Miami Takeaway

NEW YORK—As befits the largest gathering of art fairs in the history of the planet, ARTINFO/Art+Auction sent our biggest-ever reporting team down to Miami to keep an eye on the action. We hope you’ve enjoyed the reports over the last few days. Now that we’re back from our travels, here's a quick summary of our top five Miami experiences.

1. The sheer density of fairs, particularly the stretch of Collins Avenue between Ink (at the Dorchester Suites) and Aqua (at the Aqua Hotel, obviously): art fairs as far as the eye could see. On the single block between 17th and 18th Streets, Red Dot, Art Now, Bridge, Flow, and one or two others. As one gallerist put it, “You couldn’t spit without hitting an art fair.”

2. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, “The Killing Machine and Other Stories” at Miami Art Museum. Half an hour and a $25 taxi ride away from ABMB in downtown Miami, a welcome antidote to art-fair glitz. A brilliant, thoughtful exhibition of Cardiff and Miller’s video, sound, and technology installations. If you went to Miami and missed this show, you had a wasted trip.

3. Although much of the transport throughout the city was dreadful, the Teasy Rider party bus that shuttled between ABMB and Scope was a very pleasant surprise: subdued lighting, super-comfortable banquette seating, mini bars stocked with chilled energy drinks, goody bags, and Robert Wilson’s Vroom Portraits on the onboard video. Only slightly marred by the discovery that it was actually a Scope-commissioned art project.

4. The Swarovski Crystal Palace Light Sock installation by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in the Design District’s Moore Building. More than 50 pendula hanging from the ceiling to knee level, filled with precision-cut crystal and illuminated from within. An energy force field.

5. The Art Loves Music concert. Iggy Pop was lithe and otherworldly and hadn’t lost his sense of humor: Before he invited half of the crowd up on stage for an impromptu mosh pit, he mused: “It gets so lonely at the art [confused pause] fairs...”