In Wednesday’s (10/3) New York Times, Robin Pogrebin writes, “Many architects would be wary of touching a beloved Miami landmark like the multicolored Bacardi complex on Biscayne Boulevard. But the architect Frank Gehry is a fan of the organization that just purchased it: the National YoungArts Foundation, a nonprofit that helps aspiring high school artists. He has had a long relationship with the founders of YoungArts—Lin Arison and her husband, Ted—who also created the New World Symphony, for which Mr. Gehry designed a new center in Miami. And Mr. Gehry was intrigued by the foundation’s mandate: designing a master plan to convert the 3.5-acre former corporate campus into a multidisciplinary arts complex that will include year-round cultural programming. … Ms. Arison and her husband, the founder of Carnival Cruise Lines, who died in 1999, created YoungArts in 1981 as the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, envisioning it as an organization that would develop talented young artists in the visual, literary and performing arts through mentoring, master classes and access to scholarships. … But over the last couple of years YoungArts has determined that it needs a permanent home, having operated out of a downtown Miami office building and borrowed spaces.”
Posted October 4, 2012
