GATEWAY FOR THE ARTS: Mosaics of the Explorers
By Deborah Desilets
In collaboration with Conexión Media Group and Samantha’s Gift Event Planning, I invite you to join us at an event where art, architecture and a passion for history combine in the form of the Anton Refregier Tallahassee (ART!) mosaics. As the last architectural associate of Morris Lapidus, I was called when the Mosaics were discovered, as they represent the last of 26 great artists artworks from the 1957 Americana Hotel, a hotel designed for the Tisch family by Morris Lapidus.
Our art awareness movement looks to the Anton Refregier Tallahassee (ART!) mosaics in the hope that by superb example they will lead the way in support of fine art and history. We hope that the Explorers will one day grace our newly defined BLUEPRINT of “urban green-ways” to communicate a diverse story of place and may be used to mark a movement of people in Cascades, Smokey Hollow, Gaines Street and Franklin Boulevard, FAMU Way, Cascades Crossing, Collegetown, Biketown who are exploring past as prologue. We hope the Explorers will become a Gateway for the Arts in the Capital City.
Since 1957, the Americana Hotel was a Gateway to the America’s and his widely popular hotel was emblematic of the resort hotel experience to 30 years of South American Tourist to Miami. To wit, the Americana Hotel was the public ‘Living Room” to three decades of Latino/a tourists! When Starwood came to me about the new St Regis Hotel in Miami Beach to be constructed on the site of the Americana Hotel, I was in a good position to help them in their goal of building a new hotel and demolishing the historic Americana. By the 2000s, most of the art had been destroyed by interior renovations; only the Mosaics of the Explorers remain of this grand hotel. Noting that the mosaics displayed at the Americana, were art significant of worthy preservation, Jorge Perez, of Perez Art Museum Miami, PAMM, instructed the construction company to carefully cut the masonry walls supporting the 1” layer of mosaic material, and preserve the six mosaics in six pieces each (Roughly 1’ deep x 22’ x 3’; each weighing under 2000 pounds). Thus Starwood absorbed the cost of an interruption to their demolition schedule for two weeks so that the Explorers mosaics could be carefully rescued from the building prior to demolition.
After the implosion of the Americana and after the team designers were consulted; it was determined that the art should be relocated to a warehouse for storage. Four years later, I was rehired by Starwood as curator to find a suitable location in Florida for display. At that time, Starwood’s investment in these mosaics was over $500,000 in rescue and storage. I contacted the city of Tallahassee, our State’s Capital, because I considered it the most suitable location. With Starwood and Wither’s Moving, we devised a method of transport for the care of the art with appropriate packaging for ground transportation. The Mosaics were delivered by Wither’s to AMWAT. Later the City removed the art from AMWAT and stored it in a Warehouse off Railroad Square/Wahnish Way. After five years of Starwood’s careful storage, and twice moved in the care of the city, this has resulted in the art pieces languishing.
Any persons interested in learning about the Anton Refregier Tallahassee (ART!) mosaics, please join us on CapitalARTangels on Facebook. Plan to come to our event on January 28, 2017 at the Historic Martin House, to see images of the wonderful art treasure of the Explorers; giants in our midst. For more information on the January event, please refer to our ad in this edition of Conexión.
