Miami Beach: Blueprint of an Eden

Miami Beach: Blueprint of an Eden

Miami Beach is the story of an extraordinary time and place, told through the prism of two founding families, the Wolfsons and the Okas. The authors' fathers were each mayors of Miami Beach, one in the 1940s and the other in the '50s and early '60s, and their mothers were prominent first ladies, who regularly welcomed the crème de la crème of society to their enchanting city. The Wolfsons' and Okas' exhaustive family archives provide a rich cultural, architectural, political, social, botanical, stylistic, gastronomic, geological, and poetic history of the contemporary phenomenon that is Miami Beach. At once an intimate memoir, a sprawling history, and a work of great artistic integrity, Miami Beach invites you to step back into a world so visual, mythical, and filled with family lore that its local intensity illuminates a national character. Miami Beach is the story of an extraordinary time and place, told through the prism of two founding families, the Wolfsons and the Okas. The authors' fathers were each mayors of Miami Beach, one in the 1940s and the other in the '50s and early '60s, and their mothers were prominent first ladies, who regularly welcomed the crème de la crème of society to their enchanting city. The Wolfsons' and Okas' exhaustive family archives provide a rich cultural, architectural, political, social, botanical, stylistic, gastronomic, geological, and poetic history of the contemporary phenomenon that is Miami Beach. At once an intimate memoir, a sprawling history, and a work of great artistic integrity, Miami Beach invites you to step back into a world so visual, mythical, and filled with family lore that its local intensity illuminates a national character. Michele Oka Doner, born and raised in Miami Beach, FL, is an internationally acclaimed artist whose prolific career spans four decades. The remarkable breadth of her artistic production encompasses public art, sculpture, furniture, jewelry, and functional objects. She is perhaps best known for her numerous public art commissions, including those at New York's Herald Square Subway Station and the Miami Beach airport. She is represented by the Marlborough Gallery in New York and is frequently featured in books (including Michele Oka Doner: Natural Seduction ) and print media in the U.S. and internationally. Oka Doner maintains studios in New York and Miami Beach. Mitchell Wolfson Jr., born in Miami, FL, has been an avid collector of predominantly American, European, and Japanese decorative and propaganda arts from the 1885 to 1945 period. A preservationist rather than a collector in the traditional sense, his museum, The Wolfsonian, founded in 1986, pursues a local educational goal, and encourages international scholarly research. The museum and its holdings of more than 100,000 items was donated in 1997 to Florida International University.