Cultured Magazine

Summer 2014

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You'd be excused to think of Rodman Primack, the new ex- ecutive director of Design Miami, as just another art-world insider. The 39- year-old, who took the post over in March after the departure of Marianne Goebl, certainly has the bona fides one would expect: He was most recently the director of auctions for the online startup Paddle8 and previously served as chairman of the London outpost for the auc tion house Phillips. He even has the experience of exhibiting at the fair, having shown furniture by Rick Owens in partnership with New York gallery Salon 94 for the past two years. But the California native boasts one more advantage few associate with the fair: interior designer. "I'm probably one of the few people in the world they could've approached for this job who has experience at the fair from so many different angles," says Primack. "I've been using the fair as a resource to help collectors as both an advisor and a decorator." Indeed, early in his career Primack took a brief detour as a junior designer for Peter Marino, and the experience stuck with him. Interior design was a calling Primack had from an early age—and he understands the controversial weight the word decorate can have in his current profession. "I have to be honest. Fundamentally, I always wanted to be a decorator," he says. "As a kid, I used to tell people all the time that I wanted to be a decorator. My mother would immediately corrected me and say, 'architect.' Maybe being a decorator was way too gay? I wanted to be Mark Hampton." While Primack is satisfied with the condition of the organization as he's found it, he feel s he has the opportunity to gently push Design Miami in new directions. "I have the luxury of thinking in a macro way. It was the micro that Marianne had really been working on—tightening the screws and getting things to work in a way that's very efficient and elegant." Primack's goals as director can best be seen in terms of expansion. "It's really incredible and vibrant market right now, but it's no t very big," he says. He wants to extend the brand's reach beyond its two exhibitions a year and explore untapped audiences. "Our goal is to provide ways to con- nect our galleries with people, and to connect them with those who aren't collectors yet. There are thousands of people out there who aren't coming to Design Miami that would be interested to know they can buy these things. It's our job to figu re out ways to get them into our doors or in a non- physical way online—or through talks and conferences." As part of this educational thrust, Primack sees opportunities in the area of production design. "It would be exciting to look at things that aren't just in the core of collectible and vintage design. Most of our collectors and clientele don't go to the Salone del Mobile, and it would be great to b ring some of those exciting things here," he says. "There's a lot of room to make our platform more dynamic." It's a lesson he's likely gained from the success of Design Miami's recent architectural commissions, which feature new work by eager and experimental talents. The next work in the series will be a pulsating light installation, Triangular Series, by New York- based designer Jamie Zigelbaum titl ed. It will be staged inside the fair's entrance hall this June. The work will be accompanied by a new program called Design At Large, consisting of various large-scale installations, cu- rated for the first year by Dennis Freedman, the creative director of Barneys New York. Installations and high-design exercises aside, Primack wants to extend an olive branch to the decorator set. "It's something that' s actively on my mind, and it's important to figure out how to get decorators to feel more comfortable about coming to the fair and not feeling intimidated," he says. According to him, many of them need help in convincing clients to "spend money on things that will have a longer lifespan in terms of value," rather than just buying and making decorative things that don't have longevity. And despite the c harge that the calendar around Art Basel Miami Beach has already become too much of a hype-fueled bonanza, Primack has no intention of slowing down. "If the galleries that feel that way took the long view, they'd come to understand and appreciate the kind of en- ergy Miami generates," he says. "We don't have to stay above the fray. We have to be the fray." 132 CULTURED "There's a lot of room to make our platform more dynamic." —Rodman Primack

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