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[title]Since 2021, LVMH Culture House has brought something unique, meaningful and exciting to the Miami Design District and all who are attending Miami Design Week and Art Basel Miami. It’s grown every year since, and this year you can expect to see the work of a larger array of visual artists and learn from business leaders and cultural changemakers.
I had a chance to talk to Corey Smith, Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for LVMH North America, and learn about the history and planning that have gone into making this the annual impactful and exciting experience it has become. The 2024 LVMH Culture House pop-up can be found at 151 NE 41st Street, 3rd Floor from December 4–8.
This interview has been edited for clarity, length, and flow. While efforts have been made to preserve the intent and meaning of the original conversation, minor adjustments may have been made to enhance readability and coherence.
What is the mission of LVMH Culture House, especially as it relates to Art Basel, Miami?
LVMH Culture House is a five-day pop-up gallery where we showcase the artwork of artists across the full spectrum of diversity—artists with disabilities, artists of color, women, LGBTQIA+, the full gamut of what diversity is—and use it as an opportunity for them to showcase their incredible talent.
We then curate a ton of phenomenal programming, panels, workshops and interactive sessions, all designed to drive people to the venue, but mainly to see the art. This is really about the intersection of luxury, art, media, technology, music, lifestyle and culture. And, you know, for us, that is extremely important because it is, at its crux, amplification and a highlight of how diverse our clientele actually is.
What's the history of LVMH Culture House?
Our first iteration dates back to 2021. It was the brainchild of a young woman, Haleigh Rosa, who knew Virgil Abloh (then Men's Creative Director for Louis Vuitton) really well. Haleigh is native to Florida, native to the Miami area and is in a wheelchair as a result of a car accident. Virgil made Haleigh a campaign model for Off-White, which was his brand under the LVMH umbrella at the time.
We were trying to come up with a way to put together an event that celebrated and amplified that people with disabilities are people just like everyone else, and actually have a ton of other abilities that often don't get recognized. That year, Art Basel coincided with International Day for People with Disabilities, which is December 3. Haleigh and I came up with this idea to create an art gallery featuring work by people with disabilities at Miami Art Basel.
We did a very small pop-up that year. We only celebrated three artists, and all three of them were artists with disabilities. Two were quadriplegics with no use of their arms or legs. They were both wheelchair bound and painted with a paintbrush in their mouths. Their artwork was fantastic. The third was a prenatal stroke victim. She couldn't communicate—couldn't speak, couldn't read, couldn't write—so her art was how she expressed herself to the world.
2021 was also the year Virgil passed away from cancer. It was literally the week before Art Basel. One of the artists had made a piece of artwork that we were going to dedicate to him at the event. We were all devastated, and it became a tribute to him.
LVMH has something that we call Voices of Inclusion Week. And the second year, Voices of Inclusion Week coincided with Art Basel in Miami again. And so we leveraged Voices of Inclusion Week to amplify the number of different types of diversity that we would celebrate.
And that's when we took the core concept to include women, LGBTQIA+ artists and people of color while keeping the disability scope, obviously. And the iteration of LVMH Culture House that you see now was really born out of that year. And we've just continued to grow from there.
What has been the response to Culture House from the beginning? Not only from the art community, but also from people who work in and are part of DEI? How has it grown?
From the very beginning, the response has been positive.
It's been gratifying to promote artists who, on their own, probably might never actually get the opportunity to exhibit at something like Art Basel Miami, and that it's LVMH giving them a platform to do so. From the very beginning—and it still continues every year—we sell pieces of art. In fact, the very first year, there was a bidding war on a few pieces in the gallery, which again, were all from only three artists with disabilities.
We didn't do a ton of promotion, but people walked by, popped in, and fell in love with the art.
And I think that's what's been so important about this. This is about the artists. It's about the artwork.
We center the art around anything that we do at LVMH Culture House. We bring it back to the idea of art and creativity. And the fact that creativity and creatives come in all shapes, sizes and colors. They look all different ways. Their talent, their skill and their ability isn't defined by this one-dimensional ideology, right? And so for us, the “I” in DEI is probably the most important thing. It is about inclusion. It is about bringing together people from all walks of life who probably think they have absolutely nothing in common. We bring them all into the same room and there's a ton of commonality year after year.
It's why Basel works. We could do this any other time of year in any other city, but it's Art Basel. And, we do it in the design district intentionally, because that's where all of our maisons and all of our stores are. People are familiar with our brands. And then this art gallery just pops up for five days in the middle of the design district. Our clients show up. They're already connected to LVMH and are in our ethos. This is an extra layer of creativity, innovation and quality, all the things that our brands are known for, all the things that our maisons are known for. We give these creatives an opportunity to express those same qualities through their art.
And it works every year. Last year, we had a line of people down the block waiting to get inside. Yes, it's about the programming. Yes, it's about the panels. And, yes, we bring out celebrities and people that folks want to see. But again, I go back to the mainstay and the throughline—this will always be about the art and the artists.
What is the curation process? And how long does it take to choose the participants
It's a fun process, and it has evolved and grown over time. I have an awesome partner in an art curator and an event production company. We start the process over the summer. We start thinking about a theme and feeling out artists who we think we want to feature.
This year, for example, our theme is texturism. And so it's a lot of art that uses different types of paint on canvas, or art that kind of pops off. It's very three-dimensional, even if it is a painting. Also, this year we're featuring sculpture for the first time. We've got an incredible 19-piece Romare Bearden installation called Bayou Fever that has never been shown anywhere.
Romare Bearden's work definitely didn't need to be part of LVMH Culture House, but the idea that it would be surrounded by artwork from all these up-and-coming artists was something that his estate was interested in.
This is also the first year that some of LVMH's Maisons are participating. Repossi, one of our jewelry brands, has an incredible installation with a backdrop of artwork from the process of mining the gemstones, which is done by native Tanzanian women. We’re celebrating these Black women from Africa who are miners and gemstone curators.
We have incredible partners in DACRA and the Miami Design District. This year, LVMH Culture House will be on the third floor of the Paradise Plaza event space, which is 8,000 square feet. We're really excited. With more space comes more opportunity to do more creative things and feature more artists. We have traditionally featured anywhere from three to four artists, but this year, we have eight or nine global artists. We have an incredible artist coming in from Japan and we have another coming in from Spain. The size and scope of what LVMH Culture House has become, like LVMH, is truly global.
Would you spend some time telling me about the speaker series?
Our programming at LVMH Culture House is very exciting. We give the artists whose work we’re spotlighting a platform to talk about their creativity, their views and their inspirations, but also the opportunity to tell the art world what else is coming up, where they can be found next. This is what means the most to them—their art and their livelihood. It's also one of the reasons why we’re so adamant—to the degree that the artists are comfortable—pointing out that the art is for sale. This is not just an exhibit. It's a gallery, meaning the art can be purchased, right? We want to drive some economic impact for the artists, understanding that they're entrepreneurs as well. It’s about the economic empowerment of diverse communities.
We always curate a really well-intentioned panel of entrepreneurs. In some cases, their businesses are connected to LVMH. Like this year, we have Chris Collins. He is a perfumer whose brand is “The World of Chris Collins,” and his perfumes are sold through Sephora. We feature a ton of artists though, and again, some connected and some not connected to LVMH. However, they each have an incredible story.
Last year was the first year that we started a panel of LVMH Maison presidents. And that was important, because it illustrated how inclusion helps businesses grow. And you're not hearing it from the DEI guy, right? You're hearing it from our Maison presidents who are driving business. We want to make sure that whoever walks through those doors has the best experience at the highest level possible. And I don't care who it is. And I don't care what you are, where you're from, what your quality of life is, what your background is. And so, hearing LVMH leaders talk about that in a really diverse room full of people from all walks of life, makes everyone feel connected to the brand.
Last year, we featured the U.S. presidents of Hublot, Givenchy and Bvlgari. This year we are going to have the presidents of Repossi, obviously, Maison Francis Kurkdjian, which is one of our perfume brands, and Volcan de mi Tierra Tequila, which is part of our Moët Hennessy portfolio for wines and spirits.
Finally, we have our Celebrity Influencer panel, which is always fun because it is about bringing in today's tastemakers and trendsetters, the folks that folks are watching. They’re not only on the pulse of what's now, but on the pulse of what's next. And we bring them all in a room and really have them talk about their experience on what's cutting edge, what's trendsetting and the things that they tap into. We always try to bring together a very diverse crowd of people that, as I like to say, are not influencers… they're influential.
Thank you so much for your time, Corey. I'm really excited about this experience and I'm excited to tell people to attend and to make them more aware of these artists, the mission, everything. Looking at the artwork, I was really, really moved by a lot of it. And I don't know why I'm getting weepy (I cry at dog food commercials at this point in time), but I was going through them and they're just really amazing pieces. So I applaud everything that you're doing.
We've got some special artists this year. And that's what art actually does. It invokes emotion. That's what it's supposed to do. So I love that you are responding to it and you haven't even seen it in person!
Make sure to add a visit to LVMH Culture House’s pop-up (December 4–8, 10am to 6pm, 151 NE 41st Street, 3rd Floor) to your Art Basel Miami itinerary. Check out all the details here.