Photo from www.luxurytraveladvisor.com
This exciting time of the year in South Florida is back again. From November 29th to December 4th, 2011, South Florida is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Art Basel Miami Beach ( the Art Basel Miami Beach fair actually takes place between December 1st and December 4th with Vernissage on November 30th ). The contemporary art fair is coming back with its week of traffic jams and hunting for places to park, its thousands of art dealers and visitors flying in South Florida from around the world, the Art Basel Miami Beach fair taking place at the rejuvenated Miami Beach Convention Center, its dozen satellite fairs, gallery, private collection and museum exhibitions, local artist studio tours, public art projects and its must-be-seen-at private parties. This is the time when we may get nervous about the heavy traffic in Miami Beach, in the Miami Design District, Midtown and Wynwood areas but this week also crystallizes our pride to be in Miami, witnessing how its art scene has reached an international recognition.
Photo of the Wynwood Walls from Shinsekai blog
Once again the art fair, which is considered the most prestigious art show in the Americas, will be presenting more than 260 leading galleries from North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa and showcasing works by more than 2,000 artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Since Miami Beach hosted its first Art Basel Miami Beach fair, the sister fair to the highly respected Art Basel contemporary art fair taking place every year in June in Basel, Switzerland, ten years ago, Miami’s cultural community has highly expanded. From the explosion of South Florida artists being recognized on the national and international levels, the growing number of art galleries located in Wynwood, the development of street art ( including the Wynwood Walls, offering 50 or more wall paintings in Wynwood ), the new facility of the New World Center designed by Franck Ghery, the new Arsht Performing Art Center near Downtown Miami, the new Aventura Arts and Cultural Center, the new South Dade Cultural Center, the current construction of the new Miami Art Museum designed by Swiss architects Herzog and De Meuron… art is everywhere now and everybody wants to be a part of it.
For its 10th year celebration, Art Basel Miami Beach is launching two new partnerships : the first is organized with the Miami Beach-based Bass Museum of Art. Public art, installations and performances will take place on Collins Park, next to the museum. Art Public Opening Night on Wednesday November 30th will feature special performances by Theaster Gates and the Black Monks of Mississippi, Sanford Biggers and Moon Medicine and the Alalaô collective presenting Ronald Duarte. The second partnerhip is coordinated with the New World Center, as videos will be projected on the sf 7,000 projection wall of the Soundscape wall and park. Art Video will feature film and video works by today’s most exciting international artists, presented by the galleries of Art Basel Miami Beach and organized in association with London’s Artprojx.
It will surely be a challenge to be able to see it all, as usual, since the Art Basel Miami Beach fair is just one of the highlights of this first week of December. Most exhibits and events take place in South Beach and in the Design District/Midtown/Wynwood areas, except for the Nada art fair, showcased at the Deauville Beach Resort on Collins Avenue and 64th street. South Beach gathers Art Basel Miami Beach at the Miami Beach Convention Center, Design Miami and a few fairs including the second edition of Arts For A Better World which moved from Wynwood to the Surfcomber Hotel. The Design District/Midtown/Wynwood areas host a few fairs including Art Miami and Scope, Miami collectors exhibition spaces, the Wynwood art galleries and the Wynwood Walls. Further South, heading towards Downtown, another fair and additional cultural hot spots are the Cifo exhibition space, Pulse art fair and the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.
Also, as a yearly ritual, every South Florida museum and cultural institution organizes public and/or private events during this socially and culturally invigorating first week of December, such as the famous elite event MAM “Crash the ball” event gathering leading art patrons and organized at the Fountainebleau hotel on Saturday December 3rd, 2011.
