Yeah, but is it art?

Photograph of the piano in a Florida sandbar by Nicholas Harrington

Sixteen year-old Nicholas Harrington's Biscayne Bay piano is now sitting in storage somewhere; "rescued" last Thursday by Miami musician Carl Bentulan.

Some are comparing Harrington's "Piano in the Bay" to Christo's 1983 "Surrounded Islands."

It's easy to see why some would comapare the two.

Harrington put his piano on a sandbar that's just a stone's throw from some of the 11 spoil islands that Christo surrounded with six and a half miles of pink fabric.

Harrington has said that he "wanted to create a whimsical, surreal experience." Those words were also used to describe Christo's "Surrounded Islands."

But, for many, that's where the similarity ends.

Harrington's "work" came about after a raucous and drunken New Year's Eve party.

Christo - according to a 1983 Miami Herald article - was allowed to wrap the isands only after "obtaining 10 permits, enduring seven public hearings, meeting challenges by scores of environmentalists, and making numerous court appearances during 30 months of preparation."

One footnote: before Christo proceeded, his workers removed 42 tons of garbage from the bay.

But, the comparison of Harrington to Christo intrigued me.

In a town where a guy like Romero Britto can make a comfortable living selling "art" that looks like something you might see in a child's coloring book and where giant, molded pink snails are deemed "art," is a piano on a sandbar art?

Well, is it?

Yesterday I emailed a dozen or so people in search of an answer.

Many of their responses surprised me.

CRAIG PITTMAN: Environmental reporter, St. Petersburg Times. Author of two books including "Manatee Insanity, Inside the War Over Florida's Most Famous Endangered Species."

"As long as the piano's provenance was a mystery, it was art in the best sense -- it forced people to think about the role of humans in the natural world, and our relationship with both found and manufactured objects. Once the mystery was solved by the kid coming forward, it became nothing but a prank -- a bit of bizarre Floridiana but not Cristo by any means. Still, I enjoyed how the whole story played out, not least because it reminded me of one of my favorite music videos from back when MTV used to show videos: "Close to the Edit" by Art of Noise. Maybe we could round up a squad of prominent Miamians to take the grand piano back out the bar and take it apart in a grand way, while someone else tries to play a song on it. You could call it deconstruction...or, if you prefer a musical pun, decomposing."

BRIAN SMITH: Former Miami Herald photographer, now a celebrity photographer. Smith's book, 'Art & Soul,' featuring portraits of celebrities paired with their handwritten testimonials about the importance of the arts is due out this October.

"Is it art? Without a doubt. The act of artistic creation is not limited to canvas or clay. That the artist intentionally chose to place a piano on a sandbar in the bay as an artistic statement makes this art rather than littering...Art raises questions. Art can make you smile. The artist has successfully done both."

PHILIP BROOKER: "Brooker is an artist, illustrator, furniture maker, filmmaker, and the founder and director of the Miami Poster Project. He was the art director and an illustrator for The Miami Herald for 23 years."

"Most things can be called art. (that's another topic.) Squiggles that go for millions thrill art lovers everywhere, but they are just squiggles...So I think the answer to your question "is the piano on the beach art?" is, everything can be called art, yes. But it's more in the happening kind of art. (Never my favorite.) More to the point is it good art? And my answer is No! It's a fun, silly, very Miami. A piece of nonsense, not unlike Art Basel."

JIM MORIN: Miami Herald editorial cartoonist, Winner of a 1996 Pulitzer Prize.

"That the question of whether or not this is "art" is even being considered goes to show how pathetic and idiotic the "art" world has become. If this was considered an art project as opposed to an innocent prank, it would be as trite and unoriginal as much of what passes for "art" in this town. Learn how to draw. Learn how to paint. Learn how to sculpt. Learn how to write. Then use those skills to communicate the inexpressible using your own unique voice. That's the way it's been done for thousands of years. If you think it's going out of style, you're wrong."

MICHAEL PUTNEY: WPLG Channel 10's senior political reporter.

"Any comparisons between a prankish high school student and Christo are absurd. Christo is a world-renowned, remarkable artist. I had the privilege to cover “Surrounded Islands” and think it was one of the most exciting public art experiments ever conducted in this country. And quite beautiful. Putting a movie-prop piano on a sandbar has a cuteness factor, but it ain’t art. Art is what an artist does. Nick Harrington is an appealing kid, but he’s not an artist. Not yet anyway."

"RICK": Publisher of the South Florida Daily Blog.

"Excuse the cliche, but I'm of the opinion that art is truly in the eye of the beholder. I see it as art. A piano sitting out in the middle of Biscayne Bay with the Miami skyline behind it....very cool."

ALFRED SPELLMAN: Producer, Rakontur Films.

"I loved it, thought Miami got a lot of great media coverage. I don't know if I'd call it art. I'm sympathetic to the environmental managers' concerns and have no idea how they'll prevent copycats. But it's a lot cooler than trying to call a parking garage a work of art".

GENE WEINGARTEN: Columnist, Washington Post. Former editor of the Miami Herald's Tropic Magazine. Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. Weingarten won his first Pulitzer in 2008 for his essay about commuters' reactions to seeing a world-class violinist playing outside a busy Washington subway station at rush hour. Wrote Weingarten: "In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?"

"Well, Duchamp sort of established it CAN be art. Ooh, someone should reverse Duchamp: Put a grand piano into a crappy public mens' room, near the urinals. You can have that for free."

NICK SPANGLER: Former staff writer, Miami Herald, now at Newsday in New York,

"I don't know much about art or its history but as soon as I heard about this I thought of Duchamp and the "readymade," mass-produced objects exhibited in gallery space.

The piano could be understood as an inverse phenomenon -- a crafted art object placed in natural space -- with a similarly jarring effect.

While Duchamp put a made-up name on the most famous readymade, the urinal, I think people knew pretty early on who was responsible for it; on the other hand, the "authorship" of the piano was, for a while at least, a neat mystery, along with the question of how the heck it got there.

People's responses to the mystery-- the theorizing and news stories about theorizing -- were at least as interesting as the sheer spectacle of a piano in the middle of Biscayne Bay.

If you don't think something like this is funny and you don't like someone littering the bay, you call it a prank; if you like it, you call it conceptual art."

Nip it in the bud!

Miami-Dade marine patrol Sgt. Marvin Freels and an unidentified Dept. of Environmental Recources official conduct surveillance on my candelabra on Jan. 27.

"We are not responsible for removing such items. Even a car can become a habitat for wildlife." -Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer Jorge Pino, Miami Herald, Jan. 24, 2011

"The intent of these kids was certainly not to go out there and litter, per se. It was to create some sort of an art project." -FWC officer Jorge Pino, Miami Herald, Jan. 27, 2011

“The officers asked me, ‘Should your mom get arrested? Or should you get arrested?’” -16 year-old Nick Harrington quoted by the New York Times, Jan. 27, 2011

"The bottom line is that this is completely against the law. People caught doing it will be arrested." -FWC officer Jorge Pino, Miami Herald, Jan.29, 2011

What a difference a week makes. Along with some national news coverage.

When the Miami Herald first reported the mysterious appearance of a piano on a Biscayne Bay sandbar, officials shrugged it off. A spokesman for the state's Fish and Wildlife Commission went so far as to call the piano a "habitat for wildlife."

But that was then.

Less than a week later officials have adopted a no-nonsense stance against...well, nonsense.

On Friday, a day after the piano was removed from the bay, the Herald reported that "a café table and two chairs -- complete with tablecloth, place settings, a bottle of wine" appeared on the sandbar.

FWC spokesman Jorge Pino now says people caught doing this sort of thing will be arrested.

Get in a boat and cruise along Biscayne Bay and you'll see miles of shoreline littered with trash and garbage.

But Pino wants everyone to know there will be no artistic expression in the bay on his watch. Like Barney Fife, he plans to "nip this in the bud!"


I experienced first-hand the government's ham-fisted approach to art when I tried to take a few pictures on Piano Island last Thursday.

A police officer and county environmental official showed up as I was preparing to shoot pictures of the piano.

They looked on in bewilderment as they inspected some props my crew and I had placed on the piano. The police officer even demanded to see my identification!

Later in the afternoon, they were still talking about me.

Annabel Harrington, the mother of the boy who put the piano in the bay, told the Herald that "an FWC officer told her that someone had placed a candelabra atop the piano. A photographer had also hauled out fashion models for a photo shoot."

Actually, they weren't fashion models, Jorge. They were mermaids! There's a difference, you know.

So to all of you who are plotting the next random act of art; you've been warned.

A day with the world's most famous piano

Elvis has left the building.

On Thursday I spent a few hours on Piano Island.

My timing was great.

The piano was dismantled and moved late Thursday afternoon from the Biscayne Bay sandbar that was its home for the past month..

You can read my story at MiamiBeach411.com and see some of the last photographs taken of the world's most famous piano!

Biscayne Bay piano mystery solved!

The Miami Herald has solved the mystery of the Biscayne Bay piano!

The Herald's Chuck Rabin reports that teenagers and liberal amounts of alcohol played a part in getting the piano to where it sits today: a sandbar in the middle of Biscayne Bay.

[T]his past New Year's Eve, as a crowd of about 100 gathered at the Harrington home in Miami Shores, the chants to burn the piano got louder and louder.

The crowd was obliged: The heavy piano was lowered by davits into a canal next to the Harrington home, and set ablaze. The next day, after cooler heads prevailed, the piano was gently lifted onto the family's 22-foot open fisherman. Then Harrington, his two sons and a neighbor set out for the sandbar -- where they set the piano ablaze, again.

Random Pixels ventured over to the scene of the crime Wednesday afternoon and we came back with these images:

Of course no crime scene is complete without a Channel 7 reporter providing live coverage.

Wednesday morning a photographer swam out to the piano with a waterproof camera and made this image.

Miami TV anchor rubs elbows with President Obama...literally

CNN reports that Miami resident Maria Elena Salinas scored a choice seat Tuesday afternoon as she joined a select group of TV anchors for an "intimate lunch" with the president.

President Obama hosted a hush-hush lunch with television anchors to spin them before he delivered his State of the Union speech.

Who rubbed elbows with the president during the intimate lunch in the Family Dining Room? NBC's Brian Williams and Univision's Maria Elena Salinas. Who might have had to strain the most to see Obama from their seat? MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Telemundo's Jose Diaz-Balart.

This long-standing luncheon tradition to brief television anchors precedes President Obama's administration. It's a coveted invitation – White House reporters don't even get invited - and invitees are under strict orders not to tweet, blog or talk about the off-the-record lunch until the president delivers his address.

Getting married in a parking garage

For many, the parking garage at 1111 Lincoln Road epitomizes what South Beach has become: an elitist, overpriced destination.

Parking is 4 bucks an hour, $3 more than what they charge at the municipal parking garage just a few blocks away.

But for your $4, you also get to tell your friends you parked your 13-year-old brown Toyota in a world-renowned work of art.

But when Nina Johnson parked her car at 1111 Lincoln one day, she knew it was much more than a parking garage.

She saw it as the perfect place to get married.

Johnson, owner of Gallery Diet in Wynwood, knows art when she sees it.

The New York Times reports today - on page one - that over the weekend, Johnson married her fiance Daniel Milewski on the top floor of the garage.

For her wedding over the weekend, Nina Johnson had worked through a predictable checklist of locations in town: hotel ballrooms, restaurant halls and catering outfits.

In the end, though, she opted for the most glamorous, upscale and stylish setting she could find — a parking garage.

“When we saw it, we were in total awe,” said Ms. Johnson, 26, an art gallery director. “It’s breathtaking.”

Parking garages, the grim afterthought of American design, call to mind many words. (Rats. Beer cans. Unidentifiable smells.) Breathtaking is not usually among them.

Yet here in Miami Beach, whose aesthetic is equal parts bulging biceps and fluorescent pink, bridal couples, bar mitzvah boys and charity-event hosts are flocking to what seems like the unimaginable marriage of high-end architecture and car storage: a $65 million parking garage in the center of the city.

They are clamoring to use it for wine tastings, dinner parties and even yoga classes. Or taking self-guided tours, snapping photographs and, at times, just gawking.

But in case you're thinking - "Hey, what a great idea, I wanna get married there too!" - you should know that it costs $12,000 to $15,000 to rent the top floor of the garage for an evening.

And why not? Isn't that what South Beach is all about?