Dec. 8, MIAMI—Saturday night served up a set of of swanky soirees for somewhat spent fairgoers. Artforum partnered with the Wolfsonian-FIU, drawing a crowd outside the museum that wrapped around the block. Inside, revelers squeezed into several small party spaces (including a media room with slides of the permanent collection on repeat). The exhibition rooms upstairs were also open to visitors, who took in the Wolfsonian's eccentric collection of decorative arts while sipping champagne from miniature bottles. One of Art Basel's new honchos, Marc Speigler, director of strategy and development, was in attendance and already exercising his stage presence, working the crowd in a bright white suit.

Later in the night, Assouline celebrated its latest book, Worth of Art (2), at the Raleigh's penthouse suite. Getting in meant elbowing through a large crowd and handling a humid ground level; the upstairs was a relief, with its expansive view of the beach front, strong winds, and ginger-infused mojitos (thanks to co-sponsor Canton, a cognac-based liqueur). A DJ playing dance oldies managed to stir up the crowds at the (almost) end of their very busy week.

Dec. 8, MIAMI—The Sagamore hosted its annual Art Basel brunch on Saturday morning, quite an early hour to digest a recent work from nude-aholic artist Spencer Tunick, whose showcased piece featured some 500 Miami residents posing in the buff at the hotel pool on bright pink and green plastic floats. The event, hosted by collectors Cricket and Martin Taplin, Martin Z. Margulies, and Constance Collins, as well as several museums (the Bass Museum of Art, Patricia & Philip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University, Lowe Art Museum, Miami Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, and Wolfsonian) was a decadent start to the day, with mimosas flowing and crêpe bars dishing out delicious concoctions while a video of Tunick's installation played on monitors along the wall. Guests lounged around the pool, with some helping themselves to the free foot massages on offer. In the lobby, additional work was on display, including a steel and fluorescent light swing by Wolfgang Winter and Berthold Horbelt and a wall of photographs by Elliott Erwitt.

Dec. 7, MIAMI—Friday night saw a rash of big parties for art lovers, and the biggest just might have been the launch of Visionaire magazine's latest inventive issue—a package that includes five vinyl records with contributions from David Byrne and Christian Marclay, among others. The publication celebrated in the brand-new, Lenny Kravitz-designed Florida Room in the Delano's basement. The dark, speakeasy-style lounge, crammed with mirrored ceilings and Swarovski crystal chandeliers, brought out the crowds in full force. Promised special guest Linda Evangelista was nowhere to be seen, but artist Kehinde Wiley was in tow for eager photographers.

Dec. 6, MIAMI—Stick 'em up! At Pulse and Geisai's private preview Tuesday, Texan Lance Armstrong was naturally drawn to a giant cowboy figurine. 

Dec. 6, MIAMI—Celeb sightings at the first official day of ABMB: Art world regular Dennis Hopper strolling near the Louise Blouin Media booth with New York dealer Tony Shafrazi, and Steve Martin smiling patiently at a fawning fan.

Dec. 6, MIAMI—Everyday outside the fair, people distributing fliers are trying harder and harder to be noticed. Today's example? The men dressed in Ancient Roman getup, to promote Roma, a new fair opening February 28.

Dec. 6, MIAMI—The Miami Beach Botanical Garden, a stone's throw from the Convention Center, is welcome relief for VIPs in need of a break from the madness. Now the garden's become even more of a sanctuary: Cartier has erected a Jean Nouvel-designed "Cartier Dome." Inside a large birch tree and a ring of display cases with diamonds galore sit in a blue-swathed room. It's the perfect place to stop for a glass of champagne, a few chocolates, and a dash of class.

Dec. 6, MIAMI—Shuttles were clogging up the road outside of ABMB, waiting to take artgoers to the satellite fairs. But Scope had them all beat: the fair had arranged for luxury buses to transport travelers, and everyone on board was offered a cocktail and gift bag during the short ride to Wynwood.

Dec. 6, MIAMI—Biting the hand that feeds? From the streets of Miami to Art Basel itself, artists are addressing the market in their work. One of Patrick Mimran's ubiquitous billboards (found in Chelsea, Venice, and elsewhere) has shown up in Miami, with the statement: "The market is the artist's twisted muse." And in the Art Positions section of ABMB, Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum's installation for Rio de Janeiro gallery A Gentil Carioca uses diagrams and text painted on the wall that question: What is the idea of an art fair? What are the relations between the artists and the contemporary art market?

However intriguing (Basbaum's project follows in the institutional critique footsteps of Hans Haacke) and self-referential (art about art fairs, at art fairs!), there does seem to be a whiff of something hypocritical about such interventions. The stuff is, after all, for sale.

Dec. 6, MIAMI—Life's a Beach for Kengo Kuma: Some time around the Stone Age, in a quaint little year called 2002, ABMB contained but one product, a product that went by the very catchy name of "art." Having undergone quite an expansion since then, the Miami scene is now something else as well, something that might be called, in the biz, a "captive audience," and, to this audience, much, much more than that thing called "art" is on offer. Unfortunately, the lure of said audience brings a lot of schlocky material out of the woodwork. But sometimes it is woodwork that comes out of the woodwork, and it is not schlocky at all!

Enter Japanese architect Kuma, who has been hard at work in recent months on a wood-walled spa for Dellis Cay, a new group of architect-designed hotel rooms and residences in the Bahamas under the banner of the Mandarin Oriental. Doing a little publicity for the project, Kuma designed a special booth—made entirely of wood—for the VIP section of ABMB, and it was overflowing with guests on the fair's first preview day. Inside, Kuma, who has constructed some high-end spas in Japan, was intrigued to see his design playing double duty, as the booth's caterers (the booth has caterers of its own!) were storing wine bottles in the perforations in its design. And yet Kuma was a little disappointed. To evoke Dellis Cay's vast beaches, he'd wanted to fill the booth with sand, but fair management hadn't approved that one. It seems the beach stays outdoors.

Dec. 6, MIAMI—Too many parties is a trademark of ABMB week. Luckily the good ones last night were contained on Collins Avenue. A select group guests picked at lobster tails and sipped champagne under the UBS tent behind the Delano. (UBS Bank is the main sponsor of ABMB.) Whitney Museum's Whitney Contemporaries, a young patrons program, and David Yurman jewelers sponsored a soiree around the pool at the Sagamore. There, Los Angeles dealer Philip Martin boasted he'd planned his solo show of Amanda Ross Ho at Nada before discovering she'd been accepted to the Whitney Biennial, and Town and Country magazine editor Sarah Medford dazzled in a blue Pucci dress she wore to a Pucci event later that eve.

And then, the crowds hit the sand. As in past years, hundreds of art folks mixed with–oh, my god! wait for it—the general public, to witness ABMB's "Art Loves Music" concert. This year, the spectacle was a stick-thin, bare-chested Iggy Pop writhing on stage and belting out his signature punk rock. Before Iggy had finished, the jet-set dashed back to Collins for another, very different performance at the Raleigh. Done in typical Jeffrey Deitch-style, the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black seemed to transport a beach-side Miami hotel to a downtown New York boite, with an all-girl band prancing about on stage in giant black wigs and vampy eye-makeup. Talk about Miami heat—about a third of them forewent shirts. And the audience went home, and had very, very bad dreams indeed.

Dec. 6, MIAMI—Outside ABMB before the doors opened: Girls in hot pants and stilettos, handing out "Shanghai in Art" fliers that raved about Lorenzo Rudolf and Pierre Huber's brainchild fair, ShContemporary. Never mind that Art Newspaper's front page that day reported Huber may be forced to resign from the Shanghai fair.

Dec. 6, MIAMI— Everything moves quickly at ABMB, leaving visitors with little time for sleep, let alone food. This year, fast fuel for weary fairgoers can be found at AXA Art's booth, where the AXA Art Power Bar is on offer. 

Dec. 5, MIAMI—Interior designer Thom Filicia of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy fame was spotted at the preview of ABMB.

Dec. 5, MIAMI—Earlier this week we told you about some of the snazziest Art Basel Miami Beach invites. Well—stop the presses on that one because the big winner has, shall we say, hatched. The invitation for a shindig thrown by LACMA (read, Eli Broad) for Jeff Koons is a black box tied with a shiny red ribbon inside of which is a shinier metallic red egg—a miniature parody of the Koons piece Cracked Egg (Blue) that Broad bought from Gagosian's London gallery earlier this year. Crack it open and the invite card is inside. The object rivals collector Peter Norton's annual art world gift—an artist edition he mails out to friends—and is the perfect arrival on Art Basel's first selling day for VIPs—when the early birds get the worms.

Dec. 4, MIAMI—Art Basel Miami Beach magazine, a special custom glossy put together for fair week and placed in limos and hotels, has accomplished the rare feat of resurrecting former president Richard Nixon, placing him at one of last year's chicest soirees, and photographing him with superstar designer Marc Newson for the magazine's party pic page. Wait a minute. That isn't Tricky Dick at all! It's collector Jean Pigozzi! Was the caption due to an editing error or Pigozzi's quirky sense of humor? After all, who better than a quirky collector to know how much ABMB values its dead presidents?