Art Basel in Switzerland effectively pioneered the art fair model so aggressively proliferated today, but it’s the Miami offshoot, launched in 2002, that solidified it. Today, the 21-year old satellite remains l’enfant terrible, the spring breaker of art fairs. But don’t be fooled by the playful iridescent miniskirts and Latin American dance music…because Miami still means serious business, stretching far beyond the big main fair with everything from emerging art to bank-sponsored behemoths.
Pack your bags and buckle up for the best of 2023 Miami Art Week.
Hitch A Ride
Uber who? If you’re in the market for a luxury car service, two neck-and-neck competitors are eager to assist. Blacklane offers on-demand service in Miami allows users to book rides for immediate pick-up, as well as longer-distance holiday travel. Meanwhile, Alto boasts that their drivers are full-time employees, not contractors, and includes HEPA air filtration and Do Not Disturb buttons in each vehicle. Alto has coupons for first-time users, perfect for the Miami newbie!
Especially during the pandemic, art world elites were known to fly private or take black cars from New York to Palm Beach to escape the plague. Why not join them in decadence?
December 1-3, 2023 For Freedoms kicks off programming at New Wave Art Wknd (December 1-3, 2023) with … [+] events surrounding the theme “The Freedom of Expression.” Saturday, December 2, 11–12pm | UOVO West Palm Beach (4200 Westgate Ave) What is Creative Expression Now? Exploring the Role of Art in Today’s Society: This public panel discussion will be moderated by For Freedoms co-founder Michelle Woo. Panelists include Rachel Lee Hovnanian and Kathryn Andrews, For Freedoms family members, artist Wendy Red Star, and Founder and Co-director of Project Empty Space, Jasmine Wahi
Department PR
Demand Justice
The last few years have seen a massive shift in the way blue-chip art responds to inequity. Untitled Art Miami Beach has partnered with For Freedoms to debut a series of panels. On December 1 from 4 to 5 p.m., the former director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art will be in conversation with artists and educators at The Square West Palm in a public panel called Challenged: Art and The Freedom of Expression. From 11 to 12 p.m. at UOVO West Palm, What is Creative Expression Now? Exploring the Role of Art in Today’s Society will include legendary Project Empty Space founder Jasmine Wahi.
Limited edition prints will complete the panels, available December 5. Untitled will be open to the public December 6 through 10, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
At the NADA art fair, Art For Change partners with the Prospect Park Alliance to celebrate Brooklyn, with limited edition prints already available at artforchange.com.
Celebrate Local Diversity
The Rubell family is famous for having its pulse on art from New York and Miami for decades. The launch of their eponymous museum in 2019 has ensured the permanence of their family’s enduring collection. They are known for collecting works by Yayoi Kusama and Kerry James Marshall, who will be on view as well. But the mainstay on December 4 is work from the artists-in-residence program. St. Louis-born Basil Kincaid and Havana-born Alejandro Piñeiro Bello open solo exhibitions chronicling their year at the museum. Kincaid explores African themes and origins with quilting, found materials, collage and photography, while Piñeiro Bello looks at Caribbean diaspora from his home base in Miami, painting with vibrant colors on raw linen or burlap. This is a local place for local people, worth looking at in the middle of a global frenzy.
The same night (December 4 from 6 to 8 p.m.), Opera Gallery Miami opens 18 paintings and 9 sculptures by Fernando Botero (1932-2023.) His full-figured images are famous and highly collectable the world over, but distinctly Latin American.
And for true grit, the Museum of Graffiti celebrates a book launch on December 9 from 5 to 7 p.m. This is an essential destination to understand the heritage of street art and aesthetic in Miami, Brooklyn, and beyond. For more information, please visitmuseumofgraffiti.com or email hey@museumofgraffiti.com.
Take Tea Time
Scope Art Show may not be the fan favorite during its 20+ years at Miami Art Week, but its 2023 programming is going the extra mile from December 5 through 10. One hundred and ten participants from 23 countries feature 70 new galleries and experiences.
Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova will be on site, but my personal favorite is a true hidden gem: Japanese-born experiential installation tea room, which includes both hosts and guests in a ritual of sharing a bowl of tea to revere the symbiosis between craft and calm, aesthetic and environment. In a world of nightclubs and rat racing, why not take a pause with Japan before hitting the streets again?
“Faena Art to exhibit MAZE: Journey Through the Algorithmic Self, a large-scale installation by … [+] Sebastian Errazuriz on Faena Beach, and accompanying book exploring the implications of AI on society”
Courtesy of the artist and Faena Art
Save The Ocean With Technology
From December 5 to 1o, Faena Art and the Reefline will showcase installations focused on discussing the realities of climate change. After all, Miami Beach is at the epicenter of its reality, threatened every day by changing tides. Works by Beeple, Alissa Alfonso, Guido Elgueta and +X. feature. The Reefline also plans to launch a seven-mile underwater sculpture park, snorkel trail and artificial reef 600 feet off the Miami Beach shoreline later next month. Chase Sapphire supported Faena’s art initiatives.
At NADA, artist Oona’s performance of “Look, Touch, Own” is an NFT, in which every touch of her former silicone implants triggers the creation of a new NFT visual, as a statement about the commodification of women at the Annka Kultys Gallery, from December 5 to 9, 2023.
But a more subdued showcase at Faena Beach by Sebastian Errazuriz (b. 1977, Santiago, Chile), “Maze: Journey Through the Algorithmic Self,” was designed using artificial intelligence (AI) platforms Midjourney and DALLE2. This installation is actually life-sized, inviting viewers to literally navigate the maze of confusion to solving the planet’s problems through technology.
Another important discussion is over the work “Lost at Sea” by Gustavo Oviedo at the Balfour Hotel on December 6 at 7 p.m., featuring “responsibly-made” leather handbags by Piper & Skye and live music. I don’t know how much you will hear over the DJ, but hopefully the bags are saving the planet.
Mingle With Hollywood
Art Basel and Tribeca Festival will open talks to the public at Miami Botanical Garden on December 6 through 9, featuring new father Robert De Niro and John Stamos. Their events promise the creme de la creme of Hollywood elites, citing David Duchovny and Ben Stiller as prior guests.
Instagram It
If Hollywood is not calling your name, perhaps ARTECHOUSE will get you the Instagrammable photos you crave. Computer-driven installations celebrate innovation for the bargain price of $25 at 736 Collins Ave, Miami Beach.
“The B-52s, Kate Pierson, on the band’s forthcoming December art exhibition during Art Basel Miami … [+] in collaboration with 16 talented apes from one of the largest chimpanzee sanctuaries in the world that have co-produced and developed the art collection with Kate and her fellow band members over the last six months.”
The B-52s x Save The Chimps Art Exhibit
Keep It Weird
Who needs a love shack when you can have an ape shack? Forget the bored apes of crypto. From December 6 through 10, Spectrum Miami hosts a series of acrylic “Wild Planet” paintings. They are named from the B-52s of “Love Shack” song fame’s second album, and feature their new partners, 16 chimpanzees from the Save the Chimps Floridian refuge. Priced at $5,000 and under, each painting is named for a B-52 song or lyric and signed by the band. Limited-edition posters for $50 during the fair are available on site at the fair. The B-52s will be playing at the Venetion in Vegas through 2024.
And there you have it. From nudes to apes, oceans to computers, Miami is anything but boring. Best of luck to those brave souls who dare to do it all. You’re probably gong to need that Japanese tea room.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
