The Miami Street Culture Project was an initiative to document and present cultural traditions practiced in the streets of Miami. HistoryMiami’s South Florida Folklife Center conducted fieldwork to identify prominent artistic, communal, recreational, and occupational traditions practiced within Miami’s neighborhoods and produced an exhibition to share these traditions with the larger community. In addition to field research and an exhibition, the project includes an artifact collection, a printed publication, and cultural programming. The purpose of the project was to research and highlight street traditions that give the city its unique character and identity.

New World School of the Arts College's students participated in Documenting the Moving Landscape workshop. Led by Kayla Delacerda (ArtCenter/South Florida and BHQF Fellow), this photography and history workshop captures Miami's urban landscape and describes a cultural identity outside of the most visible and circulated images of South Florida.

Students participated in four walks:

Downtown and Overtown, 2018 March 8

Little Havana and Spring Garden, 2018 March 15

Brickell, 2018 March 22

North River Drive, 2018 April 5

The bulk of the collection is from events staged at the Actors Playhouse, Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center, Gables Stage and the Miami City Ballet. In addition to items from other South Florida theatres, there are programs and brochures from the Carbonell Awards for excellence in theatre and the arts in South Florida.

Additional materials donated in 2015, and covering the 2012-2015 seasons are housed in box 13. Also includes a DVD and correspondence outlining The New World Symphony’s initiative for increased funding to improve programs and community outreach.

In addtion to playbills, materials pertaining to Joe Robbie Stadium, Hialeah Racetrack, and the Marlins were donated as part of the 2017 accrual. Of note are the donor's scrapbook and licensing documents regarding a suite at Joe Robbie stadium, personal photographs at Hialeah Racetrack and World Series baseball ephemera. These materials may be found in boxes 15 and 16.

The Florida Folklife Program sought to explore Miami’s inner world thirty years ago with the first Miami-Dade folklife survey conducted for the 1986 Florida Folk Festival. The survey highlighted Miami’s traditional culture and provided the impetus for the creation of the South Florida Folklife Center at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, now HistoryMiami Museum. In 2016, the Florida Folklife Program partnered with the now three-decades-old HistoryMiami South Florida Folklife Center to reexamine Miami’s folk traditions and paint a new portrait of the city by exploring the question, “What makes Miami, Miami?” Fieldwork was conducted by HistoryMiami Museum’s Folklife Specialist, Vanessa Navarro, and Vice President of Curatorial Affairs and former staff Folklorist, Michael Knoll. The project was overseen by the Florida Folklife Program’s State Folklorist, Amanda Hardeman.

This field research project focused on customs and practices that are unique to Miami, particularly the sayings, occupations, musical styles, dance forms, beliefs, rituals, celebrations, and foodways that are quintessentially “Miami.” The findings of this study informed the 2016 Florida Folk Festival, and the artists and presenters chosen for the program reflect a sampling of the components that make Miami the unique and vibrant city it is.

This collection consists of born digital materials. Please contact staff ahead of your visit to access these materials.

An artificial collection of photographic prints relating to the history of the Miami region and South Florida, collected by the archives from numerous sources from 1940 to the present.

Geographic headings include the Bahamas, Coconut Grove, Coral Gables, Cuba, Miami-Dade County, the Everglades region, Florida Keys, Hialeah, Key West, Miami, Miami Beach, etc.

Topical headings include agriculture (comptie starch, sugar, etc.), businesses and organizations (Burdines, etc.), ethnic groups (African Americans, Cubans, Haitians, Jews, Seminoles, etc.), hurricanes, sports (baseball, football, fishing, horse racing, j'ai alai, polo, sailing, etc.), transportation (aviation, automobiles, bridges, causeways, railroads, ships and boats, Tamiami Trail, etc.), tourism (attractions, alligators, etc.), and wars (Seminole, Spanish-American, world wars, etc.).

Biographical files include Brickell family, John C. Gifford (botanist), Carl Fisher (developer and entrepreneur), Oliver Griswold, James Franklin Jaudon (developer), George Merrick (developer), Arva Moore Parks (collector and historian), Thelma Peters (collector and historian), Everest and John Sewell (mayors and businessmen), Julia Tuttle, Karl Voelter (aviator), and Hamilton Wright (publicity photographer).

Zines covering a wide range of topics including Punk Rock music, coming of age stories, the everyday struggles of young Hispanic American women, poetry, Little Haiti, and architecture, as well as urban and landscape perspectives.

Drawn from Harvey Zipkin's self-published photo book, Wynwood: A City Within (2016), this collection consists of photographic prints shot in the documentary style. The photographs document the remaining Hispanic and African American communities of Wynwood, as the area becomes increasingly gentrified. A CD containing digital images from the photo book is also included.

Scrapbook and binder compiled by Dwaine Simpson. The scrapbook contains newspaper clippings, ephemera and some photographs chronicling the lives of the Dundee brothers, boxers, trainers, and other personalities associated with the Fifth Street Gym. While the bulk of the items pertain to Muhammad Ali, the careers of boxers such as Cuban American Kid Gavilan are also recorded. Also includes newspaper clippings from national newsapers celebrating the life of Muhammad Ali after his death in June 2016

Binder containing mostly photographs of the boxers, including Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, Willie Pastrano, Kid Gavilan and Roberto Duran. Others in the boxing fraternity include the Dundee brothers, Don King, Dr. Ferdie Pacheo and other gym personnel. Images of celebrities who attended "fight nights" include Art Carney, Don Johnson, Sean Connery & Ernest Borgnine, who appeared as Angelo Dundee in the Muhammad Ali biopic "The Greatest".

Zines created as part of workshops organized by EXILE Books during their residency at HistoryMiami Museum from February to May 2016. The workshops were held at the museum and other locations in Miami-Dade County. Teaching artists researched and selected source materials from the museum's archives for the workshops. These included:

March 9, 2016: The Little Haiti Zine Workshop with Akete Chevers & Edny Jean Joseph, Little Haiti Cultural Complex

March 30, 2016: Pioneer Zine Workshop, Coconut Grove Woman's Club

April 3, 2016: Feminist Pizza Party 2.0, HistoryMiami Museum

April 22, 2016: 8 Ball Zine Workshop with Nina Hartman, HistoryMiami Museum

April 29, 2016: 8 Ball Zine Workshop with Nikki Greene and Jo Rosenthal, HistoryMiami Museum

April 30, 2016: An Archive Zine Fair Workshop with Adler Guerrier, HistoryMiami Museum

June 30, 2016: Cooking With Archives: An Evening of Tropical Floridian Cookery, The Standard Spa

The collection also includes an oversize silk screen test print Lemon City by Sandra March and Brochures and card from Tropical Riso (Re) Production of the Tropics.

This collection gathers ephemera, pamphlets, posters, newsletters and publications pertaining to happenings in the Arts of South Florida. Topics include fine arts, performing arts, music, dance, and film.

The Carl Juste collection consists of photographs and related materials shot or collected by photojournalist Carl Juste on assignment for The Miami Herald and as co-founder of the Iris Photocollective. Photographic media include 35mm negatives and photographic prints of varying sizes, pertaining to people, places, and daily life in the Miami area during the late 20th century and early 21st century. Topical subjects include politics, crime, weather events, cultural and religious celebrations, primary and secondary education, sports, and construction in Miami and South Florida.

Collection of papers, including a Pulitzer Prize and other notable awards, correspondences, work and personal ephemera, newspaper and magazine articles containing published photographs. Juste's Pulitzer-winning coverage of the Elian Gonzalez (2000) is not included.

Collection includes colored photographic prints depicting social and cultural life in Miami and South Florida. Include images showing Miami Beach nightlife, Black-owned establishments in Overtown and Liberty City, art and culture in Wynwood, including a graffiti artists at work, Ultra Music Festival, local politics and national politics, including the 2012 Republic National.

A few images are of the Everglades and the natural environment.

About Folklife

Folklife is traditional knowledge that is passed from person to person. This intimate type of learning takes place outside of formal institutions as a result of participation in folk groups such as families, ethnic, religious, regional, or occupational groups. Folklife is the manifestation of traditional knowledge and includes such diverse categories as belief, custom, art, craft, music, foodways, dance, drama, play, occupational or technical skill, architecture, and oral literature. South Florida folklife consists of the entire, complex body of traditions practiced by its residents, irrespective of whether they have lived here for months or decades.

About the South Florida Folklife Center

The South Florida Folklife Center’s folklife fieldwork projects and related efforts produce audio and video recordings, images, field notes, and associated materials. These items have been made available to the public at HistoryMiami's Archives and Research Center. The Center also collects three-dimensional folklife objects, which are added to HistoryMiami's collection of museum artifacts.

Since its founding The South Florida Folklife Center has produced exhibitions, educational programs, festivals, concerts, web content, publications, and other events and materials. Through these undertakings, the Center strives to educate the public about the region's diverse peoples, cultures, and traditions. In an effort to encourage the continuity of the area's folk culture, the South Florida Folklife Center also provides support services to local traditional artists and cultural organizations.  Materials from these various activities are included in the folklife collection.

Items within the collection date from 1985 to the present and future additions to the collection are expected.