The
Oolite Arts Awards
Celebrating the Foundation for What’s Next
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
1111 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, 33139
5:30 p.m. Cocktails
6:30 p.m. Award Ceremony
7:30 – 10 p.m. Party
Honoring visionary arts leaders Mario Cader-Frech and Robert S. Wennett for their enduring legacy and transformative contributions to the advancement of arts and culture, cultivating research into and the dissemination of Central American art and its diaspora through **The Museo Reina Sofía’s Cader Institute of Central American Art (ICAC) and **Y.ES Contemporary. They are also recognized for their pivotal role as founding members of the Art Basel Global Patrons Committee and for their continued patronage of Miami’s art institutions and artists.
The 2026 Ellies will be presented across four award categories, the Lifetime Achievement, inspired by Michael Richards, honoring an artist whose career has made a profound and enduring impact on South Florida’s cultural landscape; the Better World Award, recognizing artists whose work sparks dialogue around critical issues including social justice, climate change, gender equality, and racial equity; the Teacher Travel Awards, providing five grants of $5,000 each to support Miami-Dade public school educators in enriching their classroom curriculum through travel; and the Creator Awards, empowering artists living and working in South Florida.
Honorary Chairs
Jorge M. Pérez & Darlene Pérez
As Founding Executive Chairman of The Related Group, Jorge M. Pérez has led South Florida’s complex urban evolution for over 40 years. Regarded as one of the world’s leading contemporary art collectors, he is devoted to supporting arts and culture initiatives across South Florida and nurturing the artists and curators of the future. His long-lasting philanthropic legacy is evident throughout the region, most notably with the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), which was renamed in his honor following a $40 million gift. In 2019, Jorge expanded his support of the local arts ecosystem with the opening of El Espacio 23, his contemporary art space. Among his countless recognitions is being named by TIME Magazine as one of the top 25 most influential Hispanics in the U.S.
Darlene Pérez—a Miami native and advanced registered nurse practitioner with more than 25 years of experience — is an advocate and champion for healthcare and education in South Florida. Additionally, she founded PAMM’s International Women’s Committee and is active in a variety of civic and cultural organizations, including serving on the boards of Generation S.O.S; the Women Photographers International Archive; the Nursing Advisory Council for the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Florida International University; the Miami Cancer Institute Art & Design Committee and Wake Forest University. She is also a member of the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) Latin American and Caribbean Fund.
Driven by a lifelong commitment to giving back and promoting sustainable, inclusive and just communities, Jorge, Darlene and their four children established The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation at The Miami Foundation (the Family Foundation) in 2015. In the first 10 years since its founding, the Family Foundation has committed over $70 million in support of nearly 150 non-profit organizations helping to develop South Florida as an exemplary world-class urban center. Among the Family Foundation’s notable initiatives is the Pérez CreARTE Grants Program (CreARTE), which focuses on cultivating a more dynamic, connected arts ecosystem. Since its 2019 inception, CreARTE has invested $10 million across 45 unique organizations in Miami-Dade County, including Oolite Arts, helping fill key areas that impact the creative community most, such as access to affordable workspaces, cultural equity and education.
Co-chairs
Sergio García Granados & Tanya Brillembourg
Sergio García-Granados is a wealth manager, historian, and art collector who serves as Executive Director of a team overseeing his family’s and other family trusts at Morgan Stanley in Miami, Florida. An Academico member of the Guatemalan Historical Society, he has published and edited articles in the Society’s Anales and authored several historical works, including Cuaderno de Memorias de Jorge Garcia Granados (Artemis-Edinter, 2000; Magna Terra, 2024), Libre Crezca Fecunda (Magna Terra, 2006), a study of Enlightenment thought in 18th-century Central America, and The Birth of Israel (Newman Springs, 2024), a review of his grandfather’s notes on the UN process that led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1947–48; he is currently working on an essay exploring the stories of the Popol Vuh, the sacred text of the Mayan peoples of Guatemala. He earned a law degree with honors from Universidad de San Carlos and completed postgraduate studies in international law and finance at Université de Paris (Sorbonne). An avid collector of contemporary Latin American art, García-Granados’s collection includes works by Elmar Rojas, Antonio Pichilla, Luis González-Palma, Manuel Chavajay, Tepeu Choc, Rubén Torres-Llorca, León Ferrari, Gustavo Acosta, José Bedia, Tomás Sánchez, and Alexandre Arrechea, among others. His longstanding cultural leadership includes board service with the Patronato de Bellas Artes, the National Theatre Miguel Angel Asturias, the Museo Cubano de Arte y Cultura, the Miami Symphony Orchestra, and membership on the Collectors Council of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, as well as involvement with numerous art and cultural organizations in Miami and Guatemala.
Tanya Brillembourg is an art consultant and gallerist based in Miami with a lifelong commitment to advancing Latin American and Caribbean art. Together with her husband, Sergio García Granados, she is an active collector and supporter of artists from Central and South America, helping elevate their work within the international contemporary art landscape. With a career spanning nearly four decades, she has played significant leadership and curatorial roles in galleries and institutions in Miami, New York, and Caracas, contributing to the visibility and development of contemporary art practices across the Americas. From her early roles in Caracas to key positions in New York and her founding of influential art spaces in Miami, Tanya’s professional experience reflects deep engagement with artists and communities throughout the region. She holds a B.A. in Museology and Fine Arts from Universidad José María Vargas in Caracas.
2026 The Lifetime Achievement Winners
Roberto Behar & Rosario Marquardt / R&R Studios
Rosario and Roberto are artists, educators, and childhood friends, and the founders of R&R STUDIOS, a multidisciplinary platform merging art, architecture, and the city. Their artworks create encounters between stories and places, weaving together the everyday and the fantastic, the poetic and the political. They create architectural social sculptures that blur the boundaries between art and life and perform as instant landmarks.
The $75,000 Lifetime Achievement Award goes to these trailblazing artists which works include the biggest “M” in the world in Miami; All Together Now in downtown Denver; The Living Room, their iconic Miami home turned inside-out; Bésame Mucho at the Coachella Music Festival, Building Blocks, a square in Seattle and Peace & Love a Parkland Memorial sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. They recently unveiled three artworks for Princeton University Art Museum documented in The Home We Share: Three Social Sculptures for Princeton University (Park Books, 2025), and Beauty for All, a visual manifesto for the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial.
2026 Better World Award
william cordova
william cordova is an interdisciplinary cultural practitioner working with site-specific installations. His work is based on a creative engagement with architecture, geometry, and history. These are essential components that have continuously shaped his worldview. cordova is interested in the fundamental origins of abstraction, including cultural encoding and non-linear narratives, from the African, Andean, and Asian diaspora point of view that originates in Peru, where he was born and raised. william’s work continues to invest in this cultural, ethnic, and Racial synthesis, as a method of disrupting, challenging, and reassessing these influences on the history and practice of Western secular architecture, modernism, and theory. It has been a continuous process of illuminating and connecting historical evidence of ritual labor and its theory to contemporary examples. It is an attempt to reconsider how the abstracted evidence of cultural matter plays a large role in the modern world.
2026 Better World Winner
william cordova
william cordova is an interdisciplinary cultural practitioner working with site-specific installations. His work is based on a creative engagement with architecture, geometry, and history. These are essential components that have continuously shaped his worldview. cordova is interested in the fundamental origins of abstraction, including cultural encoding and non-linear narratives, from the African, Andean, and Asian diaspora point of view that originates in Peru, where he was born and raised. william’s work continues to invest in this cultural, ethnic, and Racial synthesis, as a method of disrupting, challenging, and reassessing these influences on the history and practice of Western secular architecture, modernism, and theory. It has been a continuous process of illuminating and connecting historical evidence of ritual labor and its theory to contemporary examples. It is an attempt to reconsider how the abstracted evidence of cultural matter plays a large role in the modern world.
About the Ellies
The Ellies—Oolite Arts Awards are now unrestricted and open to artists living and working across Miami-Dade, Broward, Monroe, and Palm Beach counties, reflecting our commitment to meet artists where they are and support their growth as they seek new, affordable spaces to create and thrive. This year, the winning artists will collectively receive $425,000 in direct financial support, with an additional $75,000 in direct artist support through acquisitions, bringing the total awards to an outstanding $4.1 million in support through the eighth editions of South Florida’s premiere art award program.
Your support will provide vital resources that empower artists to create, connect, and grow through residencies, exhibitions, and public programs, fueling the continued vibrancy of our cultural community.
More Information
For more information about supporting The Ellies, including tailored sponsorship opportunities, please contact Nuria Richards, Director of Development and Advisor for Strategy, at [email protected] or by phone at 305‑674‑8278 Ext. 304.
