This week, Miami is the world center of art
This week begins Miami Art Week , a few days in which the city is a whirlwind of art, design and humidity. Eighteen years have passed since the almighty ArtBasel decided to bet on this city that is, in substance and form, at the antipodes of Switzerland.
There has been the success. ** Miami is a bridge between the United States and Latin America ** and in it there is money and much more sun than in Basel. The plan could not fail and has not failed.
Today, Art Basel (December 5-8) is the hub of a week full of fairs. It has **a “sister” focused on 20th and 21st century design, Miami Design ** (December 3-8) ; and other satellite fairs.
Let's take a breath: Untitled (from 4 to 8) , ArtMiami (from 3 to 8) , Nothing Miami (from 5 to 8) and Context Art (from 3 to 8) , Press (from 5 to 8) , Scope (from 3 to 8) and Prizm (from 2 to 8) .
Also, new spaces are opened, hotels have their own artistic program and there are as many parties as there are sun loungers on the beach. During this week Miami is filled with collectors, artists, curators, art lovers, celebrities and those who aspire to be any of the above.
The most important thing anyone traveling to Miami this week should know is that can't see it all. Not even if he cloned himself into ten people would he do it. You have to choose. Distances are long and Ubers are limited. This week is also an excuse to be in Miami, a city that arouses love and hate.
It is easy to find out what we, arch-fetishists, piscinophiles, revelers and defenders of cities with palm trees, think. This week Miami is on fire. Let's try to move through it without getting burned.
We will spend time in the closed venues where the fairs are held, but we will go out a lot. That's where the city shines this week, in its interaction with the art world.
There is a lot to see and spread over many areas: South Beach (later we will write a paragraph-ode) , Wynwood, Faena District, Downtown, Key Biscayne or Allapattah , an emerging neighborhood that we still have to learn to spell well because we will write it frequently from now on.
It opens this week the Rubell Museum, the new home of the Rubell Family Collection. It is larger (almost 10,000 m2) and more of a “museum” than the previous space of this marriage of collectors, which has 7,200 pieces by more than 1,000 artists of the stature of Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, and Cindy Sherman. The building is by Anabelle Selldorf.
This is another example of contemporary architecture in the city, which has its share of rock stars with buildings of Gehry, Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, Moneo, Jean Nouvel or Rem Koolhaas.
A walk full of art, design and palm trees
miami is much more than MiMo (Miami Modern) and Art Deco , although it will be those two movements that make us hyperventilate, evil creatures of old Europe.
In Allapattah there will also be the new space of the collector Jorge M Pérez, handyman of the Perez Art Museum . His new project is called space 33 and it opens in an industrial space with the exhibition called Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection. These are good times for political art. Also opening this month in Wynwood Museum of Graffiti.
These three previous spaces are born with the intention of lasting many years. Just the opposite of the super installation that the city has commissioned from Leandro Erlich. It is called Order of Importance and it is a sculpture made with sand that represents 66 cars in a jam.
It can be visited from the 1st to the 15th of this month on the beach, in Miami Beach, off Lincoln Road. The idea is that it degrades over the days until it disappears. Metaphors are easy.
Another curious and visitable project is Les Lalannes at the Raleigh Gardens. It is a cross between art, design and landscaping that takes place at the Raleigh Hotel, an Art Deco gem built in 1940 by L. Murray Dixon which is under renovation.
But not its gardens, which have been designed by landscaper Raymond Jungles and Peter Marino and where one of the most unique exhibitions that can be seen this week in Miami takes place.
It is a tribute-claim Hosted by Michael Shvo to the pair of French artists Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne. They can be seen forty of his sculptures mixed with palm trees and tropical flowers. A rarity, like the Lalanne furniture, which will be open until February 29.
We will have to wait a little longer until reopen the hotel and its pool , one of the most mythical in the world? Miami's identity is built, in part, by its pools. The artists Elmgreen & Dragset have wanted to reflect on them with Bent Pool, a permanent installation outside the Miami Convention Center , where the main headquarters of Art Basel is.
The hotels of the city deploy all their artillery to be part of the world of art, always prestigious and prestigious. Who wouldn't want to mingle with him. Hotels like the Faena or the Edition have quite an important program of events and activities, that accompany the level that these days is managed in the city.
The ** Faena Festival ** is being held, for the second year, in parallel to the fair. This year the theme is The Last Supper and explores concepts such as abundance and sacrifice, indulgence and abstinence. Around this theme there are many performances, installations, parties and activities.
Very close to the Faena, in the Miami Beach Edition, things will happen too. In addition to various actions throughout the hotel, it has organized an exhibition called Museum of Plastics . The idea is to bring to the forefront the great problem of plastic in the oceans.
A large part of the hotel will be dedicated to this exhibition, which takes place in collaboration with Loney Whale and that it aligns with Edition Hotels' policy of eliminating single-use plastic.
Just as hotels mix with art, fashion does not resist this flirtation either. Versace, an illustrious resident of the area, is present in an exhibition called South Beach Stories.
the interior designer Sasha Bikoff has dived into the archives of the brand to design pieces that are on display this week at Versace's Design District store along with the original sketches that inspired them.
Also as part of Design Miami, Louis Vuitton brings its exhibition Objets Nomades , which for the first time is the work of an American designer, Andrew Kudless . There he will present the 'swell wave shelf'. The brand takes advantage of this effervescent week to present new pieces in its Design District space. One of the most original is a trunk for sneakers.
Other brands like Loewe, Balenciaga, Miu Miu or Thom Browne are also present this week in Miami with proposals that blur the boundaries between crafts, art and fashion.
Assuming that you can't see everything, not half, not even a third, of what happens this week in Miami, the only thing left to do is take advantage of the city. Art Basel and Design Miami concentrate much of its content in South Beach, in the Convention Center and surroundings. This is the area that we choose to enjoy in the free time that we have left. And here begins a small ode to this Miami neighborhood.
South Beach is like Times Square , a place as reviled by the locals as it is fascinating. This area has various personalities. What we understand by South Beach is a mix of Art-Deco buildings and bikini shops , but that's only part of it. to the south there is condos with palm trees on the terraces, organic restaurants and healthy breakfasts.
For the breakfasts we can distinguish the two South Beach that there are: one starts the day with eggs, pancakes and bacon and the other with avocado and matcha toast.
An inexcusable place in this area is ** Puerto Sagua , a Cuban restaurant with a lot of “mi amol”** and “muñeca” in the air. It's a Miami institution (opened in 1968) and has Caribbean food at a very good price and is photogenic.
South Beach, a mix of Art-Deco buildings and bikini shops
In this area, although it may not seem like it, there two museums, and quite interesting. One is the Wolfsonian , which focuses on the period from 1850 to 1950 and explores advances through design and everyday objects. The store is great and the architecture, too. Another curious place is the ** Jewish Museum **, about the Jewish history of Miami Beach, which was key in the development of the city.
Until recently, snobs raised their eyebrows when told about sleeping in Miami Beach; that is changing thanks to hotels like the ** Kimpton Angler´s **. This hotel is an example of the new South Beach, which integrates past and future. a Mediterranean patio, cabanas, two swimming pools and spectacular vegetation. The hotel, like all this week, has activities around Art Basel.
In the area there are other delicious places like ** Plymouth ** and ** The Betsy **, both with beautiful interiors. They review the legacy of Art-Deco and MiMo of the place with a contemporary and very, very attractive look.
Now, because of places like these and because it's actually an extraordinary place, South Beach lives a sweet moment. This is pure Miami, a place where you can go shopping in a bikini and where you find streets like Euclid Avenue, which may be one of the most beautiful in America. From respect to Art Basel, nothing beats a stroll through palm trees for her.