Bass Museum of Art

The Bass Museum in Miami Beach holds the collection, now owned by the city, of John and Johanna Bass. The museum has a decent collection (considering this is Miami) of local and European Art and shows both temporary and permanent exhibits.

Among notable artists the museum's collection includes paintings by Jacob Jordaens, Peter Paul Rubens, Gerard Seghers, Ferdinand Bol, Giovanni Barbagelata, as well as a stunning altarpiece by Italian Renaissance masters Botticelli and Ghirlandaio, one of only a handful of Botticelli's on public view in the United States.

In addition to painting, the collection contains sculptures, works on paper, decorative objects and a handsome textiles selection. The masterpieces in the textiles collection are the famous sixteenth-century Flemish tapestry The Tournament and two monumental nineteenth-century tapestries called The Hunt, by French designer Louis-Marie Baader, which fill two walls on the museum's Grand Ramp that was specially designed to provide adequate space for hanging and proper viewing of these precious treasures.

The Bass Museum occupies what was originally the Miami Beach Public Library and Art Center, which was designed in an Art-Deco style in 1930 by Russell Pancoast, grandson of Miami Beach pioneer John A. Collins. This was Miami's first public building with an exhibition space for the fine arts, and it was designed to preserve the symmetry of the formal gardens of Collins Park, which had been donated to the City by Collins and laid out in the 1920s. This building is now the centerpiece of the city's Art Deco Historic District and was placed on the National Register in 1978. A modern wing was added to the building by architect Aratza Isozaki.