The Vasari Project, established at Main Library in 2000 and co-funded by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, is a collection of printed matter and items of ephemera that document the history of art in Miami from 1945 to the present. Named for the first art historian of Western Art History, Giorgio Vasari (1474-1511), the archive preserves anything relating to, or reflecting, how the visual arts became part of our city’s cultural, social and economic life. There is enough evidence in the documentation already on hand to suggest that art was a factor in Miami’s growth from the town’s earliest strivings. Artists first came to paint the natural environment, then to enhance what settlers built and where visitors played, then to study and work here and stay.