Jessica Goldman Srebnick, the museum’s curator and the daughter of its creator, Tony Goldman, discussed her role and her vision for the neighborhood’s artistic future.
This article is part of our Museums special section about how artists and institutions are adapting to changing times.
The real estate developer Tony Goldman was no stranger to transforming neighborhoods when he established the outdoor street art museum Wynwood Walls in Miami in 2009. Located in Wynwood, formerly an industrial district of warehouses and garment manufacturing factories, the museum was his way of revitalizing a city pocket that had declined in the 1980s and had since sat virtually abandoned and forgotten.
Goldman, who died in 2012, was known for breathing new life into Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood by investing in real estate and turning it into a destination for artists and the fashionable set. He saw the same potential with Wynwood, according to his daughter, Jessica Goldman Srebnick, a co-chair of the real estate development company Goldman Properties and the museum’s curator.
“My dad, Joey, and I were together when we first visited Wynwood in 2005,” she said, referring to her brother. “Block after block of single-story industrial buildings — mostly vacant or abandoned — served as canvases for a sea of chaotic graffiti, but my dad recognized the opportunity to build upon the DNA of the neighborhood and enhance it for others to enjoy.”
Goldman Srebnick said that her father saw the advantages of Wynwood’s central location, the walkability of its streets, the mass of underutilized buildings and its grittiness — all factors he used to breathe new life into SoHo, South Beach in Miami and Midtown Village in Philadelphia.
“To him, it was clear that Wynwood would become the center for the creative class, with the Wynwood Walls Museum as its vibrant, beating heart,” she said.
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