At a moment of extreme unpredictability in the financial markets, antsy people may be looking to real estate as a more secure investment. And it just so happens that a Miami waterfront home with an art connection—namely a $26 million mansion formerly owned by the late art collector Rosa de la Cruz—is now on the market.
De la Cruz died at 81 in February 2024. The private museum she and her husband Carlos operated in the Miami Design District, which had featured on the itinerary of thousands of art pilgrims during the Art Basel fair there every December, soon closed, and Artnet News reported a month after her death that works from the collection would go to auction at Christie’s New York during the marquee May sale season.
Rosa de la Cruz’s Biscayne Bay mansion. Courtesy Brigitte de Langeron.
Estimated at about $30 million, the Christie’s sale totaled $34.4 million for 26 lots, led by a $13.6 million Felix Gonzalez-Torres light bulb sculpture. (Memorably, the piece hung in the sale room, and when the lot came up, the house momentarily dimmed the lights to show the piece to best advantage.) Five months later, the 30,000-square-foot de la Cruz Collection showroom sold to the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami for $25 million.
Rosa de la Cruz’s Biscayne Bay mansion. Courtesy Brigitte de Langeron.
The mansion, at 5 Harbor Point in Biscayne, measures 10,900 square feet on a 28,800-square-foot lot and features three bedrooms and four bathrooms. It’s one of just 12 waterfront estates in this “exclusive enclave,” said the realtor, Brigitte de Langeron. Built in 1970, it boasts marble floors, vaulted 20-foot ceilings, a private beach and dock, and views of both Biscayne Bay and the Miami skyline.
The private dock at Rosa de la Cruz’s Biscayne Bay mansion. Courtesy Brigitte de Langeron.
A calculator on De Langeron’s website indicates that with a 10 percent down payment ($2.6 million) and assuming a 5 percent interest rate on a 30-year mortgage, the monthly payments will be a very affordable $125,616. It’s less than a half-mile from two public schools and three private ones.
The couple is known for a contemporary art collection, built over two decades, that included stars like Tauba Auerbach, Dan Colen, Wade Guyton, Glenn Ligon, Ana Mendieta, Sterling Ruby, Dana Schutz, Rudolf Stingel, and Christopher Wool. The home is currently decked out with works from the couple’s holdings by Joe Bradley, Nate Lowman, Albert Oehlen, Sigmar Polke, Cosima von Bonin, and Kelley Walker, among others (which are presumably not included in the sale price).
assume vivid astro focus: XI (2004) on view in Rosa de la Cruz’s Biscayne Bay mansion. Courtesy Brigitte de Langeron.
Notably, the mansion was for two decades home to murals by Assume Vivid Astro Focus, commissioned by the collectors in 2004 and recently gifted to Miami’s Bass Museum.
“The de la Cruzes have been some of our greatest art patrons,” the Miami collector and filmmaker Dennis Scholl told Artnet News shortly after her death. “They helped change the face of Miami and make it an international cultural destination.”