Miami’s Bakehouse Art Complex celebrates its 40th anniversary with a three part exhibition titled “Bakehouse at Forty: Past, Present, Future”. In this video we have a look at the “Present” section of the show, which offers a glimpse at the creative life of the Bakehouse Art Complex today. The exhibition showcases pieces from 28 current resident and associate artists. Instead of focusing on one central them, Present captures the diverse range of viewpoints, practices, and identities that characterize Bakehouse Arts Complex.
The Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami, housed in a historic 1926 Art Deco bakery transformed into artist studios in 1985, celebrates its 40th anniversary and the building’s centennial with the exhibition Bakehouse at Forty: Past, Present, Future.
Past assembles archival fragments to evoke the site’s evolving identity, from industrial bakery to cultural anchor, weaving nonlinear histories that inform the present.
Present showcases works by 28 resident and associate artists, capturing diverse perspectives, South Florida’s sense of place, intergenerational ties, and mutual support amid cultural precarity.
Future envisions a pioneering campus designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture, integrating affordable housing, studios, and public spaces to foster creative fusion and combat displacement in a rapidly urbanizing Miami.
The exhibition has been curated by Krys Ortega and runs until April 17, 2026.
Bakehouse at Forty: Past, Present, Future. Miami (USA), December 4, 2025.
00:00 – Intro
00:29 – Gabriela Gamboi: Fragment – f(a,b & c), 2025
00:48 – Sterling Rook; Gerbi Tsesarskaia
01:05 – Leo Castañeda; Sandra Ramos
01:17 – Robert Chambers; Amanda Linares
01:40 – Troy Simmons; Adler Guerrier
01:53 – Maria-Alejandra Icaza Paredes; Maritza Caneca
02:16 – Shawna Moulton
02:32 – Susan Kim Alvarez; Thomas Bils
02:51 – Patricia Monclus & Malcolm Lauredo
03:03 – Martina Tuaty; Cristina Pettersson
03:20 – Tonya Vegas; Noah Cribb
03:36 – Adler Guerrier; Diana Eusebio
04:02 – Javier Barrera; Tom Virgin
04:21 – Martina Tuaty
04:34 – xxx
04:48 – Amanda Linares; T. Eliott Mansa
05:12 – Nicole Combeau
05:24 – Rhea Leonard
05:36 – Outro
Exhibition text (excerpt):
In early 1986, Bakehouse opened its doors to the public in an abandoned Art Deco–era industrial bakery—the American Bakeries Company. As the organization celebrates its fortieth birthday and the centennial of its iconic building, we present this multi-faceted installation. To situate Bakehouse within the broader arc of Miami’s social, cultural, and economic development, we also share a century-long timeline, quotes about the bakery and Bakehouse drawn from public sources, and a commissioned audio work by Archival Feedback evoking the sounds of the past one hundred years. We invite you to join us in exploring decades of legacy, community, and vision.
Past, Present, Future is a tribute to the artists, advocates, funders, and community members who have shaped and championed the institution over the past forty years. It acknowledges the organization’s heritage as an artist-founded and -serving space, while showcasing the vibrancy of Miami’s creative community today. Our future vision is a bold one: a transformed live-work-play campus that stands as a national model for culture-centered development—fueled by creativity and rooted in community.
PAST
In 1926, this building opened as the American Bakeries Company—an Art Deco-era factory designed to feed a booming city. Through hurricanes, economic shifts, and neighborhood change, it nourished the community for half a century before falling silent in 1978. In 1985, artists reclaimed the abandoned bakery, transforming ovens into studios and production lines into spaces of creation. Bakehouse has been a working home for Miami’s artists ever since, serving as an anchor of culture for the surrounding neighborhoods while providing vital sustenance for Miami’s growing creative communities.
PAST—or more precisely, the many different pasts that intersect here—draws on history, but it does not attempt to trace events in a straight line or return to a single point of origin. Instead, it gathers fragments from archival documents, photographs, catalogs, brochures, legal documents, and media that, when combined together, convey the shifting identity of the Bakehouse over time.
This vision of the past need not be accurate. What matters is how we weave separate moments into a larger story—one that allows us to live more fully in the present while imagining the future with confidence. The Bakehouse tale is still being written. What has already unfolded gives us a clear sense of the direction ahead, but there will always be more to remember.
PRESENT
Present offers a dynamic glimpse of the creative life of Bakehouse today, foregrounding the multiplicity of voices and modes of expression by which artists both reflect and reimagine the world around us. Against the backdrop of great precarity for cultural producers everywhere, Bakehouse artists have forged their own systems of support– not only through shared resources, but through daily acts of showing up for one another. Across this space, ideas flow beyond studio walls, conversations spill into hallways, and countless gestures of kinship and collaboration become integral to the artists’ practice. Representing a microcosm within a broader cultural ecosystem, these fusions– whether intentional, intuitive, or incidental– embody the transformative possibilities of collective care and community building.
Featuring work by 28 current resident and associate artists, Present reflects the breadth of perspectives, disciplines, and identities that define Bakehouse and, by extension, Miami’s cultural landscape. Rather than advancing a singular theme, the exhibition traces various shared touchpoints, highlighting a strong sense of place rooted in the specificity of South Florida; generational connections and divergences; and an emphasis on the here and now that resonates as both timely and timeless.
FUTURE
Future is a compound, where culture compounds. A place where creative forces shed boundaries and ignite transformative movements. Not mixing. Not blending. Fusion—where separate energies combine to spark something greater. Future expands culture’s footprint through the design of a campus where extraordinary minds collide, collaborate, and confront the urgencies of our time. It resists complacency, demands authenticity, and insists on engagement that matters.
For four decades, Bakehouse has been the working home to hundreds of Miami’s artists—providing affordable spaces, opportunities, and community to sustain creative practice. But as Miami has rapidly urbanized, artists and neighborhoods alike have faced rising rents, displacement, and the erosion of cultural space. In 2018, Bakehouse set out to reimagine its role: not only as a place for artmaking but as an anchor for its neighborhood. Over the past eight years, working with artists, neighbors, civic leaders, and planners—alongside the Wynwood Norte Community Enhancement Association—we helped shape the Wynwood Norte Community Vision Plan, which the City of Miami codified as a special zoning overlay to safeguard affordability and character. With that tool in place and the urgency clear, we partnered with Michael Maltzan Architecture to advance a bold vision: FUTURE—a pioneering campus that integrates affordable housing, studios, and public spaces as a model of culture-driven development, rooted in community and fueled by creativity.
