. 9, 2022.
(Courtesy of HistoryMiami Museum)
A cape belonging to late Latin icon Walter Mercado, the gender nonconforming TV psychic-astrologer.
What have curators taken out of their trunks for this landmark display?
High points of interest include a trademark cape of the late TV psychic-astrologer Walter Mercado – whose 50-year career made him an icon of Spanish-speaking countries across the globe – and the landmark neon “B” sign from the Burdines store that was a quintessential part of downtown Miami from 1947 until it was taken down in 2005. There are the marvelous maritime treasures from a 1622 shipwreck found sunken off the Florida Keys and a circa 1980 airboat from the Everglades, a donation from the Airboat Association of Florida that was delivered and set up specifically for the exhibition.
(Courtesy of HistoryMiami Museum)
A neon shrimp sign from Jumbo’s – a classic soul food joint and desegregation landmark in Liberty City that closed in 2014 – is on display at “It’s a Miami Thing: Highlights from Our Collection” in HistoryMiami.
Jumbo’s, an important part of Black Miami history, is also featured. The classic Liberty City diner, famous for its fried shrimp and chicken, holds the distinction of being the first restaurant in the city to integrate its staff and customers during the civil rights era. One of the restaurant’s signs, a fluorescent shrimp wearing a top hat, will be on display.
“The museum is the repository for so much,” said George. “I could spend months and years and never exhaust everything that’s there. You really could spend half a lifetime going through its collection.”
The exhibition’s curators know visitors don’t have half a lifetime, Knoll said, so they’ve created a framework to showcase the strengths of the collection, divvying hundreds of items up by type of object, from textiles and architectural drawings to archival materials that cover everything from historic signs to cherished letters.
The textiles area is where you’ll find Mercado’s cape and another don’t-miss, according to Knoll: a Bahamas Junkanoo Revue costume, made and worn by ensemble leader Langston Longley.
Featured in the archival area are photographs, maps, architectural records and the one item that never loses its fascination for historian George – a typewritten correspondence from Henry Flagler, considered by many to be the “Father of Miami,” to Julia Tuttle, the so-called “Mother of Miami,” written in April 1895.
In the letter, Flagler agrees that, in exchange for half of Tuttle’s Miami property and the right to build a resort hotel near Biscayne Bay, he would extend his Florida East Coast railroad from West Palm Beach to Miami. Almost exactly one year later, on April 15, 1896, the first train arrived in Miami, and the town was officially incorporated on July 28, 1896.
(Courtesy of HistoryMiami Museum)
A letter from the 1890s from Henry Flagler to Julia Tuttle, as part of their correspondence for the former to extend his railway to Miami.
“In many ways, it is one of the city’s birth notes,” George said. “This (exhibition) can really give a sense of where we’ve come from and, hopefully, what we are going to become. There is such a great variety of artifacts that point to these human experiences.”
In summing up the relevance of HistoryMiami’s exhibition, its historian thinks back to what Miami has been through in the past year, including the most recent tragedy of the Surfside building collapse.
“The past gives us a perspective on today and a point of view of the future,” said George. “The past is really a source of solace during times of crisis.”
ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit source of theater, dance, visual arts, music and performing arts news.