Rising 24 feet above the lawn fronting the chemistry building, the giant arm of Jonathan Borofsky’s “Hammering Man” moves up and down in an endless rhythm.
Across the lake, three volcanic rocks chosen by Michael Heizer for “Elevated, Surface, Depressed” sit on aluminum platforms drawing weeds to their craggy surfaces and scorn from students who ask, “Is this art?”
Above the main plaza, Joan Miro’s strange, horned “Oiseau” stares down from its perch while Isamu Noguchi’s primal granite “Man” stands to the side. Behind the fountain, Alexander Calder’s red “Lion” prances while Jean Dubuffet’s concrete “L’Aleatoire” guards a door.
Borofsky. Heizer. Miro. Noguchi. Calder. Dubuffet. The names may mean little to most of the 26,000 students who attend Florida International University, but Martin Z. Margulies believes everybody should be familiar with these modern masters. So the wealthy Miami developer recently uprooted 42 monumental sculptures from his personal collection on a private Coconut Grove island and transplanted them to FIU’s very public main campus.
The $30 million-plus “long-term loan” of works by some of the world’s best-known contemporary sculptors catapulted FIU’s ArtPark onto the list of the most prestigious university sculpture collections in the nation and transformed the 342-acre campus into a museum without walls.
“These are absolutely outstanding works of art,” said Anne Barclay Morgan, a Florida-based critic for Sculpture magazine. “Anyone who appreciates modern art and, in particular, modern sculpture, will want to go see it.”
An intensely private man who won’t divulge so much as his age, Margulies said his loan was motivated less by art enthusiasts and more by those who know nothing of conceptualism, constructivism, environmentalism, minimalism or any of the other isms that distinguish contempory sculptors from the traditionalists who carved or cast heroic figures from marble or bronze.
He wants to shake the young and uninitiated by the shoulders and say: “Look at this! Appreciate it!” He wants to stimulate their interest and expand their horizons. He wants them to know that today’s sculptors use different materials and new methods to incorporate the new ideas and technologies of our complex society in their works. He wants them to understand that Borofsky, Heizer and Dubuffet are to modern sculpture what the Beatles and Elvis are to rock ‘n’ roll.
“What’s the significance of the Beatles and Elvis Presley?” Margulies asked in a phone interview from New York, which he visits regularly to shop the galleries. “They inspired other musicians to go forward and use them as a point of reference. This is the same thing, in a sense. These (sculptors) are considered legends in the art world.”
An education for the students
If a random sampling is any indication, most students are not yet aware of the significance of these treasures on their campus. Some scoff at Richard Serra’s “Steel Pole and Plate,” which is exactly what its title implies. Others shrug their shoulders at Sol LeWitt’s perfectly symmetrical aluminum “Eight Unit Cube,” once exhibited at the United Nations.
But their eyes widen and their interest grows when told that FIU’s Dahlia Morgan, an art historian and director of The Art Museum on campus, said that walking past the Noguchi on the administration building’s steps down to a Willem de Kooning on the plaza is like “walking from a Michelangelo to a Leonardo de Vinci.”
“He (Margulies) should be thanked because he’s educating me,” said finance major Jorge Gutierrez, 29. “It’s a wonderful gift, whether we appreciate the art or not.”
A graduate of the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, Margulies bought his first monumental sculpture, Tony Rosenthal’s “T-Square,” in 1978 for Grove Isle, the exclusive condominium, club and hotel complex he developed on a 20-acre island in Biscayne Bay.
At the time he didn’t set out to assemble what ARTnews considers one of the top 200 private collections in the world, but, sculpture by sculpture, painting by painting, he did. Today his collection includes more than 600 contemporary pieces, from Picasso to Donald Judd.
“It took on a life of its own,” Margulies said. “This pursuit became something very important to me, aesthetically, intellectually, socially and spiritually. I realized there was more to life than putting together a business deal.”
By 1992, when Hurricane Andrew struck South Dade County and damaged some of the sculptures, Margulies also began to realize it was time for his outdoor collection to find a new home and broader audience. Though public tours of the Sculpture Garden at Grove Isle had been offered since 1980, the garden remained largely the province of the privileged. Just as disturbing to Margulies, Grove Isle’s condo board was tired of paying upkeep for the sculptures and directed management to trim the maintenance budget.
The perfect site
After what FIU’s Morgan describes as a long, slow dance, FIU proved to be the logical place for the Margulies collection. The campus offered wide open, flat spaces and urban, concrete architecture. It had a supportive, enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff, and a long, positive relationship with the collector that was sealed in 1988.
That’s when Morgan asked Margulies if she could borrow William Tucker’s “The Rim” for a Tucker exhibition at the university. Over the months, the 14-foot steel circle that stood at the entrance of FIU’s art museum became a campus landmark. Students met there. The president made important announcements there. As the months stretched into years, Margulies never asked for the piece back.
Instead, he asked Morgan if she would be interested in Miro’s “Oiseau,” the strange, bird-like creature that resembles an ancient fertility idol. Morgan jumped at the chance, and when she and Margulies began looking for the appropriate spot for the bronze sculpture, she gestured at FIU’s main plaza and said: “Look at this huge patio. We could take any number of large pieces.”
Excited, Margulies moved from spot to spot, pointing out which piece could go where, following through by sending the pieces to the campus, a task that involved barges and cranes. The dance was over. FIU was the collection’s new home.
“They really belong there,” Margulies said. “More people see them in a day than saw them in a year at Grove Isle.”
