Miami Art Week 2011

Art Basel Miami Beach Returns with a Constellation of Fairs, Exhibitions, and Events

If you love art and design and don’t mind crowds, head to Miami the first week of December for what’s become known as Miami Art Week. The annual celebration of art and design transforms Miami, an already art and design conscious city, into a place where you can’t pass a fire hydrant without wondering if it’s a signed piece. Organized around Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB), most exhibitions and events take place in Miami Beach or across the bay in Midtown Miami, the Wynwood Arts District, and the Miami Design District.

On the Beach

Ten years ago, Miami Beach may have seemed an unusual choice to host a sister fair for Switzerland based Art Basel, an internationally acclaimed art show for modern and contemporary art running 42 years. But, in retrospect, it was an inspired one, with Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB) becoming one of the most important art shows in the U.S. as well as a draw for more than 40,000 art loving, sun seeking curators, critics, gallerists, collectors, artists, designers, socialites and celebrities from around the globe.

Held in the Miami Beach Convention Center, ABMB presents 20th and 21st century artwork by more than 2,000 artists represented by more than 260 leading art galleries in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Divided into several sections, it presents both established and up and coming artists in a variety of formats. Adding to a heady cultural brew are Art Conversations, Art Salons, Art Positions, Art Video (in association this year with London’s Artprojx and projected on the giant wallscreen of the newly opened New World Center designed by Frank Gehry), Art Film (curated by Zurich connoisseur, This Brunner), and Art Public (sculptures and performances presented in Collins Park in collaboration with the Bass Museum of Art). Art Video and Art Public are free.

Anticipating tired eyes and throbbing feet? The lovely, newly redesigned Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, directly across from the convention center, can provide a welcome respite from your ABMB art immersion. For a physical as well as emotional adjustment, there’s YogArt Fair beginning November 30th at the Loews Hotel Miami Beach. For refreshments and retail therapy, the Lincoln Road pedestrian mall is nearby.

If ABMB is Art Basel’s sister fair, then Design Miami is its’ first cousin. The fairs are located near one another both in Basel and in Miami. The 7th annual Design Miami will showcase 20th and 21st century museum quality, collectible, and often stunning designs from more than 20 world class design galleries as well as four emerging ones. There will be Design Talks hosted by Stefano Tonchi and W Magazine and new design projects by Fendi, Audi and Swarovski. Visitors to the fair will be greeted by an exclusively commissioned installation created by African architect David Adjaye, the fair’s Designer of the Year.

Hotel housed art fairs give new meaning to the expression “room with a view” and present a way to view art that is often private and intimate. It’s not unusual to see shoes tucked under beds or art displayed in bathrooms. Most of these fairs are clustered around ABMB. The Greenwich Hotel, new home for Verge Art Miami Beach, is just half a block from the convention center and will include two juried exhibitions of emerging art. Ink Miami Art Fair, in the Dorchester Suites and sponsored by the International Fine Art Dealers Association, shows contemporary works on paper, including 20th century masters and just published editions. Pool Art Fair in the Carlton Hotel, follows the French tradition of artists’ fairs and is dedicated to unrepresented artists while Art Now, in the Catalina Hotel, is a curated contemporary show.

Arts for a Better World at the Surfcomber Hotel will feature “Tous Ensemble” (All Together), an installation decrying violence by acclaimed French artist Marc Ash as well as The Van Gogh’s Dream, a pavilion in which the room where the artist spent his last days will be recreated. It will also show videos about his life and house contemporary works that pay him tribute. A recreation of another kind is Will Ryman’s twenty-two foot high bed…of sculpted roses at the Sagamore Hotel. Seattle based Aqua Art Miami will showcase forty five exhibitors in the Aqua Hotel. Sponsored by Modern Painter, it will have a VIP opening and include unique collaborations such as one installation created by a Navajo Nation artist working with Miccosukee Nation artists and another by artist Adad Hannah and Oscar winning filmmaker Denys Arcard.

Further south on famed Ocean Drive in South Beach, the Art Deco Welcome Center’s new Burst Art Fair promises emerging artists and galleries and will include mixed media pieces, surreal pop art, indie film shorts, street art, sculpture, and photography. In the historic Deauville Hotel up in North Miami Beach, the 9th NADA (National Art Dealers Association) will showcase emerging art from more than thirty cities worldwide in ballrooms where Frank Sinatra and the Beatles once performed (but not together).

Across the Bay

Art Miami, now going strong for twenty-two years, found a new 125,000 square foot home in Midtown Miami several years ago and moved its dates to coincide with ABMB. With plentiful parking, restaurants and shopping nearby, the area’s just a short ride across the bay from Miami Beach. Art Miami will showcase modern and contemporary art from more than one hundred art institutions and galleries in Europe, Asia, Latin America, India, the Middle East and the U.S.

Other art fairs have also located in Midtown. Across the street from Art Miami, ten year old Scope Miami will include eighty international emerging art galleries with solo and thematic shows as well as film, music, installation and performance art. Pulse, located closer to downtown Miami, has a similar range of art, but edgier. Art Asia features Southeast Asian, Near and Middle Eastern art. At the Rotunda, a pop-up location in Midtown, the SushiSamba Restaurant Group dishes up the exhibition “Graffiti Gone Global” with French architect Marc Fornes’ 30 foot wide structure.

Just north of Midtown Miami is Wynwood Arts District, home to more than fifty cutting edge galleries, artist studios, art complexes, museum collections, restaurants and lounges. It’s also home to more than 200 murals, making it a veritable outdoor art museum. Both car and pedestrian traffic increase exponentially during Miami Art Week. A popular destination is Wynwood Walls, an urban park displaying twenty murals by international artists. Neighboring restaurants decorated with street art will be filled with art lovers, revelers, and art-loving revelers. Some neighborhood fairs have both indoor and outdoor venues, such as Multiversal Art Fair, which offers art, music, and live performances and Seven, organized by seven galleries in a 15,000 square foot warehouse.

At the western end of the Miami Design District, a stone’s throw north of Midtown and Wynwood, is the de la Cruz Contemporary Art Space which will have a special exhibition of local artists Justin Long and Robert Lorie. It Ain’t Fair, with 20 artists, including acclaimed local artist Daniel Arsham, will be organized around the timely theme of materialism. The Buick Building on the eastern end will house The Craig Robins Collection of Art & Design while in the nearby Moore Building on the second floor, Haiti Art Expo II will raise money for housing for hurricane victims. Also there will be “Architecture and the Air” by Christopher Janney, whose new “Harmonic Convergence” interactive art installation will debut at Miami International Airport for Miami Art Week.

Miami Art Museum, the Bass Museum of Art, the Wolfsonian Museum, and MOCA North Miami Beach are among the local museums hosting special events and exhibitions during Miami Art Week. Some of Miami’s renowned private collections are housed in museum-like buildings and open to the public; the Rubell family collection, COIF (Cisneros Fontanas Art Foundation), and The Margulies Collection in Wynwood will have extended hours as well as special exhibitions. Art incubators, The Bakehouse in Wynwood and the Art Center/South Florida on Lincoln Road in South Beach, will also host special exhibitions.

If you have the time to venture further, ahem, afield, you can visit Fairchild Tropical Garden to see Will Ryman’s giant flower sculptures or Viscaya Museum & Gardens to see Naomi Fisher’s video and installation. On December 4, from 9:30 to 12, The Frost Museum at FIU will host its annual free Breakfast in the Park, which includes brunch, lecture by noted sculptor Joel Perlman and tour of the sculpture garden – a delicious, refreshing way to conclude Miami Art Week.