The Bass Museum recently announced that Philippe Vergne — who has run museums from Marseille to Minneapolis to Los Angeles and, since 2019, Serralves Porto — will soon arrive in Miami Beach as the institution’s first artistic director and chief curator. He begins in October, sharing leadership of the museum with Executive Director Silvia Carman Copenha, in a role the two invented over months of conversation. He inherits an institution in the middle of a transformation, with Johnston Markle’s expansion on the way and Art Basel Miami Beach just two blocks from his front door. We caught up with him to hear more about his new gig.
You described the move as a return to organization after years of running organizations, saying you wanted to know if you “still have it.” I suppose this is kind of a joke, but after three decades and several management positions, why would you want to return to practical organizational work?
Well, it’s just kind of a joke. At the end of the day that’s what I love most. Dialogue with artists, accompanying their vision, and learning from them. I never stopped orchestrating, I had to do it less in the director’s role. Years ago, I learned from my friend and colleague Adam Weinberg when he was director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, that even as a director you never stop curating.
Being a director allowed me to have a different impact on the organization, allowing me to give opportunities to a younger generation of curators, which was very important to me because when I was a younger curator, I benefited from people who trusted me. I was fascinated by the challenge of being a manager, but be warned, I have been a manager of very special organisations. They have all been artist-centred institutions, where the role of the director is different because they never lose direct contact with the artists. In Europe especially, the role of the director is also the artistic director, unlike American institutions where there is often discrimination, so I have been able to organize a lot over the last few years.
Eighteen months ago, I curated an exhibition in Serralves with eight artists called “Physical Evidence,” and I realized that I was missing this curatorial role. I’m 60 now, and I want to do what I wish I knew how to do well.
This post is new, developed with Silvia Carman Copenha, whom you have known for years. How do you envision dividing the responsibilities of the artistic director and chief curator between you in practice?
I see it as a partnership. The first is about building an institution. The other relates to enterprise programming. It is about the synchronization of processes, aspirations and inspiration. Sylvia Cobinha and her Board of Directors are credited with shaping this new position at The Bass through our conversations. She and I were talking about where we are in our careers now, and she was telling me that she wanted to be more of an organization builder, and I told her that I wanted to be more of a curator, so I think it really started there. She really likes to build an organization and she said she might be willing to give up the organization, and I really like thinking about software and organization, and I might be willing to give up the institutional part. It was really spontaneous like that conversation.
Then we got into the nitty-gritty of it, trying to find out what it meant to work in this partnership. For my part, this means participating in exhibitions, collections, parallel programs and education, all in partnership with Sylvia, alleviating some of this pressure on her. Meanwhile, Bass is planning an ambitious expansion, and I know how exhausting that is as a director: The foundation must grow, through fundraising, planning, and perhaps board development, and in parallel, the program must grow along with the foundation. This is how I see this dialogue and partnership happening.
When we started the conversation, I didn’t know that the architects of the expansion would be Johnston Markley, who I know very well from my years in Los Angeles, and also because Mark Lee came to visit Porto to see the work of Alvaro Siza, the architect of the Serralves Museum, so it all comes together. It’s a new route for the museum and for Sylvia and me, so we’ll give it a try.
You and Sylvia have mentioned shared enthusiasms such as Haeju Yang, whose bass catalog you co-edited, and Allura and Calzadilla. What do these artists tell us about the kind of program you want to build here, and to what extent should the chief curator’s personal taste reshape the direction of the institution?
It would be too early to name names yet. But if I look at the history and vision of Sylvia’s program and at my own work, I would say it might be about the pleasure of rest and confrontation, and of thinking about the museum as a permanent biennale. An ongoing and evolving group exhibition. Personal taste is a bit like having an accent. You own it, compose with it, fight it, and own it.
I look at the show and the conversations I had with Sylvia, even before she was on bass, and we have common ground. I remember seeing a wonderful exhibition by Allora & Calzadilla that she curated, and it was amazing. There is one artist, profiled in the upcoming programme, who I worked with at Serralves, who is internationally based and works in sound style installation with a lot of musical experimentation and performance, which you also see in Haegue Yang’s experience coming from Korea. You have artists from Puerto Rico, Korea, Paris, and the Middle East, and it gives you a sense of the values we share. I think that in terms of software, we may be in a comfort zone, and what we need to do is challenge it, and that’s where the conversation becomes rich and important.
I happened to see you not long ago in Porto to attend the opening of the Duerckheim Collection at the Serralves Foundation, a fine European institution set on 45 acres of abundant nature. It’s quite a dramatic change to go from that to Miami. What are the challenges of programming for a Miami audience?
Well, both locations have unique natural settings and environments, Art Deco architecture, Pritzker Prize expansions, and growing ambitions. Challenges…it’s a privilege. For me, the institution is the artists, and the commitment to the institution is to the artists. Both places are very different, of course – with different geography, architecture and cultural contexts – but I tend to see these differences less as obstacles and more as opportunities. My primary commitment has always been to the artists, and the Foundation’s role is to serve them meaningfully within its specific context. To do it well, I have to be present.
City hopping has always been part of how I learned. Every transition – from Marseille to Minneapolis, from Minneapolis to New York, from New York to Los Angeles and then to Porto – involved a sharp cultural contrast. Again, getting out of my comfort zone is important to me. In Miami, this means recognizing its special energy – its diversity, internationality, seasonality, and responding to it without reducing it to a stereotype. You build a program by listening to artists, audiences and the city itself.
I have always admired colleagues who have spent decades in a single institution, building deep institutional memory. My path has been more nomadic, and this has shaped the way I approach programming. Each step was an opportunity to learn again and recalibrate. But the constant, wherever you are, is the same: the institution exists for artists. If you stay consistent, the differences between places become less in difficulty and more in probability.
She has held senior positions at a wide range of institutions: the Walker Art Center, the Dia Art Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and now at Serralves. Which of these jobs do you think contributed the most to your development? Where did you learn the most?
All of them. From my first museum in Marseille to Serralves, this is cumulative. I learned a lot from all of them. Different lessons in each institution. They all share one dimension: artists and visitors. It is what connects and connects, and it is the chemistry between and throughout all institutions.
I have overseen expansions before, in Serralves with the Alvaro Siza Pavilion and back in Marseille, and I said that the new architectural form gives the institution a new mission. The Johnston Marklee expansion is already underway at Bass. Have you thought about what new tasks you might open up for that organization?
I would actually frame that a little differently. I don’t think the expansion gives the institution a new mission, whether it’s a museum, a library, or a concert hall. It’s more of an expansion that allows the current mission to grow. If you look at why cultural institutions expand, it is rarely because they change direction. That’s because the mission itself is evolving and deepening, and the building is no longer equipped to support that growth. The need is not conceptual; It’s practical. Programs expand, collections grow, audiences change, and the organization needs the space to respond.
This has certainly been my experience with previous projects: as exhibitions became more ambitious, as collections required greater care and vision, and as public programming expanded, the limits of the existing structure became apparent. The mission remained consistent, but its expression required more space. I see the same path in bass. The expansion will support a growing exhibition program, an evolving collection, and an increased focus on community and visitor engagement. It creates the conditions for the museum to do more, but it does not change its basic purpose. The mission remains the same. And the ability to achieve this is what is expanding.
The Bass is located in Collins Park, two blocks from Art Basel Miami Beach every December. Would it invigorate or intimidate you to be in the shadow of the country’s highest art gallery?
In a very sunny place, shade is a very good place. We are part of an ecological environment, and it is a changing environment. There is a lot that museums can learn from the private sector. When I was a student, and even now, galleries are often where I meet artists for the first time. If you look at how major galleries embrace real estate, archives, publications, education, and parallel programming, there is a lot to gain from this model. I also think about Art Basel – how conversations and conversations became an integral part of the fair. When Sam Keller introduced that, it was a real development.
Of course, the scale of it all is large, but that comes with the territory. In many ways, art galleries have become institutions in themselves. I can’t say they are similar to museums, but they act as a kind of counterpart in the private sector. There is value in that. Every time I visit a gallery, if I leave having discovered some artists I didn’t know or encountered ideas I hadn’t thought of, then something meaningful has happened.
I was thinking more in terms of the gap between museums and the market, as if they don’t work side by side. Now I see it as a relationship with necessary boundaries, like any healthy partnership. Ultimately, if the goal is to serve artists and audiences, we need to find ways to work more closely together.
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