Mitrani Art Opens in Little River Nov. 30, Giving Miami's Lens-Based Artists a Permanent Home
Seven years after buying a Little River mechanic shop, the Mitrani sisters are opening a photography, film and video venue with galleries, Miami's Screening Room, artist studios and a new nonprofit.
MIAMI — One of Wynwood’s original art spaces is coming back, a few miles north and seven years in the making.
Mitrani Art, a venue dedicated to photography, film and video, opens Nov. 30 in Little River, The Art Newspaper reported. The building will hold exhibition galleries, a screening room and artists’ studios. It is the next chapter of the Mitrani Warehouse, which sisters Dina and Rhonda Mitrani ran out of their family’s longtime Wynwood clothing factory starting in 2002.
The story covers a lot of Miami’s recent business history in one building: a family manufacturing company, a neighborhood that became an arts district, rents that pushed artists out, and a new attempt to keep creative space affordable.
From garment factory to arts hub
The sisters grew up in Miami and both built careers in New York. Dina worked at Christie’s and then at two galleries, including one specializing in Latin American photography. Rhonda had a film production career and, by her own account, did not plan to leave New York. A documentary about her father returning to Cuba brought her back to Miami to edit it.
“During one of those visits, Dina said, ‘Why don’t you stay here? There’s something going on in the art community,’” Rhonda told The Art Newspaper.
At the warehouse, they started with artist studios on the second floor and gradually took over the building. Dina opened Dina Mitrani Gallery, a contemporary photography gallery. Rhonda opened the Screening Room, which the publication describes as the first dedicated space in Miami for filmmakers and video artists to show their work.
Priced out of Wynwood
Over the years, the sisters watched artists and galleries get priced out of the neighborhood they had helped build.
“We realised the Wynwood Art District was shifting. We held on for as long as we could, because we had an emotional attachment to that space where our parents had their business,” Dina told The Art Newspaper. “But we realised it was time to go.”
The Mitrani Warehouse closed in 2017. In 2019 the sisters bought a mechanic shop in Little River with high ceilings and room to add a separate studio building. Since the closure, the Screening Room and Dina Mitrani Gallery have relied on pop-up programming around the city.
The pandemic, permitting and other roadblocks slowed the project. “It’s been seven years in the making, so we’re very excited to open,” Rhonda said.
Who built it
The new facility was designed by R&R Studios, a local multidisciplinary architecture firm run by Argentine artists Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt, who were longtime tenants of the Mitrani Warehouse studios. Miami firm Studio Arth handled the landscape design.
What’s inside
Mitrani Art brings several pieces of the old operation under one roof again:
- Dina Mitrani Gallery, focused on contemporary photography
- The Screening Room, for film and video work
- Four artist studios, each big enough for two artists
- Mitrani Art Projects Inc., a new nonprofit that will run educational programs in the space
Artists have already started moving into the studios. The sisters say rent sits at the lower end of market rate for the neighborhood, and they hope to keep it there by winning grant funding.
The opening show
The inaugural exhibition is a group show of lens-based art called ReExposures: The Magic Within. One expected highlight is Suddenly We Jumped by Miami artist Antonia Wright, a video of a 2013 live performance in which she jumped onto a pane of glass, shattered it and fell to the floor below.
“Antonia makes really creative work and focuses on important social issues that need change,” Rhonda told The Art Newspaper. Work by Tatiana Parcero and Marina Font also appears in the publication’s coverage of the space.
Why it matters for Miami’s creative economy
Wynwood is the best-known example of a pattern Miami keeps repeating: artists move into cheap industrial space, the area gets popular, and rising rents push them out. The Mitrani sisters’ answer was to buy a building rather than lease one, then hold studio rents down with grants instead of charging what the market will bear.
That approach is worth watching for anyone running a creative business in the city. Owning property gives a venue stability that a lease in a hot neighborhood can’t, and a nonprofit arm opens the door to grants and educational funding that a commercial gallery alone can’t easily get.
For Little River, a permanent venue for photography and film, with working studios attached, adds a new cultural anchor.
The timing is also good for business. The Nov. 30 opening comes just ahead of Miami’s December art fair season, when collectors, curators and visitors pour into the city.
If you go
Mitrani Art opens Nov. 30 in Little River. Check the venue’s official channels for hours, programming and Screening Room schedules as opening day gets closer.