Fans of outdoor sculpture will notice one significant alteration: The Art Projects section of large plein air works has been expanded and moved from its former location (between the convention center and Collins Park) to Lummus Park, a strip of green, popular with joggers and bicyclists, that runs along Ocean Drive, seven blocks south of the convention center.

Along the periphery of the convention center are the 58 booths in the Art Nova section, where emerging and established galleries can show new works by a maximum of three artists. One highlight is a new, large chandelier sculpture by the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei at Urs Meile, a Lucerne and Beijing gallery. As in past years, Art Positions, a cluster of 20 shipping containers on the beach, will have an irreverent spirit. The Los Angeles gallery Steve Turner Contemporary is giving over its container to the raucous art and music group My Barbarian, which will transform it into a womblike space decked out in red velvet in which the group will perform “Hystera-Theater,” a piece inspired by ancient pagan rites. At New York’s Newman Popiashvili Gallery, Raul De Nieves is responsible for the installation I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream. “There will be some serving of ice cream,” promises the gallery’s director, Marisa Newman. However, this section is not by any means reserved for experimental youth. Miami’s own David Castillo gallery is bringing a site-specific installation of collages made from fashion-magazine clippings by the Cubanborn midcareer artist Quisqueya Henriquez, who just had a retrospective at New York’s Bronx Museum.

Rounding out the fair is Art Supernova, an open-format 20-gallery section introduced last year. Look for the Los Angeles gallery Cherry and Martin, which is showing a new sculpture by Nathan Mabry, who has welded a cast of a Halloween-style mask to a version of a Rodin sculpture produced in Mexico. Several galleries are making their ABMB debuts, and, not surprisingly, a few of them come from developing art markets, such as India and the Middle East. The Third Line, from Dubai, is exhibiting in the Art Supernova section, where it will show gallery artists like the Paris-born, Beirut-based photographer Fouad Elkoury. “It is fantastic that we will be able to promote our gallery on the international stage,” says director Claudia Cellini.

Miami, of course, has plenty of homegrown collectors, and it’s become a tradition for them to open their homes and exhibition spaces during the fair. For the 10th year running, Debra and Dennis Scholl have invited a curator to reinstall their home; this year’s invitee is Nicholas Baume, from the Boston ICA. Across town, in the Scholls’ exhibition space, World Class Boxing, are specially commissioned works by the Dutch landscape painter Carla Klein and the young American photo-based installation artist Zoe Strauss. Opening at the Rubell Family Collection on December 3 and running through November 28, 2009, is “30 Americans,” an exhibition of contemporary African-American art.

At the Margulies Warehouse, you won’t be able to miss one of Martin Margulies’s most recent acquisitions: Hurma, an arrangement of 250 lifesize figures of women and children made from burlap and resin between 1994 and 1995 by the Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz; that takes up fully half of the warehouse’s largest room. Beyond the private museums are Miami’s other noncommercial spaces: Taking over the Miami Art Museum is Yinka Shonibare’s work, based on clothing designs made from African fabrics; on display at moca are works by Albanian video maker Anri Sala; and at MoCA at Goldman Warehouse, “Possibility of an Island,” a group show inspired by visions of the future that takes its name from a novel by the French writer Michel Houellebecq, will include artists like Mungo Thomson and Peter Coffin.

Next year the fair will reformat by expanding into a fourth hall of the convention center, although it won’t add more galleries. For now, though, Spiegler and Schönholzer are taking the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. “We do not want to make changes that will be in place for only one year,” says Spiegler. Now that the fair’s parent firm, Messe Schweiz, is in a partnership with the convention center—it shares a financial stake with the management company Global Spectrum—ABMB has finally signed on for a three-year stint, rather than renewing its lease yearly.