Bass Museum of Art Reception For New Exhibit UNNATURAL 9/8/12
Bass Museum of Art Reception For New Exhibit UNNATURAL 
Saturday, Sept. 8, 2012, 7 to 10 p.m.
8 p.m. walk-through with the artists
Bass Museum of Art
2100 Collins Ave.
Miami Beach, FL 33139
www.bassmuseum.org
Bass Museum of Art invites art aficionados to mingle over complimentary cocktails and live music during the upcoming opening reception for its newest exhibit, UNNATURAL, on Saturday, Sept. 8, 2012 from 7 to 10 p.m. This special event will include a walk-through tour with the curator, Tami Katz-Freiman, and several featured artists from 8 to 8:30 p.m. The reception is free to members and basspass holders, and $10 for non-members. Live beats will be spun by DJ Terence Tabeau, and complimentary valet parking will be provided.
UNNATURAL presents scientific, romantic, conceptual, poetic, sensual and ecological concepts of nature through a variety of strategies that reflect advances in technology in the 21st century. The artists selected for UNNATURAL come from diverse cultural backgrounds, with a majority being Israeli-born. The artists’ work in a wide range of media, including video, photography, sculpture and installation, blurring the boundaries between traditionally represented nature and culture.
Artists confirmed to attend the reception include: Meirav Heiman and Yossi Ben Shoshan, Michal Shamir, Hilja Keading, Blane De St. Croix, Samantha Salzinger, Antony Aziz + Samuel Cucher and Wendy Wischer.
UNNATURAL runs through Nov. 4, 2012. Regular Museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.
Interviews with exhibit curator Tami Katz-Freiman, or Silvia Karman Cubina, Executive Director and Chief Curator for Bass Museum of Art, are available upon request.
Tami Katz-Freiman is an art historian, curator and critic, based in Miami. Until recently, she served as the Chief Curator of the Haifa Museum of Art (2005-2010). She has curated numerous group and solo exhibitions in prominent museums in Israel and the US, where she lived and worked between 1994 and 1999. Her most notable project in collaboration with the Bass Museum was Desert Cliché: Israel Now—Local Images, a traveling exhibition co-curated with Amy Cappellazzo that debuted at the Bass Museum of Art on April 1997. Between 2008 and 2010, she was teaching at the Art History Department at Tel Aviv University and at the International Curatorial Studies Program of the Kalisher Art School in Tel Aviv. She has published extensively in books, catalogues and magazines devoted to contemporary art. Her most recent exhibition Critical Mass: Contemporary Art from India (co-curated with Rotem Ruff) is currently shown at the Herta and Paul Amir new building of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
When the words “pastry” and “Miami” come together, the first thought that usually comes to mind for locals and tourists, alike, is Cuban pastry – those little geometric shapes of crispy, lardy, flakiness most famously filled with guava paste and/or cream cheese.  Cuban culture and cuisine have come to be almost synonymous with Miami culture, and apart from the plethora of Cuban bakeries on almost every corner in western Miami, practically every supermarket in South Florida carries pastelitos and croqueticas.  However, after having moved to North Miami Beach and then bouncing around different neighborhoods in the northeastern part of Dade County, I discovered that Cuban pastries are not as prevalent in this part of the Magic City as they might be in Hialeah, Little Havana, Kendall, or Coral Gables.  Whereas Español might be the language of choice in those neighborhoods, Kreyòl is the lingua franca in places like North Miami, North Miami Beach, Miami Shores, and Little Haiti where it’s easier to find a place to grab a box of griot (spicy fried pork chunks) and a Choucoune (champagne cola)  than it is to find a Cuban sandwich and a cafecito.  Haitian culture is very prominent in northeastern Miami, which means that Spanglish phrases widely accepted in other parts of the city are usually met with blank stares (I learned this the hard way), and the chances of finding a fresh guava and cheese pastry can be slim to none.
Discovering Haitian cuisine is a gastronomic revelation for any true foodie.  While the cuisine is unpretentious and simple, the flavors are bold and spicy, oftentimes quite unique, and demonstrate a very African culinary aesthetic paired with a very French sophistication.  One area in which this cross-cultural fusion of techniques and palates can be experienced almost perfectly is in a Haitian patty, which is an anglicization of the Creole word “pate” (pronounced pah-tey) derived from the French word “patisserie”, which simply means pastry.  In form, it more closely resembles a Cuban pastelito than a Jamaican patty.  Like Cuban pastries, Haitian patties consist of delicate, flakey puff pastry surrounding some sort of filling, but the similarities end there.  The main difference between the two pastries is that while Cuban pastries are best known for their sweet fillings, Haitian patties are almost exclusively savory, and even when comparing  savory pastries from both cuisines, Haitian patties are noticeably spicier and have bolder flavors.  The most typical fillings are ground beef, ground chicken, salted cod (bacalao), smoked herring, and ground turkey.  There is also a difference in the crusts between Cuban pastries and Haitian patties.  While Cuban pastries place value on crispiness and have more brittle crusts that are glazed to complement the usually sweet fillings, Haitian patties go unglazed and place emphasis on producing as many impossibly delicate layers as possible.  Like most pastries, Haitian patties are best when they are fresh out of the oven in the morning, making them an ideal choice for a breakfast on the go, especially if you’re one who prefers something savory for breakfast over something sweet.  There are two main shapes to take into account with Haitian patties that usually denote the two most popular fillings: beef patties (and sometimes chicken) are square while cod patties (and sometimes herring) are triangular.
