One Museum Now Runs Both Free Art Buildings on NE 41st Street, and November Is When It Changes Over

"This combined space now gives Miami a museum about the same size as the Whitney Museum in New York City."

Carlos de la Cruz said that in October 2024, when the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami bought the two-story building at 23 NE 41st Street. For 15 years that building had been home to the de la Cruz Collection, as WLRN reported at the time. Two years later, the comparison is close to being tested. On December 1, the former collection building gets its first named exhibition as part of ICA Miami. In the days just before that, the museum's other galleries change shows too.

So for anyone who lives within walking distance of NE 41st Street, the useful dates this season mostly come before Miami Art Week. Between Nov. 19 and Dec. 1, nearly everything ICA has on view either closes, opens or moves into new space. That makes the stretch before Art Week opens on Nov. 30 the first good chance to see the block working as one larger museum.

Two free addresses, one owner

For years this block had two separate free art spaces side by side. ICA Miami was one. The other was the de la Cruz Collection, which showed the private collection of Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz without charging admission. The collection closed in 2024, and Christie's began selling its works. The first sale brought in $34 million. The collection's own website still opens with one line saying it is closed.

ICA paid $25 million for the building. According to WLRN, the money came from dozens of South Florida donors, including developer and Design District co-founder Craig Robins. The purchase added 30,000 square feet and roughly doubled the museum's size. ICA's expansion page says the funding was entirely private, including a $5 million grant from the Knight Foundation. It also lists what the second building is meant to hold:

• Galleries for special exhibitions
• A Knight Foundation new-media gallery for artists working with emerging technology
• For the first time, dedicated galleries for the museum's permanent collection
• Classrooms, space for talks and performances, and a lab for digital and audiovisual media

The permanent collection plan means the most for repeat visitors. In 2024, ICA artistic director Alex Gartenfeld told WLRN that 99.5% of the collection had been in storage. A second building gives ICA room to keep part of its own collection on view alongside its temporary shows.

A late-2025 target, a December 2026 date

The timeline has moved. In 2024, Gartenfeld told WLRN the renovated building would open to the public sometime before the end of 2025. ICA's expansion page, last updated in August 2025, still says "as early as late 2025."

The building has hosted family events since then. ICA's calendar listed Family Fest 2025 at 23 NE 41st Street on Sept. 28, 2025. Family Fest 2026, themed "We Are Miami," was listed there for Sunday, Oct. 25, from 1 to 4 p.m. The first exhibition ICA has announced for the building opens Dec. 1. That is Friedrich Kunath's I'll Romanticize This Later, running through Jan. 22, 2027.

ICA calls it Kunath's first solo museum exhibition in the United States. It fills the second floor of the expansion building with paintings, sculptures and installations from across his career. It also includes a new interactive digital space where visitors can play with the song lyrics, titles and other text the artist uses in his work. The digital piece is a first look at the kind of work the planned new-media gallery is meant for. The show is a collaboration with DMINTI and the Nassima Art Foundation. On opening day at 11 a.m., Kunath will talk with Klaus Biesenbach in the expansion building.

December 1 falls on a Tuesday. ICA's posted hours keep the galleries closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so the 11 a.m. talk is a special opening program. The next regular gallery day under those hours is Wednesday, Dec. 2. That is also the middle of Miami Art Week, which runs Nov. 30 to Dec. 6, 2026.

The changeover, date by date

Lined up, ICA's program and the District's own calendar put the changes in a short stretch, with two holiday closures in the middle.

Veterans Day lands on a Wednesday, which is normally an open gallery day, so that week has one less day to visit than usual. The four days from Nov. 19 through Nov. 22 are the only time the outgoing and incoming shows overlap. Chavajay's Xojowi ja qa tee ruachulew, or Mother Earth Dances, and Yektai's The Stranger and the Tree have been up since April 30. Hakihiiwe opens three days before they close.

The show that runs past Art Week

Most of what opens around Art Week is gone by mid-January. Hakihiiwe's exhibition stays open through March 28, 2027, which gives local visitors four months instead of one crowded week.

ICA says this is the first solo U.S. museum exhibition for Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, a Venezuelan artist born in 1971 and a member of the Yanomami people. He was raised in, and still lives in, the Poripori community on the upper Orinoco River. The show has more than 100 works. They include pieces from the Fondation Cartier's collection and new commissions, with animation, murals and site-specific installations alongside the works on handmade paper he is best known for.

It is organized in four sections: Building a Language, Notational Systems and Encyclopedic Exercises, Landscapes, and Shamanic Initiation. The last section includes a new film set to the artist's own chanting, a site-specific mural and an installation of shamanic poles. The galleries were designed by Mexico City architect Mauricio Rocha and his studio, Taller de Arquitectura. Rocha drew on traditional Yanomami houses, called shapono, using filtered light, natural earth pigments and framed views.

This is also the first exhibition ICA and the Fondation Cartier have co-curated and produced together. It follows the Olga de Amaral retrospective, which opened in Paris in 2024 and came to ICA Miami in 2025. Kunath's show gets the Art Week attention, but Hakihiiwe's is the one still open in March.

Using the block on an ordinary Saturday

Admission to ICA Miami is free. ICA strongly recommends advance tickets, because people who arrive without one may be turned away if the building is at capacity. Groups larger than nine need a group tour reservation. Galleries are open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The gift shop is open every day on the same hours.

The District's free Public Art Tour also starts at 11 a.m., so a Saturday on Nov. 21 can be planned in order:

1. Join the 11 a.m. Public Art Tour. The District's Nov. 21 listing gives the time but no meeting point, so check it before you go. The walk covers Buckminster Fuller's Fly's Eye Dome, Virgil Abloh's Dollar a Gallon and Criola's Interdimensional Portal.
2. Walk to NE 41st Street after the tour ends at noon. Hakihiiwe will have been open for two days, and Chavajay and Yektai close the next day.
3. On the way, look up at 3704 NE 2nd Avenue. Jill Mulleady's Pesca a la Encandilada, installed in 2024, is on the building's south facade.
4. Finish at Karyu, the Tokyo wagyu restaurant that opened its first U.S. location at 40 NE 41st Street this spring, according to the Miami Herald. It sits on the same street as both ICA buildings.

The Nov. 7 tour is the same walk on the same 11 a.m. to noon schedule, and it starts at Palm Court. That date falls before the changeover, so the old shows are still up. In late October, the District's December calendar showed no events. Through Art Week, the scheduled activity on this block is ICA's program.

The museum's own two-building programming is what changes on NE 41st Street this season. For residents, the times to see it are the four-day overlap ending Nov. 22 and Wednesday, Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving and the last regular gallery day before Art Week begins.

If you live near the Design District, or want to, it helps to work with someone who knows which block is changing and when. Christopher Ulloa follows the Design District, the condo towers near it, and the projects reshaping it. Let's connect and find your Miami condo or development opportunity.