Art Basel Miami Beach is the American edition of the Swiss fair and it has run since 2002. The fair proper occupies the convention center on Miami Beach for five days — two of them VIP previews — with galleries from over thirty countries showing modern and contemporary art from six-figure paintings to emerging names in the Positions and Nova sectors. Day tickets are sold online and sell out for the weekend; the Friday and Saturday afternoons are the crush.
The satellites are half the story. Untitled sits in a tent on the sand at 12th Street; NADA champions newer galleries; Scope, Aqua and Pulse have rotated in and out of the calendar. Design Miami, beside the convention center, is the collectible-design fair. Across the bay, Wynwood's murals, galleries and the Rubell and Margulies collections are the daytime alternative, and the Pérez Art Museum and the ICA open shows for the week.
Then there are the parties — brand dinners, museum galas, hotel takeovers on Collins Avenue and pop-up performances that are invitation-only or not. The public version is the Miami Beach hotel scene during fair week: the Faena, the Setai, the Edition and the Soho Beach House run programmes of their own. Restaurant reservations in South Beach, the Design District and Wynwood need to be made weeks out.
Hotels on Miami Beach for Art Week are among the most expensive nights of the year in the city and most are booked by September. Consider Brickell or the Design District for value and a fifteen-minute chauffeur ride to the beach — ride-hailing surge pricing during fair week is notorious, and a booked car with a driver who knows the causeway traffic is the sane alternative.
Three things to get right
- Buy fair tickets online early; weekend afternoons sell out.
- Untitled, NADA and Design Miami are the satellites worth a full morning each.
- Book South Beach hotels by September, or stay in Brickell and use a car.
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