BASSnotes FOR THE FIRST TIME, CULTURE LOVERS ARE SAYING MIAMI HAS ‘A SEASON’. REPORTS ON THE CITY’S NEW BIG HITTERS, FROM THE BASS TO HERZOG & DE MEURON’S PÉREZ ART MUSEUM
STEPHEN WALLIS
One of the more colourful recent additions to the Miami Beach landscape is a sculpture near the edge of Collins Park (collinspark.us), a block from the ocean and just a short walk from COMO Metropolitan Miami Beach (comohotels.com/metropolitanmiamibeach). The 42ft-high stack of five limestone boulders, arranged like an improbable geological formation, is made up of stones painted a different Day-Glo hue, with the finished totem taking on a whimsical, almost Play-Doh-like appearance. Created by Swiss-born artist Ugo Rondinone, the sculpture serves as a spirited beacon for The Bass (thebass.org), the museum at the opposite end of Collins Park that commissioned the piece – and heralds the museum’s much-anticipated reopening following a nearly two-year-long renovation and expansion.
Rondinone’s colourful work is a perfect monument for the changing Miami, embracing the South Beach clichés of flashy cars, skimpy swimsuits and colourful cocktails, while also heralding the city’s role as the cosmopolitan capital of a shifting ‘Latin America’. The new Miami–diverse, optimistic,
culturally rich–is no longer relying on just sun, surf, and nightlife to lure visitors, but also offers up a vibrant mix of world-class food, shopping, and especially art. The sense of opportunity and ambition can be seen in the astonishing amount of construction taking place all across Miami, the dramatically changing skyline peppered with eye-catching buildings by star international architects from Rem Koolhaas to Norman Foster to Zaha Hadid.
Much credit for Miami’s transformation is indisputably owed to Art Basel Miami Beach (artbasel. com/miami-beach)–and the numerous other fairs and events that have sprung up around it each December–for focusing global attention on the city with its weeklong annual migration of the art world’s elites. But the festival has also had a more lasting effect, laying the groundwork for Miami’s evolution as a year-round cultural hub. “What’s happened with Art Basel is that 14 years of injecting energy for a week has brought in a whole new community of full-time and part-time residents, boosting attendance and donations and strengthening the city’s institutions,” says Silvia Karman Cubiñá, director and chief curator of The Bass. By overhauling the interior of its 1930s Art Deco building as well as the 2001 wing added by Arata Isozaki, The Bass is gaining 10,000 square feet of additional exhibition space, two new classrooms, and an expanded café and bookshop.
Less than a dozen blocks north of The Bass, the Faena Forum (faena.com), a striking multipurpose domed structure by Koolhaas’s firm OMA, made its debut this fall. The focus of this Kunsthalle-style space will be given over to a lively mix of performance, talks and other events. Curator Ximena Caminos is in charge of programming, which officially kicked off during Art Basel week with an artistled Carnivalesque parade along Collins Avenue.
These developments come just a few years after the Pérez Art Museum Miami (pamm.org) made its splashy move into vastly expanded digs by Herzog & de Meuron in Museum Park, overlooking Biscayne Bay. And more is on the horizon. Next up: The two-year-old Institute of Contemporary Art (icamiami.org) plans to unveil an arresting 38,000sq ft building by the Spanish firm Aranguren & Gallegos Arquitectos in the Design District next December. The ICA, spearheaded by prominent collectors Irma and Norman Braman, has been presenting an adventurous roster of shows in a temporary space in the neighbourhood, but its new home will be a game-changer. Situated near the building that showcases the collection of Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, the ICA promises to make the Design District–which developer Craig Robins is fashioning as Miami’s ultimate luxury retail destination–a must-see for contemporary art enthusiasts.
Those same art pilgrims will likely find themselves travelling farther afield in the coming years, thanks to the city’s shifting real estate dynamics. In increasingly lively Wynwood (wynwoodmiami. com), just to the south of the Design District, an influx of restaurants, shops and condos has prompted a number of the neighbourhood’s pioneering art galleries to decamp for the emerging scene in Little Haiti. Even the Rubell Family Collection (rfc.museum) – a Wynwood fixture and the most famous of the city’s private collector museums – has announced plans to relocate to larger quarters several blocks west, in the Allapattah area.
The expanding cultural offerings enlivening Miami aren’t only about art. This spring the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science (frostscience.org) reopens next to the Pérez in a Grimshaw Architects–designed building featuring a state-of-the-art planetarium, a three-level aquarium and a variety of exhibition spaces. And the visually arresting complex that Frank Gehry designed for the New World Symphony (nws.edu) has helped reinvigorate the area around Lincoln Road.
All locations mentioned in this article are easily accessible from COMO Metropolitan Miami Beach. It’s a fiveminute walk to The Bass, a 10-minute walk to Faena Forum, a 10-minute drive by car to Wynwood and a 15-minute drive to Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Guests staying at COMO Metropolitan Miami Beach can experience the best of the new art scene in 2017 with ‘Art in the City’: a minimum two-night package that includes daily breakfast, an Art Deco tour of Miami Beach, tickets to an art museum and US$30 Uber credit to spend travelling between galleries (Uber’s terms and conditions apply). Prices start from US$388 per night. For more information, contact res.met.mia@comohotels.com.