The winner of this year's Arsht Angel Award literally is a groundbreaking organization.
By Carlos Frías
Go back to a time before there was an Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County. Before AileyCamp Miami taught children dance in a safe environment and a classical music series brought international orchestras to the city to play a world-class concert hall. Go back before any organization in Miami was supporting large arts institutions and funding artists directly with “challenge grants” to, say, print poetry on cups of Cuban coffee coladas during National Poetry Month.
Before any of these could become hallmarks of Miami art culture, there had to be an organization with the vision and leadership to make it possible. The Knight Foundation has given more than $214 million to support the arts in South Florida. Every year, the foundation gives more than $30 million to local art endeavors large and small. With a track record like that, it was easy to select the Knight Foundation as recipient of the 2025 Arsht Angel Award.
“What can we say about Knight Foundation that hasn’t been said before? They are the heartbeat, the lifeline for Miami’s cultural renaissance,” says Esther Park, a past director of programming for the Arsht who sat on the Angel Award selection committee. “Many arts organizations would not have happened without Knight’s funding.
The Adrienne Arsht Center’s relationship with the Knight Foundation precedes the Center’s opening. Before the Arsht broke ground in 2001, the foundation donated more than $9 million for the construction of the Knight Concert Hall. Over the years, Knight has been effusive with its generosity, investing more than $16 million to support the Center’s mission. Another $1 million has been donated from the Knight Arsht Center Endowment Match Fund at The Miami Foundation.
Knight granted to the county some of the land on which the Knight Concert Hall sits. “It's impossible to overstate the importance of the Arsht Center to Miami’s development,” says Alberto Ibarguen, the Knight Foundation past president who presided over Knight’s initial gift. “We would not have seen the rebirth of downtown without the flywheel effect of a major arts center … which gave confidence to other developers to move into downtown.”
The 2,200-seat Knight Concert Hall hosts the greatest artists and musicians from around the world, as well as comedy and family shows. Recent performers include Cuban jazz pioneer Chucho Valdés, Icelandic rock act Sigur Rós and superstar comedian Kevin Hart.
More than 1,600 Miami-Dade County public middle school students have had their lives changed thanks to AileyCamp Miami. This six-week, full-scholarship summer camp, started in 2009 with Knight’s support, provides a safe, artistic environment for children to learn West African, jazz and modern dance. The experience doesn’t end with art. The camp, attended by more than 100 Miami-Dade Public School students from the sixth to eighth grades every year, also teaches children about nutrition, conflict resolution, drug prevention, critical thinking and other life skills, such as personal development and creative communication.
Classical Music at the Arsht, a Knight Masterworks series, brings in the world’s top orchestras and conductors. The 2024-2025 season alone includes performances by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Riccardo Muti, the London Symphony Orchestra with Sir Antonio Pappano, the Israel Philharmonic with Lahav Shani and the National Symphony Orchestra with Gianandrea Noseda, featuring violinist Hilary Hahn.
Knight’s support helps the Arsht highlight diverse voices and foster global conversations, as it did during the December 2024 presentation of The Great Yes, The Great No. William Kentridge’s latest chamber opera is set on a creaky cargo ship, sailing from Marseilles to Martinique, in March 1941, as its passengers attempt to escape Vichy France. Among the manifest: surrealist André Breton, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, Cuban artist Wifredo Lam and communist novelist Victor Serge. Miami was only the third city to host the show, after Vienna and Arles, France.
Rare is it to find an organization like Knight that supports large institutions such as the Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami City Ballet and, of course, the Arsht and smaller organizations such as the Miami Film Festival. Zoom out, and it’s impossible not to see the Knight Foundation’s effect on Miami’s diverse arts ecosystem.
(Top: Photo by Tony Tur.)