REVIEW

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Some say it started in the 1980s with the comeback of South Beach and the Art Deco area. Miami's transformation into one - or probably, the - cultural hotspot of the Americas was a vision foreseen by some of the city's top collectors. Among these was Norman Braman, who, along with fellow art visionaires in Europe, North and Latin America, sought to re-jig the city's bad rep. In the 1990s, Miami's drug industry brought in billions of dollars and with that came the cars, the condos, the clubs and of course, the crime. Before the arrival of Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB), the city polished itself up and, significantly, with the fair now a major catalyst, it has become one of the world's class art acts. Its Wynwood area, formerly a decrepit depressed district, is now home to numerous art galleries; starchitect Frank Gehry's New World Centre building, home to the New World Symphony, America's Orchestral Academy, opened in early 2011; 1111 Lincoln Road is Herzog & de Meuron's concrete shopping, dining, residential and parking spot (the Swiss firm is also designing the Miami Art Museum); and fellow Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid recently won the bid on a parking garage in South Beach. Let's not forget that Design Miami was born in Miami too and its seventh edition boasted 28 galleries and a record 29,000 visitors.

Yet, however many rave reviews Miami spawns on its art scene, it is also the capital of Party. The city has got a magical way of squeezing out that last ounce of energy at the end of a frantic art fair calendar. It is a gruelling marathon - Frieze and FIAC in October, Abu Dhabi Art and Contemporary Istanbul in November and the auctions in between, but Party is Miami's modus operandi and no city does it better. But art fairs are about art, aren't they? ABMB's 2011 edition marked the fair's 10th anniversary with over 260 participating galleries and a whopping 150 museum groups in attendance. And like its previous edition, the Brazilians were back, pumped with cash from their economic boom.

I t is practically impossible to indulge in all of Miami's cultural offerings in the first week of December. Aside from the mother fair, there were 17 ancillary fairs...