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The museum in 1986 christened a 75,000-square-foot
building designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. It
features a modernist design of dramatic angles. The
inaugural exhibit honored “An American Renaissance,”
with painting and sculptures from the past 40 years.

In the early 2000s, the museum saw record attendance,
first in 2003, with 150,000 patrons coming to see “St.
Peter and the Vatican.” The following year the museum
scored again by displaying Princess Diana’s gowns,
including her wedding dress. In 2005, another 750,000
visitors came to see an exhibit of Egyptian antiquities. William J. Glackens
In the Luxembourg, c. 1896
The museum in 2008 began an alliance with Nova Oil on canvas
NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale; bequest of Ira D. Glackens
Southeastern University. For the museum, it meant access to
Nova’s ability to raise funds. For Nova, it gave the museum, and include works by Cecily Brown,
university a home for its arts degree programs. To honor Barbara Kruger, and Kara Walker.
the new partnership, the museum was renamed NSU Art
The show came about after Clearwater and her staff began
Museum Fort Lauderdale
going through the extensive collection. She said she found
Caroline Carrara, managing broker of EWM Realty themes and connections between pieces that might
International (EWM) Las Olas branch in Fort Lauderdale, otherwise seem disconnected. “It was a significant
says a pivotal moment for the museum came in 2013. collection and now that we’re doing research on it, we’re
That’s when it hired Bonnie Clearwater as curator, pulling making some amazing discoveries,” she says. “The
her away from the Museum of Contemporary Art North collection was built to be an inter-locking narrative. They all
Miami, where she had spent 18 years. seem to take certain themes and subjects, and that’s what
“The museum did a 360 when they hired Bonnie Clearwater we’re displaying with this show.”
away from Miami,” Carrara says. “She has made great
strides with the exhibitions, events and publicity.” SIXTY YEARS OF FRANK STELLA

Clearwater says the goal is to stay true to the museum’s It seemed appropriate for the museum’s 60th anniversary
roots, even as it becomes known internationally. “We that it would display the 60 years of work from American
remain humble, maybe not in size but in spirit,” she says. painter, printmaker, and sculptor Frank Stella. From New
York, Stella’s work has helped define minimalism and post-
PERMANENT COLLECT ON DISPLAY painterly abstraction.
Later this year, the museum will display works from its “Frank Stella: Experiment and Change” includes 300
permanent collection, and many will not have been paintings, drawings, and sculpture. It serves as a timeline,
previously seen publicly. tracking alongside Stella’s own trajectory from minimalism
to maximalism. Among the headliners of the exhibit is
The collection, valued at $75 million, is one of the largest in
Florida, with more than 7,000 works. That includes the
largest collection anywhere of work by American painter
William J. Glackens and among the most significant
holdings in America of avant-garde European Cobra artists.
The permanent collection also includes key New York
School artists, including Frank Stella, Joan Mitchell, and Lee
Krasner. There’s a significant collection of arts of America,
African and Oceanic Tribal Arts, and Latin American and
Cuban art. Those include examples by Diego Rivera, José
Clemente Orozco, and Joaquin Torres-Garcia.
Fort Lauderdale residents David Horvitz and Francie Bishop
Good recently gave the museum a gift of 100 works from Frank Stella
their art collection. They have yet to be displayed at the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale

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