The Colombian collectors and philanthropists Cristina Chacón and Diego Uribe will open DC Lab, a new contemporary art space on Miami’s Bird Road, expanding their nonprofit DC Art Foundation.
The admission-free, 9,000-sq.-ft space will host projects by international galleries that do not have a permanent presence in Miami, alongside research and public programming. Opening just in time for Miami Art Week on 29 November, DC Lab will present the first major survey in Miami of the Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa, the foundation’s current artist in residence.
Based in Miami, Bogotá and Madrid, longtime partners Chacón and Uribe view collecting as a means of supporting the art community. “For us, collecting has always been more than acquiring works and has focused on a commitment to contributing to the cultural ecosystem,” Uribe tells The Art Newspaper.
The couple’s collection includes more than 500 Modern and contemporary works from around the globe, and they support institutions in Miami and beyond. At the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, they sit on the chairman’s council and the American and Latin American acquisitions boards. They also serve on the Museo Reina Sofía’s international patronage board and on the boards of Bogotá’s Museo de Arte Moderno and Miami’s Coral Gables Museum.
In 2021, the couple founded the DC Art Foundation to support artists and connect Miami’s art scene with the international community beyond Miami Art Week. Since 2022, the foundation has run a residency programme for mid-career and established artists.
“The foundation was a vehicle for the residency programme we fund at a private residence,” Uribe says. “The intention is to bring to Miami artists that activate the community, promoting local and international exchange.” Past residents include the Spanish textile artist Sonia Navarro and the Colombian artist Miler Lagos.
Carlos Garaicoa Photo: Oak Taylor Smith, courtesy DC Art Foundation
DC Lab will include exhibition and education spaces as well as a library. “This is a laboratory where experimental ideas and projects can happen in the city,” Uribe says. “We created a novel residency model that provides international galleries with space to present mid-career and established artists new to Miami, potentially inspiring them to settle here.”
Chacón adds that while international galleries often participate in Art Basel Miami Beach and its various satellite fairs, DC Lab will enable more in-depth projects. It will also strengthen the foundation’s community-centred work. “In our residency programme, artists commit to an educational activity, and we often organise talks,” she says. “But this new venue allows for deeper community engagement.”
The opening exhibition at DC Lab, co-presented with Italy’s Galleria Continua and Mor Charpentier (based in Paris and Bogotá), links the new venue to the residency. “While the residency programme runs independently from DC Lab, Garaicoa’s residency was especially fitting for the opening,” Chacón says.
Garaicoa—known for addressing cultural and political issues through architecture, urbanism and history—will present works from his November residency as well as other recent projects. “My residency work relates to Miami, its architecture and growth,” he says, “reflecting how politics and language coexist in architecture.”
Passion is the key driver for Chacón and Uribe’s new space. “We are not trying to be a museum,” Uribe says. “We continue being a private foundation supporting the local community.”
Chacón adds: “For us, art is an incurable disease that lifts the soul.”
