Sometime ago, Constant Companion and I ventured to downtown Miami for another of our infrequent staycations (see 3-14-23 post). I ended that post wondering about a large circular bas relief that resembled an oversized manhole cover. All my best googling skills could not identify it, thus the mystery.

I wrote to a local history blogger, but he was not familiar with this “thing.” Recently, I asked one of the major, local history cognoscente (someone possessing superior or specialized knowledge in a particular field) about this mysterious feature. He recommended that I explore the county Art in Public Places archive (https://miamidadepublicart.org/#grid) and there it was! Mystery solved. Curiously, New Calypso also appears on the city Art in Public Places website (https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Shortlist/index.html?appid=c54df55cfd4c4117b27d40a923ffec95)

New Calypso by Houston Conwill (1947-2016) was commissioned by the Art in Public Places program in 1994. The intricate piece was created in partnership with Estella Conwill Majozo (poet), and Joseph DePace (architect). It is a site-responsive art installation and a peace memorial tribute to the city’s multicultural community. The circular cosmogram is formed from incised bluestone slabs. The artists worked closely with the local Black Archives to identify historical figures, local literary symbolism, poetic texts, and song fragments which are sandblasted into the stone. The cosmogram celebrates Miami as a place of spiritual renaissance.

Conwill was an African-American multidisciplinary artist known for his large-scale sculptural installations. A former seminarian and Vietnam War veteran, he assimilated a wide range of genres and forms, among them maps and bowls of earth, to depict memory, heritage and the African diaspora in works that blurred the boundaries between performance and conceptual art.

Conwill is also known for collaborative site-specific works celebrating African-American culture and spiritualism.

New Calypso is located at the Park West Metromover station at the intersection of Northeast Second Avenue and Eighth Street, two blocks northwest of the Miami-Dade Arena in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Miami.

Another similar, but much smaller, mystery emerged last week when Constant Companion and I went to the ballet at the performing arts center. When the center was built, it became the palette for a number of noted artists whose artwork is found in and out of the two buildings. This intricately inscribed circular piece (perhaps a manhole cover) is outside. Another google search came up blank! Maybe we need to take a tour of the facility to learn its secrets.