Magazine

Navigating the Miami Scene: Art Week Edition

Hayworth’s curated highlights to help you get your bearings during the city’s buzziest art and design week. From navigating our evolving art hubs, to locals-only places to wine and dine, we’re offering some nuggets of wisdom for the art-curious wayfarer.

Ellie Hayworth

Date

December 21, 2023

Art

Navigating the Miami Scene: Art Week Edition

Surrounded Islands in Miami by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Woven polypropylene fabric surrounding 11 islands, styrofoam, steel cables, and anchoring system, 6.5 million square feet of fabric overall © Christo 1983, image by Wolfgang Volz

Ellie Hayworth

Date

December 21, 2023

Miami, the iconic, southernmost American metropolis known for its Art Deco architecture, cultural extravagance, gastronomic indulgences, and practice-perfected Spanglish. For those seasoned travelers during Miami Art Week, it may appear that our city spread grows evermore sprawling, seeing new hubs you may or may not be familiar with become household names.

May this guide break you out of your proverbial comfort zone. Contrary to common belief, Miami spans well beyond Miami Beach’s bridges. If you are open to traversing the cross-cultural industrial grit of our cityscape, you may just find that the most interesting hubs lie outside your frame of reference.

Getting your bearings

Looking for art week activities both on and beyond the beaten path? Over the past few years Miami has cultivated several microcosms, with their own unique culture, that offer a well-rounded sampling of the cities’ flavors.

Distinct as a growing art destination is Miami’s Allapattah neighborhood.

An abbreviated history: Formerly sitting just beyond Miami city limits, Allapattah was largely an agricultural site at the turn of the 19th century. As the city developed I-95, our main thoroughfare highway, it grew westward and Allapattah evolved in the intervening years as a warehouse district, housing garment warehouses, a rich textiles industry, and large food distribution companies.

Today, many of those warehouses have been converted into art galleries, private museums, restaurants, and project spaces. The Rubell Museum (housing esteemed Basque restaurant Leku) is anchored across the street from PACE-backed digital arts hub Superblue, two of the first to pop up in the neighborhood. Shortly thereafter, Jorge Perez opened El Espacio 23 with a strong collection of Latin (predominantly Cuban) artists both local to and beyond Miami.

Today, they are joined by the recently opened Andrew Reed Gallery and KDR 305 — both helmed by the new vanguard of Miami’s gallerists thoughtfully paving a vibrant emerging arts scene in Miami. The district also houses Ukrainian gallery Voloshyn, which took up roots in Miami following the onset of the Ukrainian War. Founded by Max and Julia Voloshyn, the couple were in Miami at the onset of the conflict and decided to open a sister gallery to their Kyiv home base. (They exhibit a hard-hitting roster of artists from the Ukraine, recently presenting an exhibition on the theme of conflict, displacement, and post-war trauma.)

Alongside iconic Miami gallerists like Mindy Solomon, non-profit artist run gallery Dimensions Variable, and the recently-opened private art space by maverick collector John Marquez (Marquez Art Projects), the neighborhood is brimming with visionary talent and sets a new anchor in our evolving city.

A word of advice for those new to Miami? Don’t be afraid to drive south to Coconut Grove.

I am no doubt glossing over a huge population of must-see galleries, design hubs, and local jaunts worth visiting for your local arts-and-culture bucket list. Cue Primaried Studio (Little Haiti), Dale Zine (Little Haiti and mobile), Nina Johnson Gallery (Little River), to name a few.

But it seemed worthwhile to take you, perhaps a bit further south than you are used to, to Coconut Grove for a more lifestyle-focused visit.

Coconut Grove is by no means a gallery district. Colloquially, The Grove is known for bustling shops, a tropical laid-back atmosphere, dozens of restaurants, food purveyors, and bars, and local, curated boutiques.

The Coconut Grove arts festival is a Miami favorite, but it does not coincide with art week (and rightfully so, as it is a more community oriented event that has set the Grove apart long before ABMB touched down on our beaches).

Why visit the Grove you might ask? Because a bit of a break, and some soul-soothing, is well worth the while.

One art fair, the Latin-American focused Pinta, has revived its brand after a several year hiatus at The Hangar in Coconut Grove, a venue with strong history as Pan American’s former Miami base. The fair boasts its 17th edition in this unique location, which shares a backyard with the marina-front Bayshore Club for a tropical lunch & dinner fare.

Boutique hospitality companies like Mr. C Hotel will host smaller, more curated arts programming. Beyond that, stroll into boutiques like The Wardrobe & More and The Showroom to find thoughtful housewares, a curated selection of boutique fashion, and a taste of local culture.

The streets are cobbled, the palms trees illuminated, and the people brim fresh with Vitamin C. It is a worthwhile step away from the mayhem.

Where to acquire art, the shortlist

As arts professionals, we stay educated by attending the broader scope of art fairs in New York, Miami, and beyond. But as collectors, the truth is that we are creatures of habit and familiarity, so we find ourselves focusing a keen eye on the outlets we’ve come to know, trust, and admire.

With this in mind, of the wider nexus of fairs that touch down in Miami for art week, we prioritize the following 2 fairs:

UNTITLED Miami

UNTITLED Miami Beach has always been a stand-out for Hayworth. In 2021, we had the honor of exhibiting a booth and producing a featured project that marked a key milestone in Hayworth’s professional development.

We’ve long admired Omar Lopez-Chahoud’s curatorial eye and time-earned commitment to promoting new talent and diverse dialogues.

We also can’t help but love the galleries who exhibit with Untitled. Check out Carvalho Park (Brooklyn), Fridman Gallery (New York), Dinner Gallery (New York), Dio Horia (Athens), and Library Street Collective (Detroit).

NADA

NADA Miami is another stand-out. Known for its esteemed roster of gallery participants in the New Art Dealers Alliance (ergo NADA), the fair also welcomes a strong cohort of newcomers, including 34 fresh faces at this year’s fair.

Located in the Ice Palace Studios off Miami Beach, NADA is always a welcome place to keep one’s thumb on the pulse of cutting edge artistic talent, while enjoying a respite from the beaches.

Ones to watch at this year’s fair include: Swivel Gallery (Brooklyn), Tyler Park Presents (Los Angeles), Shulamit Nazarian (Los Angeles), Nina Johnson (Miami), and KDR (Miami).