Art attack
A visit to Fort Lauderdale proves there’s more to Florida than beaches
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — From my hotel balcony I saw a helicopter hovering over a fixed spot, a few miles away.
I didn’t know it then, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation and I had roughly the same destination that warm January day. Agents were at the Finger Islands home of ex-Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone, arresting him as part of the Russia probe.
It was an auspicious day in this neighbourhood of one-percenters. In a city full of canals (265 kilometres of them, hence the nickname “the Venice of America”) with waterfront houses and apartments, the Finger Islands — a private island community on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway — represents a life apart. And every year, it plays host to Art Fort Lauderdale — The Art Fair on the Water — as part of the larger Fort Lauderdale Art & Design Week.
An ingenious mix of real-estate event, art event and glimpse into the lives of the rich and famous, Art Fort Lauderdale sees several forsale properties handed over as pop-up art galleries for conceptual artists mostly native to Broward County. The houses range in price from $6 million to $16 million. The art is generally in the four-to-five figure range. In 2018, a buyer purchased a house and all the art in it.
It is, according to festival co-founder Lisa Rockford, “the most glorified open house imaginable.”
On the water at Finger Islands, Fort Lauderdale’s history comes alive with the provenance of its mansions. There’s where Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had a home. There’s where several movies were shot, including Any Given Sunday, Cape Fear and, of course, Where the Boys Are — a movie that is both a point of pride and a curse on the city.
The 1960 coming-of-age film starring Connie Francis all but started the springbreak-on-the-beach tradition that has seen millions of teens and 20-somethings annually invade this city. That experience IS Fort Lauderdale to generations of people unfamiliar with the place of late.
In fact, “the city has been cracking down on the spring breakers, charging people for public drinking and intoxication,” says AJ Mindermann, a wine and spirits distributor and former chef. He’s noted an influx of young professionals in recent years, many from market-saturated Miami.
Speaking of Miami, Fort Lauderdale’s Art & Design Week operates in the shadow of that city’s larger, globally minded Art Basel festival, which runs in parallel with Art Basels in Hong Kong and Switzerland. But Lauderdale is working to establish its own identity, and lift itself up by what the ironically named urban theorist Richard Florida calls the “creative class economy.”
That gentrification is embodied by FATVillage, a trendy strip for new artists that has sprung up in a neighbourhood of warehouses and working-class homes. It features monthly art walks, open galleries, food and music. At C&I Studios, an art space run by a marketing firm, we saw a music video being shot as the public looked on, then stopped at the BREW Urban Cafe in the same space.
Several miles away from the Finger Islands, but across a thousand miles of social divide, the city and county’s African-American history is kept alive at the Old Dillard Museum — at one time the first public school for black children in Fort Lauderdale. Small but packed with African and African-American cultural artifacts, it tells a story of communities that have been gentrified but not forgotten. Music rooms on the second floor cover Broward County’s jazz history — the biggest name being jazz saxophone legend Cannonball Adderley.
Street art thrives in Hollywood, Fla., with the Downtown Hollywood Mural Project, a series of curated murals from locals and international muralists that breathes in this city between Fort Lauderdale and Miami.
And then there’s the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, an exceptional venue for both realist and modern art, in a 75,000-square-foot modernist building designed by Edward Barnes (of the Barnes Exhibit fame). The Barnes connection is partly why the NSU contains the largest collection of realist Philadelphia artist William Glackens — a.k.a. the Renoir of America.
That nickname inspired the current exhibit (ending in May), William J. Glackens and Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Affinities and Distinctions, an impressive collection of both artists’ works, which mischievously places pieces side by side that are so similar as to make Glackens look like a mere copycat (though his style did evolve).
The ocean air may clear the lungs for the winter-weary, but away from the beach, art feeds the mind.