Simon Benjamin painting selected for 2024 New Art Dealers Alliance acquisition gift to Pérez Art Museum Miami

New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) and Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) have announced the selection of the seventh annual NADA Acquisition Gift for PAMM, an acquisition gift which provides funding for PAMM curators to acquire an artwork for the museum’s permanent collection. For this year’s edition, PAMM Associate Curators Jennifer Inacio and Maritza Lacayo have selected Simon Benjamin’s Crown and Anchor I (2024) from Swivel Gallery.

Centering his practice on the sea and coastal environments, Jamaican multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Simon Benjamin delves into overlooked histories and colonial legacies—as well as how these continue to influence contemporary life. Drawing on maritime imagery, Crown and Anchor I juxtapose the symbolic meanings of both objects thus evoking themes of power, colonial legacy, and resilience. By reimagining these icons, Benjamin crafts a visual dialogue speaking to heritage, belonging, and enduring impacts of collective histories on the present. 

“My first visit to PAMM was in 2017 to see Jamaican painter John Dunkley’s ‘Neither Day nor Night’ retrospective,” Benjamin said. “Seeing work I knew well from Jamaica reframed in a globally interconnected context made a deep impression on me. I remember hoping that one day, my work would be exhibited at PAMM. It is an honor to have my painting, Crown and Anchor I, included in the Pérez permanent collection, along with many artists I admire.

The NADA Acquisition Gift for PAMM provides funding for PAMM curators to acquire artwork for the museum’s permanent collection, which features international modern and contemporary art from the U.S. Latino experience, the African diaspora, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

“We are thrilled to acquire a work by Simon Benjamin for PAMM’s collection, as it highlights the museum’s dedication to amplifying Caribbean voices and narratives. His poetic exploration of migration, memory, and the sea aligns deeply with Miami’s cultural and geographical ties to the Caribbean,” PAMM Associate Curators Jennifer Inacio and Maritza Lacayo said. “This acquisition not only strengthens the impactful work of the museum’s Caribbean Cultural Institute but also acts as an additional tool within the collection to engage with the region’s layered histories and its enduring connections to place and identity.”

The NADA Acquisition Gift for PAMM was designed to enhance the relationship between the museum and the fair’s diverse roster of exhibiting galleries and artists, and provides an opportunity for NADA to support and engage with the art institutions of Miami-Dade County in exciting and dynamic ways. The NADA Acquisition Gift for PAMM is funded by ticket sales of NADA Miami 2024.

ABOUT SIMON BENJAMIN

Simon Benjamin (b. 1979, St. Andrew, Jamaica) is a Jamaican multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker based in New York, whose practice considers how the past ripples into the present in unexpected ways. Using the sea and coastal space as frameworks, his current body of work explores how lesser-known histories and colonial legacies impact on our present and contribute to an interconnected future.

Benjamin was featured in Art In America’s New Talent Issue in 2024, and is a 2023 New York City Artadia Awardee, and 2023-4 Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Awardee, New York, NY.

Benjamin earned his MFA from Hunter College in New York in 2021.

ABOUT SWIVEL GALLERY

Swivel Gallery was founded in January 2021 by Graham Wilson, who designed, built and opened the first gallery venue in Nostrand 329 Avenue (New York) in an unconventional space, turning the once Restoration Tabernacle into a powerful incubator for emerging artists.

The gallery’s focus is to showcase a vast range of artists’ practices from all over the world, which deal with some of the most pressing themes of our generation, creating a platform for a global conversation and confrontation. The gallery’s programming ranges from sculpture to installation, photography, painting, and new media art, often working with artists whose work is overlooked in the contemporary market.

In just a year and a half, the gallery has been featured in major press outlets including Artnet, The New York Times, Artsy, Widewalls, Cultured, and Hyperallergic.

In 2023, the gallery expanded to a larger space in Brooklyn, with a new 5,000-square-foot location at 396 Johnson Avenue (the former C L E A R I N G Gallery space). In this space, the Swivel Gallery continued its mission to host compelling exhibitions for its diverse cast of emerging artists while fostering creativity and inspiring the Brooklyn community and beyond. With the upcoming move to Manhattan and a new space at 555 Greenwich, New York City, the gallery will host a series of dynamic, hyper-focused solo exhibitions from its program, showcasing exceptional talent from both emerging and established artists.

ABOUT NADA

The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) is the definitive non-profit arts organization dedicated to the cultivation, support, and advancement of new voices in contemporary art. Founded in 2002, NADA’s membership comprises an international roster of leading contemporary art galleries and professionals. The organization hosts year-round programming, including art fairs and collaborative exhibitions in New York, Miami, Paris, and Warsaw, as well as at its exhibition space in the Lower East Side, NADA East Broadway.