City of Miami Beach Announces Finalists for 2025 Legacy Purchase Program at Art Basel Miami Beach

Miami Beach, FL — Today, the City of Miami Beach announced the finalists for its 2025 Legacy Purchase program. Each year, the city’s Art in Public Places Committee selects three stand-out artworks from a pool of applications from the emerging artists of the Art Basel Miami Beach Positions, Nova, as well as newcomers and recent entrants to the Galleries sector presenting early-career artists. The city then invites the public to vote for their favorite work. Once voting closes, the winning artwork will be purchased by the City of Miami Beach for permanent display in the Miami Beach Convention Center.

This year, the three finalists are Ximena Garrido-Lecca (presented by Livia Benavides Gallery), Patrick Dean Hubbell (presented by Nina Johnson) and Ken Tisa (presented by Kate Werble Gallery).

The public may cast their votes at www.miamibeachfl.gov/legacy-purchase-program starting Friday, Nov. 21 at 9 a.m. EST through Monday, Nov. 24 at 5 p.m. EST. 

The winner will be announced publicly on Wednesday, Dec. 3 at the Art Basel Miami Beach Prelude Opening at 9:30 a.m.

See below for information about each of the finalists.

Ximena Garrido-Lecca (Modulations - Sequence XXIX, 2024), Livia Benavides Gallery

(Born 1980, Lima, Peru)

Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Modulations - Sequence XXIX, 2025. Copper rope, 61.42 x 39.37 in. Courtesy the artist and Livia Benavides Gallery.

In her Modulations series, Ximena Garrido-Lecca continues to explore the role of copper in Peru’s economy, where this natural resource is exported as a raw material for its use in tech industries. In many of her other works, the artist brings industrialized copper materials back into artisanal practices, reflecting on the erasure of traditional cultures, often triggered by extractivist policies. These new works integrate a series of abstract symbols inspired by modernist corporate logos used by diverse industries and corporate entities. By using these geometric symbols in a traditional woven form, she questions the relation between these modern images, tied to the engines of modernization and the global economy, and their links to pre-Columbian abstraction. The work also highlights the demand for accelerated growth and modernization in the context of a growing economy, under unregulated natural resource extraction, which often does not generate investment in local infrastructure and social welfare, but instead favors corporate gain.

Patrick Dean Hubbell (You Guided Our Prayers For Generations, We Will Continue To Persevere, 2025), Nina Johnson

(Born 1971, Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Patrick Dean Hubbell, You Guided Our Prayers For Generations, We Will Continue To Persevere, 2025. Oil, acrylic, acrylic dispersion, enamel, oil stick, oil pastel, charcoal, Sharpie, marker, pen and ink, enamel spray, natural earth pigment, synthetic polymer, staples, horse hair, leather, buckskin, commercial tanned deer hide, cut seed beads, synthetic textile, paper, sewing, canvas, 105 x 62 in. Courtesy the artist and Nina Johnson.

Expanding beyond the two-dimensional plane, Patrick Dean Hubbell creates correlations between his Indigenous identity, personal self, and cultural philosophy within the field of contemporary painting. His work features a series of bold and gestural mark-making combined with natural materials — earth pigment from his Diné ancestral homeland, buckskin, horsehair, beadwork — and considers ideas of reclamation, topography, sense of place, language, and the dialogue between Indigenous art forms and contemporary art.

Patrick Dean Hubbell (Diné, b. 1986) is To’ahani’ (Near to Water Clan), Born for Dibe’lizhini (Black Sheep), Maternal Grandfather is Kinyaa’aanii (Towering House People), Paternal Grandfather is Hona’ghaahnii (One Who Walks Around Clan). Hubbell’s work has been exhibited at the Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ; the Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, CA; Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Rochester, NY; and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT. Hubbell’s work is in the collections of the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; the Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM; the Arizona Community Foundation, Phoenix, AZ; and the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA.

Ken Tisa (Heaven, 2019-2022), Kate Werble Gallery

(Born 1945, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

Ken Tisa, Heaven, 2019-2022. Vintage fabric, found fabric, plastic and glass beads on canvas, 58 x 49.5 in. Courtesy the artist and Kate Werble Gallery.

Ken Tisa is a seminal figure to emerge from the downtown New York art scene of the 1970s. He is best known for his luminous beaded textile wall hangings and intricately detailed paintings. Over the past six decades, Tisa’s work has had a significant influence on a wide range of prominent artists and writers.

Heaven was created for Tisa’s first solo exhibition of beaded works in more than forty years, held in 2023 at Kate Werble Gallery. He describes the process behind the piece as “wanting to make a beautiful landscape in beads.” Growing up outside Philadelphia, Tisa was an avid paint-by-numbers enthusiast, but his dyslexia prevented him from following the prescribed colors—so he simply chose his own. The central panel of Heaven pays homage to this early fascination, reimagining a paint-by-numbers composition entirely in beads.

Over the past five decades, Tisa’s work has been featured in exhibitions at institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA); La Salle University Art Museum (Philadelphia, PA); the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY); the Philbrook Museum of Art (Tulsa, OK); MoMA PS1 (Long Island City, NY); Artists Space (New York, NY); Art in General (New York, NY); Gray Gallery (New York, NY); PS122 Gallery (New York, NY); and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY). He is represented by Kate Werble Gallery and currently lives and works in New York City.

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About the Legacy Purchase Program

The Legacy Purchase Program began in 2019, acquiring world-class art pieces for the city’s public collection and growing in value as artists further their professional careers. This program seeks to strategically expand the City’s current public art collection by pursuing artwork that is reflective of our community, aligned with the curatorial direction of our existing collection, reflects artistic excellence and relevance in terms of current artistic practices, and is a valuable investment to the Art in Public Places Collection. Previous acquisitions include works from Juana Valdés, Sanford Biggers, Amoako Boafo, Ebony G. Patterson, and Farah Al Qasimi.

About the City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places Program

Art in Public Places Committee is a seven-member city board responsible for the commission and purchase of artwork by contemporary artists in all media. The program allocates funds totaling 2% of hard costs for City projects and joint private/public projects. Funds from construction projects may be aggregated into the Art in Public Places Fund and allocated for artwork at public sites and for collection maintenance.

Press Contact

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