Dennis Scholl (b. 1955, USA) is an American artist who lives and works in Miami Beach, Florida. He is a visual artist and filmmaker whose practice interrogates the intersections of memory, history, and cultural iconography. His work navigates the space between conservation and transformation, questioning the limits of historical truth and personal recollection.

Scholl’s work – both visual and cinematic – questions how history is archived, remembered, and reframed, offering a conceptual dialogue between past and present.

It was an honor to interview Dennis Scholl on March 6, 2025. We got to learn about Dennis Scholl’s leadership roles in Miami and his personal journey through the arts world into becoming an internationally known visual artist.

Read all about our uncovering below or watch the interview!

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: We’ve heard your name across headlines here in Miami, mainly with your leadership roles here in Miami, holding positions like as the Vice President for Art at Knight Foundation, President of ArtCenter/South Florida and President and CEO of Oolite Arts and an early leader of the Art Deco Historic District and the Wynwood Arts District, is that right?

Dennis Scholl: Yeah, that was my first entrepreneurial experience and was also my first creative experience. If you’re buying and renovating historically true to their character Art Deco buildings, I think that counts as a creative practice.

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: You are also an artist. First off, you are a regional Emmy award winner for your documentary works as a filmmaker, how many Emmy awards have you won to date?

Dennis Scholl: Well, whose counting! 23 actually. I made a lot of films I’ve made over 80 shorts and seven features. My newest feature is about to come out, it’s called, Naked Ambition, it is the story of Miami’s Bunny Yeager, who was a pin-up model, who became a pin-up photographer. I’ve previously made feature films about soul music in Miami, a movie called Deep City and I also did a film a few years ago about the greatest jazz singer of the 21st century, her name was Cécile McLorin Salvant. She’s won three of the last five jazz vocal Grammies, some crazy number like that and she’s a Miami girl. She was raised here and turned out to be a miracle of a singer. I’m fortunate because Miami has so many great stories and they are not hard to find here. Miami’s an unusual town that way and I like to make films only about art and artists. I haven’t made films about anything else and I think that is because I revere artist and I respect them so much, it’s a way of shining a light on them. My entire practice of all 80 shorts and seven features has been about artists.

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: Wow, that’s amazing and thank you for covering the artists across Miami from past to present. So, you’re also a visual artist apart from filmmaking, what is your story in beginning your journey as a visual artist ’til now?

Dennis Scholl: I think it has two tracks. I never went to a museum until I was 22 years old. I grew up down here but, as a blue collar kid I went fishing and diving and snorkeling, things like that, so, I didn’t have much of a cultural upbringing. But, at a very young age I had a pension for collecting things. I started with milk bottle caps, collect all the president type of things – stamps, coins, baseball cards. Anything you could collect, I collected. There’s something about building a collection that gave me a sense of completion if you will and I started collecting art though at the age 22. I went to this museum. I walked in I couldn’t believe what it was like and I immediately started collecting then, right away. That 47 years ago, I started to collect art and I did for a very, very long time and my wife Deborah and I built a very large collection of Contemporary Art. Lots of different kinds of Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Art, drawings, we had a photography collection, we would kind of just cycle through them and that was great.

At some point in time, I wanted a creative endeavor. I started creating the films, that was a really satisfying creative endeavor but, at the end of the day I wanted to be able to do something just by myself and if you’re a filmmaker it takes a lot of people to make a five minute film. Particularly for somebody like me because I’m not a camera man, I’m not a sound guy, I don’t actually turn the knobs to do the edit, I just have a conceptualized idea of what a film might be and I gather teams really well. I’m a good gatherer of teams and I made a lot of films that way. But, I wanted to do something myself, something where I can just sit in a studio and obsess. I think that the most authentic for me to do that would be to try an turn my collecting gene, my collecting skillset if you will into some kind of art making. That’s what I’ve wound up doing, I began to gather, I guess I started about 10 years ago, historical artifacts – 12 newspapers from the Civil War, NASA material from the space launches, Charles Dickens original serial chapters. I began to gather all of these things and I kind of flailed around for the first five years and couldn’t find a way to use it thoughtfully if you will, but, then I hit upon this thread of joining them together in a what I call a dodecagon, it’s a 12-sided figure. So, I take the historical objects and I redisplay them if you will in what’s called a assemblage. I kind of just put them together. Sometimes, I put something in the middle that’s different and that allows me to have a creative practice.

The whole practice is built around one thing and I’m going to ask you a question about that one thing and that is what is your most vivid collective memory? For me, it’s the Kennedy assassination and a collective memory is one you share with the nation or the world, take your pick. So, can you think of what your most vivid collective memory is, one that really sticks with you, that makes you remember exactly where you were, what you were doing, exactly who you were with?

Untitled (Assassination), 2023

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: I would say my time at the Arts & Business Council with a lady named Sonia Hendler and my time there with them, Ms. Laura Bruney and that experience with her.

Dennis Scholl: Yeah, so everybody has a different one and it takes them to a very specific place for a lot of people it was 9/11, just depends on how old you are really. If you’re between the ages of around 45 or 55 years old, it’s almost certain that your most vivid collective memory is the Challenger explosion because you were in school and the teacher wheels out a TV, you’re sitting there and watching it, everybody’s clapping for the launch and then all the astronauts are lost right before our eyes. So, it’s different for everybody for me it’s also the man on the moon, the moon launch, where the man landed on the moon, those are the kinds of things that I make work about, that I try to find subjects that are responsive to many, many people. You know if you weren’t around when Kennedy was assassinated it’s probably not a big thing in your life but, by the same token some of my younger friends like were very crushed, very devastated by the loss of Michael Jackson. So, everybody has a different touch point in our culture that leads them to a moment where they say, “oh, I remember exactly where I was, I was in school or in college or this or that.” That’s the kind of thing that I’m chasing when I make the work.

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: That’s interesting! So, in your new exhibition that opens this month (March 2025), titled, “The Melody Haunts My Reverie”, it’s going to be on display at Piero Atchugarry Gallery from March 15 to May 17th. Well, you kind of explained a little bit about your artistic background, how you like to create and the meaning behind it but, what lead you to put on this exhibition?

Dennis Scholl: Well, I’ve mostly been showing in Europe for the past four years or so and I really wasn’t in a hurry to do a show in my hometown. I wanted to make sure that I had done enough to deserve a show in my hometown. I wanted to make sure that my work was at a level, where when I brought it home you know people would feel good about it. I’ve been involved in patronage in this community and in arts administration for many, many years and I revere the visual artists in our community, so I didn’t want to bring something that was too weak. I wanted to bring something that people would go, you know I think that would be good enough to show in our community, so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that. I finally got to the point where I felt like I could have a show.

Piero Atchugarry Gallery is literally my favorite gallery in the community. The space is gorgeous. It’s an international program. They are in the Art Basels. They do everything at a very, very high level and so, when Piero offered me the opportunity to have a show I jumped at it because I felt I was ready and again because I wanted to work with a gallery that is working at the highest level. He and the staff there are working at the highest level. So, I just come from the gallery about 20 minutes ago. We are installing right now and it’s a really beautiful space and there’s just enough work and they’ve been helping me fight my inclination too much into the show. I’m fighting that very hard. You know Angie, the director of the gallery has been helping me not do that so, that’s great and the show is looking beautiful. I’m really, really excited about it. I’m just hoping that my Miami pose, my 305 people will all come out and celebrate with me because it’s been a real labor of love. I’ve been working on this show for probably four years now, so, I’m anxious to see.

There are pieces about the Olympics, there are pieces about the aforementioned, Charles Dickens, there are pieces about Jack Kerouac – the beat poet and author of On The Road from the 1950s. There is a Michael Jackson piece. There’s a lot of interesting things in there and they’re all original, archival ephemera – things that you would find at auction. I don’t work with found objects – things like you would find on the street that someone discarded. There’s lots of artists that do that and they do it really beautifully. I work with acquired objects, where I have to go out into the universe of auction houses and things like that. I try and chase down these things. Today, I was bidding on works by Harry Belafonte’s estate. I was trying to get some things out of his estate. You know he passed recently and then these things they come to auction and so, lots of things flow through and it’s just a question of whether I can find something. I look at tens of thousands of objects a month and maybe I find ten or a dozen that I am interested in using to make a piece but, then I have to bid on them. I’ve got to bid on the work and try to get the work and I only wind up getting one or two a month, so, that’s my output. It’s when I can find a series of objects I can acquire and then turn into a piece using this 12-sided figure.

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: As a visual artist moving forward into the next five years or thinking forward into the next five years, what are your goals?

Dennis Scholl: I think I want to be in a position where people get to see the work. It’s a real gift as an artist to have people want to experience your work and so far I’ve been fortunate to do that in a lot of different places. Bigger you know scale-wise, I have some ideas that are bigger. I have some ideas that are about objects that I haven’t really thought about before. There’s going to be more sculptural elements as opposed to wall pieces.

I’m also starting to bring film into the art practice. I’ve got a couple of what I would call art videos as opposed to the short films that I make. They’re more narrative films. There’s a story, there’s a beginning, there’s a middle, there’s a end. There’s a protagonist but, in the art videos it’s a little looser, it’s a little freer. I’m working on a video right now. I’m going to do a show in Scotland next year (2026) and the building I’m showing in had a tragic event in 1865 on January 2nd, a bunch of people were going into the building to see a music concert and just like in a rock and roll setting people started pushing and shoving and fell on top of one another and 20 children died. It’s a horrible, horrible experience. I’m working on a film about that experience and about what happened because nobody really talks about it in that city where it happened. I’m hoping to go and take the film and show it to the city council and have a plaque put up for the children that passed in 1865.

That’s the kind of work that I do. It’s a conceptual practice, where kind of the idea is more important than the work itself. It’s really about conveying an idea. So, I hope to do a lot more of that.

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: That’s amazing! When you just described that I can already connect with you on just like wow…I’ve never even heard of that story and it’s such a tragic story but yet to put it in film to be able to have us as the newer generation connecting with the past that’s like very powerful. So, thank you for doing works like that.

Dennis Scholl: That’s what the whole practice is about really. It’s about the same things with the films. You know the films are an attempt to recognize artists maybe that had a moment. Deep City, all of these great soul music musicians, you know they wound up being bus mechanics and school teachers even though they were this close to Motown in terms of what they did, but, you know times were different then and they couldn’t get their music out. I just wanted to honor that because it’s extraordinary music. I do that for a lot of artists I think in the filmmaking practice. I guess I’m doing that in a way for the viewer. I’m trying to get the viewer, when they look at the artwork in the show to have a historical experience, one where I can take them back. You know maybe you weren’t at the Civil War, even I was not at the Civil War, but, there’s a moment in which you studied the Civil War so much that you knew a lot about it. You knew about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address and those things. So, you can make work historically, that still resonates with people and is kind of an historical memory for them, the ideas of studying things.

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: Oh Wow, that’s just amazing! So, for the viewers that are beginning their journey as a visual artist, what advice would you give those looking to make a name for themselves in the art world, locally and beyond?

Dennis Scholl: Well, I don’t know how willing I am to tell somebody else how to do it in a sense of I’m still kind of learning to do it, but, I would say that one of the things that I found really helpful is a really resonant effort to learn more about art history because if you don’t know art history it’s very hard to build upon it. I think that making sure that you’ve had an art history or certainly over the last 50  or 60 or 70 years that would help a lot, post-war and maybe forward. Art  has changed so much in that time period and it’s become so much more conceptual, so different in how we view it, the things that we are willing to look for, the things that we seek. So, that would be the number one thing that I would work on.

The second thing, I would say is the same thing, I would tell my film students at the University of Miami, I teach a documentary film class there sometimes. I tell them ABM – Always Be Making. There’s no excuse not to be making. If you want to make films then, you got to make films as much as you can. You got to make them on the weekends. I had a day job until a year and half ago and I still made 80-something films. I got up everyday and went to work, but, I found a way to do it. So, you’ve got to always be making, always be thinking about what am I doing today to move forward my film practice, my studio art practice. Doesn’t matter if you’re going to work and you got a hard day and there’s no money and you know you’ve got to find a way to move the practice forward.

The last thing I would say, you have got to show up. I would say that 70% of the art world is about showing up. We have an extraordinarily resonant arts community in Miami. There are tremendous amount of artists and there are tons and tons of opportunities to be seen. You have places like Locust Projects, you have places like Name Publications, you have places like Dimensions Variable, you know these are all for emerging artists that don’t have art ready for a museum show, maybe not even ready for a gallery show.

I’m working on a show right now with my good friend…it opens April 19th at FIU’s Miami Beach Campus, 1620 Washington Avenue and it’s called The Unusual Suspects and it’s 14 or 15 artists that aren’t really seen that much in Miami, they don’t show that much but, they’re hella good makers. It’s a show for those people that aren’t getting seen and we want them to be seen. So, there’s plenty of room in this town to spend as much time as you want to as you can to build your practice. You got to show up, gotta make the work and you gotta kind of have a good feel for what came before you.

Those would be my three suggestions.

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: Since, we have some time I wanted to go back to…I believe you said you collected artwork over the years.

Dennis Scholl: Yes, five different collections. Starting with the print collection because that’s what we could afford. They were very inexpensive at the time. It’s still a great entry point to the contemporary art world – signed, numbered, limited lithographs, wood cuts, seriographs by the best artists in the world. You know the first two pieces of art I ever bought were by Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Motherwell, but, they were prints and you could afford them.

After that for awhile, we had our collection if you will of South Beach buildings that was a really big seven, eight, nine year project, buying as many of those as we can find at a good price and renovating them and filling them with young people, it was a really amazing and wonderful time. The Art Deco District is a miracle. It’s 880 historic buildings, certainly the largest district in the world. It’s beautiful, it’s fun, it’s human scale so, to be able to kind of participate in that back in the late ’80s with people like Craig Robins and Tony Goldman, you know these are legendary figures in our community and my wife Deborah and I were very fortunate to get to do that. But, when the buildings finally began to eat us out of a house and home because when you’re doing a renovation project, forget it, you’ve got time or money for nothing else. We went back to the art world and we started collecting artist photography. Photography made by artist not necessarily photography made by quote photographers and that was a really ripe moment for us. We wind up building a collection of I don’t know 600 photographs or something by pretty famous artists, you know like John Baldessari, Cindy Sherman…we did that for awhile and then we went on this kind of conceptual art kick that I’m on right now with my own practice, where we acquired work that the idea of the work was more important to the concept than the actual work itself. We had a pretty big conceptual art collection.

Then, I got a little burnt out on the art world to be honest, we’ve been in it for many, many years. Deborah and I had made wine in Australia for this is our 25th vintage under the name Mother Tongue is the name of our winery. Before that we were in a winery project called Betts & Scholl. Our name is Scholl. I started to go down there to Australia a lot and one of the curators down there said you ought to go look at the Aboriginal Contemporary art. I said I’ve seen some of that. He said you are not looking at the right stuff, go here look at this and then tell me what you think and I did and it was an epiphany. I went down there and I started to look at that work, I got on a plane the next morning I flew home and I said to Deborah you’re not going to believe what we are going to do next. We stopped with the Contemporary Art world as we knew it and spent 12 years acquiring over 400 Aboriginal Contemporary artworks from Australian Aboriginal artists, toured them all over America at 16 museum shows. We got the order of Australia from the Prime Minister for doing it. It was an amazing, amazing experience but, the best part of it was spending time with the artists in the bush and just watching them paint day after day after day.

Subsequent to that we kind of finished that project and now we collect drawings, works on paper. We’re back to what we would call the Western art world. You know the Eurocentric, US centric art world. We spend all of our time now on building that drawing collection. We’re getting drawings from the ’50s to work made last Tuesday as I always like to say. It’s a big collection, we love it but, I got to say this studio art practice has taken a lot of my time in a good and blessed way. I feel very, very fortunate to be able to go to the studio everyday now, that I’ve given up my day job at Oolite. Go to the studio everyday, I work hard on the practice. I’ve got shows through 2027 lined up, lots of interesting shows all over the world. Again, I feel very, very fortunate.

I’m still making films. I have two films that are coming out in the Miami Film Festival in four weeks. One is about a Ukrainian artist in the 1970s who lived on South Beach. I’ve made a film that a lot of people have seen called The Last Resort about elderly population in South Beach in the 1970s. This film was brought to me by one of the guys in that film, Gary Monroe, a tremendous photographer. He kept this man’s archive after he passed, George’s archive and he turned it into an amazing exhibition.

Then, I’ve got a second film in the film festival about a Richard Serra sculpture that is one of the largest in the world and the process of moving it from Jacksonville all the way across the panhandle, it weighs a half a million pounds.

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: Oh wow, that’ll get those whose interested in information like that like how did they move that statue?

Dennis Scholl: Yeah and that’s what it is it’s a process film. I’m making a bigger film for the owners of the sculpture about the bigger story but, this is just a little six to eight minute process film and it’s crazy. I mean trucks that you can’t get anywhere else. Yeah, it’s pretty wild.

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: Oh wow! What made you come up with that idea?

Dennis Scholl: Well, I knew my friend had owned this sculpture for awhile and they were getting ready to install it one place and it didn’t work out and so they decided to move it to the panhandle to Rosemary Beach and I thought well what’s that going to be like? I mean this thing is massive. Well, it turned out it was a big thing. It was an amazing big thing and so shooting that film was fun. Five days of shooting, you know day in and day out you know moving this giant piece. So, it’s now resting ready to go into its new home.

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: Alright! Well, just to remind everyone, the new exhibition is coming out and Dennis’ new exhibition is titled, The Melody Haunts My Reverie on display at Piero Atchugarry Gallery from March 15th to May 17th. You just have so many wonderful works coming out, we just can’t wait to hear about all of them and hear what the public has to say as well.

Dennis Scholl: Well, that’s very kind. Thank you! I just want to say the website looks great. To those of you who are watching this keep checking out the website because they did a beautiful job you know on the stuff that I’m doing and I think there is more to come is what I’m guessing, right? So, thank you guys.

Arts Decoder Miami – Indy: Yes and thank you Dennis for your time.

Contact Dennis Scholl

Website: www.dennisscholl.com/works

Photos Courtesy Of Piero Atchugarry Gallery

Date Posted: March 17, 2025