The Wolfsonian-FIU

The Wolfsonian–FIU is a museum, library, and research center located in the heart of Miami Beach's Art Deco district. Since 1997, the institution has been a division of Florida International University. It is named for Mitchell Wolfson Jr., a Miami Beach–born collector and expert in modern design, architecture, and decorative arts, who began assembling the holdings in the 1970s. The collection comprises roughly 180,000 objects dating from 1885 to 1945, an era stretching from the height of the Industrial Revolution to the end of World War II. Media include furniture, glass, ceramics, metalwork, rare books, periodicals, prints, paintings, textiles, and medals. Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States are especially well represented, while holdings from Austria, France, Japan, and the former Soviet Union are also significant.

The museum occupies a historic building on Washington Avenue that was originally built in 1927 in a Spanish Renaissance–style design as a storage warehouse. Wealthy winter visitors from the northern United States used it to safely store their furniture during the hot, humid summer months. In 1992, Wolfson had the architect Mark Hampton renovate and expand the building to turn it into a museum and research center. The renovation added two more floors and created a modern lobby as well as galleries dramatically arranged around light wells. The ground floor now houses the lobby, a café, and a bookstore, while the upper floors hold the permanent and temporary exhibitions. Part of the collection, notably the research library with about 60,000 prints and pieces of ephemera, is housed on the third floor.

At The Wolfsonian–FIU, you'll encounter a broad range of design history, including the British Arts and Crafts movement, Dutch and Italian variants of Art Nouveau, and American industrial design. Other areas of focus include objects and publications from world's fairs, propaganda materials from the world wars and the Spanish Civil War, and graphic and decorative arts from the New Deal era. As a Smithsonian Affiliate with a teaching facility on the university's main campus, the museum actively supports research and education. It offers fellowships for scholars, hosts lectures and conferences, and makes its holdings available to researchers and students through digital catalogs and dedicated access.