HistoryMiami, awaiting new home, envisions the future

While HistoryMiami Museum awaits the county’s final MetroCenter Project plan that could move its location, the museum has utilized the time gathering insights from the community.

The museum has for some months been gathering insights from key stakeholders and utilizing different methods of soliciting community feedback from surveys that were sent to the public, and facilitating community workshops to get a better idea of how HistoryMiami will be envisioned in the future.

“Every department has been working on these exercises that are informing and inspiring the process of our new vision,” said Natalia Crujeiras, HistoryMiami’s CEO and executive director. “We’re very excited about the direction that it’s going and it’s good that we are able to think about our future in this way.”

The museum is part of the county’s MetroCenter project plan that would redesign about 17 acres of county-owned land that include the present museum into a MetroCenter community. When finished, the museum would grow 50% larger than its current location at 101 W Flagler St.

The MetroCenter project is targeted to be a 24-hour community with housing, an intermodal transit terminal, educational buildings, parks and new cultural facilities. The whole proposed project could take up to 15 years.

The Smithsonian Affiliate museum’s location is not predetermined but should be close to the main library to create a Cultural Arts Campus. The new museum is proposed to have classrooms with a 50-person capacity, reading rooms, an event space for up to 300 people with a kitchen, a space for collections and archives and exhibition preparation and fabrication, offices, employee support areas for staff of up to 50 people and additional storage.

Other specialized features sought for HistoryMiami include a dedicated climate-controlled space for collections, a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified building, and space dedicated to researchers to consult collections.

But in the meantime, in the midst of the strategic planning, “we also continue bringing good exhibitions and programming in our current location,” Ms. Crujeiras said.

Last month, History Miami saw over 4,200 visitors for the opening of the Mythic Creatures exhibition, which is on display through March 2024. Upcoming events include the return of Free Family Fun Day with “Celebrating Korean Culture” on Sept. 9.

HistoryMiami was founded in 1962 as the Historical Museum of Southern Florida by the Historical Association of Southern Florida. In 1983, the museum moved from a site near Vizcaya to its current location, where it now is spread over two buildings. In 2010, the arts institution was renamed HistoryMiami Museum during its 70th anniversary.

The museum is home to over 37,000, artifacts from prehistoric archaeological finds to 20th century Afro-Cuban folk art, has more than 1 million historical images, and is considered one of the most important in Florida.

“We have an opportunity that I think happens once in a generation to envision the museum of the city,” Ms. Crujeiras added. “We deserve a world-class museum that is open to everybody where everyone sees their story presented and where we can feel like a diverse community that constantly reinvent themselves and hopefully discover that there’s more that connects us to one another than things that separate us. Let’s focus on that and dream big for the new museum of Miami.”