Art Basel Miami [Archive] - SkyscraperCity

dave8721

December 2nd, 2005, 05:30 PM

Good Article. Some quotes:
http://www.miamisunpost.com/AB_return.htm

Return of the Basel

Greater Miami Loves Art Basel and Art Basel’s Organizers Love Greater Miami. But Make No Mistake: Art Is Also a Business

Art has become a big-ticket commodity and Art Basel is the market’s most valued goldmines where all the major dealers go head-over-heels to get a coveted booth at the Convention Center

After having browsed for long hours around the endless labyrinth of Art Basel, the eye-popping overdose of ART will most likely have you seeing things for days to come.

You’ll need a break, a reprieve from this precious onslaught of art on the senses. Really, you’re not used to this. We’re living in Miami here. The drunken walks across the sparse, ominous streets of Wynwood offer chump change compared to what we’ve got on our hands here: All these art fairs; an abundance of free events (including a New York Dolls performance on the beach and endless comp booze everywhere); the incoming swell of fashionistas, collectors, artists, art dealers, New York intelligentsia and (some) intellectuals. It all boils down to a reeling, blurry week of big bucks, all the art you can eat, and, ahem, sophisticated decadence.

The big-footed animal that made it all happen is called Art Basel Miami Beach, a sister to Switzerland’s original 36-year-old Art Basel, the world’s most reputed art fairs.

So aren’t we lucky? Headquartered at the Miami Beach Convention Center, the South Florida spin-off is here for its fourth year and four days of art madness overload.

“Art Basel is the single best event that we have as a city or, really, that any city can have — it fills our hotels, the visitors that come here do spend a lot of money, and it doesn’t take up that many resources in terms of police and such,” comments Miami Beach Mayor David Dermer. “More so, it heightens the cultural reputation of the city and puts us in a great spotlight in the world when it comes to culture. There wasn’t a major emphasis on art here prior to Basel, but now you even see our museums getting more attention from it, and more people interested in art are coming down here. I hope this relationship with Basel continues for a long time over the future.”

According to fair organizers, the Miami Beach Convention Center recorded 33,000 attendees last year, an increase of about 3,000 from the year before. Chances are, those numbers will bump up this year as well since, as the city of Miami Beach’s art and entertainment liaison Dennis Leyva puts it, all the hotels have been booked solid for three or four months and there are “waiting lists at the top restaurants for almost every night.”

Art has become a big-ticket commodity and Art Basel is one of the market’s most valued goldmines where all the major international dealers go head-over-heels every year to get a coveted booth at the Convention Center HQ. This year, the fair’s selection committee received a record number of applications with 99 percent of 2004’s exhibitors reapplying. Well over 600 galleries applied and only 195 were chosen, representing countries from all over the world, including newcomers from Russia, Finland, Iceland, Colombia, and Puerto Rico.

Keller says that the fair keeps coming back for evident reasons such as the weather, the touristic infrastructure with the sundry hotels, and the geographical location of Miami Beach as a gateway to Latin America. But more importantly, he emphasizes that the city was very welcoming to begin with.

“We got a lot of support from the art community like collectors, the authorities and the museums here,” Keller says. “There were a lot of governments that weren’t not-art-minded, but [Miami Beach] is pro-culture. We like to make this so that it becomes more of a festival, not just an art fair, by integrating the community, the museums, and the botanical garden.”

Additionally, one must not overlook the fact that Miami and Miami Beach are home to some very, very prominent art collectors such as the Rubell and de la Cruz families.

“Miami has a huge density of major collectors. I doubt any other city in the world can boast this amount of collectors with such a huge commitment to the support of contemporary art,” opines Mark Coetzee, director of the Rubells’ collection. “It is obvious that any art fair would want to be close to that support.”

“Basel is a catalyst in the local art community and brings the international limelight on Miami,” he says. “The scene is vibrant and evolving. All the curators and collectors that come here for Basel always enjoy going to see the local collections and what the museums are doing as well as the galleries in Wynwood. One of Europe’s leading curators [Hans Ulrich Obrist from the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris] told me he worked on a big survey of young artists and picked some Miami artists, which he wouldn’t have done if it wasn’t for the fair.”

“This is a true South Florida event,” he says. “Every museum is having an opening night. It’s a regional thing – Art Basel has stamped South Florida as a cultural destination.”