Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) welcomed more than 600 artists, philanthropists, and museum supporters to the 13th annual Art + Soul party, the museum’s premier social and fundraising event in celebration of the PAMM Fund for Black Art, which supports the purchase and showcase of contemporary art by Black artists for the museum’s permanent collection. The museum raised more than $1.5 million in support of the Fund.
During the celebration, Sandra and Tony Tamer, Director Franklin Sirmans announced the Ambassadors for Black Art’s newest acquisition, Horn Seller (2023) by Lubaina Himid. Past acquisitions for the museum’s permanent collection include works by Lauren Halsey, Willie Cole, Carrie Mae Weems, Dawoud Bey, Terry Adkins, Romare Bearden, Kevin Beasley, Ed Clark, Theresa Chromati, Ebony G. Patterson, Isaac Julien, Lorraine O’Grady, Faith Ringgold, Tschabalala Self, Vaughn Spann, Juana Valdes, Nari Ward, Kennedy Yanko, and more.
Himid is the winner of the 2017 Turner Prize and this year’s representative of Great Britain at the Venice Biennale. A pioneer of art and activism in the Black British Arts Movement of the 1980s, Himid’s Horn Seller (2023) comes from her 2024 exhibition Street Sellers at Greene Naftali, a series of large-scale figurative paintings that foreground the dignity of street laborers. Rendered in vibrant acrylics, the figure of the horn seller stands poised, elegantly dressed, and equipped with the tools of trade. Himid’s composition resists anonymity: the seller is not a generic type, but a subject imbued with agency, presence, and grace. By drawing upon historical prints of merchants and peddlers while infusing them with contemporary resonance, Himid bridges temporalities, situating the act of selling within broader narratives of migration, survival, and cultural exchange. The painting’s scale and chromatic intensity elevate the everyday into the monumental, affirming the seller’s role as both worker and bearer of history. In Horn Seller, Himid continues her lifelong project of rewriting the gaps of the historical record, insisting that the overlooked lives of street vendors are brought to the foreground of economic prosperity, community, and growth.
Himid’s Horn Seller resonates with works in PAMM’s permanent collection that interrogate identity, labor, and cultural history. It dialogues with artists who, like Himid, insist on the visibility of those excluded from dominant narratives. The painting’s scale and vibrancy align with PAMM’s holdings of contemporary figurative practices, while its historical grounding expands the museum’s engagement with diasporic histories and postcolonial critique.
The evening honored Fab 5 Freddy, an artist and seismic cultural figure who helped shape the street art movement and who led the charge of early graffiti artists moving into galleries. The original host of the groundbreaking show Yo! MTV Raps, Fab 5 Freddy’s work in film and television also includes co-producing, starring in, and composing music for the cult classic film Wild Style. This March, Fab 5 Freddy is publishing “Everybody's Fly,” a memoir with Penguin Random House, which will help retell the history of that cultural moment from his uniquely powerful perspective.
“Fab 5 Freddy’s work has consistently dissolved boundaries between so-called high and popular culture, creating space for under-recognized creativity to be seen, heard, and valued on a global stage. To many, he is a household name—the face of the groundbreaking Yo! MTV Raps and a visionary director for icons like Snoop Dogg and Queen Latifah. But to the art world, he is the bridge between punk and hip hop; graffiti made for public space and made for the private gallery; and the proverbial worlds of uptown and downtown… We are honored to celebrate an artist whose influence continues to reverberate across generations,” said Franklin Sirmans, Sandra and Tony Tamer director.
Guests enjoyed cocktails, music by Deep Fried Funk and DJ Aya, and dancing, as well as a curated dinner by Chef Raheem Sealey.
Attendees also had the opportunity to view the museum’s current exhibitions which include: Elliot and Erick Jiménez: El Monte, the first major museum show by the identical twin brothers and photography duo; Shadows and Traces: Selections from PAMM’s Collection, which presents work by women artists across photography and printmaking exploring memory, identity, and the lasting imprints of lived experience; and Woody De Othello: coming forth by day, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in his hometown, presenting sculptural works that examine the relationship between body, earth, and spirit through material, form, and ancestral reference.
Proceeds from Art + Soul presented by Baldwin Richardson Foods Co. benefit the PAMM Fund for Black Art. Art + Soul 2026 is made possible by Founding Support from the Knight Foundation and Jorge M. and Darlene Pérez, Platinum Sponsor Miami-Dade County Commissioner Keon Hardemon, and Gold Sponsor J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Additional sponsors include Lincoln Financial Group, CW Advisors, BankUnited, NA, and Hennessy.
Image credit: Morgan Sophia Photography and WorldRedEye.com
