Ripple Effect
Art Basel helped spur a city-wide cultural and economic renaissance
Arts can be a catalyst for change. Just take Miami, which has cemented its position as a global cultural force in less than 50 years. With arts at the center of its efforts, investment has streamed into beleaguered neighborhoods and triggered a cultural and economic renaissance.
MIAMI BEACH, Florida—All eyes in the art world are on Miami Beach this week, as more than 280 galleries from 38 countries and territories representing the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe have set up camp inside the Miami Beach Convention Center for Art Basel Miami, exhibiting works from contemporary masters and emerging artists alike. It’s North America's largest and most prestigious international contemporary art fair, attracting roughly 80,000 visitors this year.
Since its launch in 2002, Art Basel Miami has morphed into Miami Art Week, a dynamic citywide event stretching from Miami Beach across Biscayne Bay into Miami neighborhoods like Wynwood and the Design District. It features acclaimed satellite fairs, like Untitled, which is held on the beach, and public art installations, like The Great Elephant Migration, which includes 100 elephant sculptures in front of the Faena District. Activations from major luxury brands dot the city, including Cartier Trinity 100, a traveling pop-up exhibit, and LVMH Culture House. Porche and Soho House will host American-Ghanaian singer and songwriter Amaare on Friday night and Bob Moses on Saturday night.
Miami Arts Week has turned into a massive economic engine for the city. According to The Miami Herald, “Between the art handlers, flower arrangers, caterers, restaurants, hotels, real estate brokers, Uber drivers, and valets, Art Week generates an estimated $500 million in economic impact.” Over the years, it’s transformed the region’s art scene, which many see as a catalyst that secured investment for the redevelopment of entire neighborhoods.
The World Before Basel
Miami has always been synonymous with sunny weather and beautiful beaches, making it a popular tourist destination for domestic and international visitors. South Beach, in particular, gained fame for its Art Deco Historic District, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, and vibrant nightlife. And, of course, it's known for its retirees who flocked here for decades, immortalized in the television show The Golden Girls. However, Miami was seen more as a cultural wasteland and cruise port than a globally recognized center of arts and culture.
Miami’s position as the “Gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean” helped fuel its growth in the ‘80s and 90’s, particularly in trade, but that came at a cost. It was infamous for its association with illicit drugs, particularly cocaine smuggling. This led to the rise of the "Cocaine Cowboys" era, which contributed to crime and corruption, dramatized weekly on the television show Miami Vice, but also fueled an economic boom that transformed the city.
Miami developed a strong reputation as an international financial hub, and where there’s money, there’s invariably a market for the arts. Art collectors emerged, and cultural institutions launched or grew during this period, including the opening of the Center for the Fine Arts (later renamed the Pérez Art Museum Miami, PAMM) in 1984, The Wolfsonian in 1986, and the Rubell Museum in 1993.
By 1999, Miami-based art collector and car dealer Norman Braman, real estate developer Craig Robins, and the Rubell family had convinced the Swiss organizers of Art Basel to establish a U.S. edition of the fair in Miami Beach. “We have an art community here now that can rival places like SoHo in New York City,” Braman said in a 2011 TIME interview, “and that community has opened itself up to the world in ways others simply haven't.” Art Basel’s success has helped fuel Miami’s momentum.
Catalysts for Change
Outside of the annual economic activity created by Miami Art Week, Art Basel’s launch here marked a transformative moment. It not only placed Miami on the global art map, attracting collectors, galleries, and artists worldwide, but also triggered a cultural and economic renaissance, bringing attention and investment into the arts, including private philanthropy. This then begat an economic development cycle, causing new arts institutions to open and long-neglected neighborhoods to be reborn.
Before Art Basel’s launch, Miami’s art scene was relatively small, with a few nascent art museums and no major tradition of cultural philanthropy. However, major philanthropic players, including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Jorge M. Pérez, Adrienne Arsht, and others, emerged and helped change that, gifting hundreds of millions of dollars across the city. But multi-million dollar gifts from the well-heeled donor class alone wouldn’t be enough for a cultural and economic renaissance to take hold. Developers played a big role in transforming entire neighborhoods, including Wynwood and the Design District, through the arts, culture, and commerce.
Originally an industrial area, the neighborhood of Wynwood has evolved into a renowned arts district celebrated for its extensive street art and galleries. Tony Goldman's creation of the Wynwood Walls in 2009 was pivotal in this transformation, attracting artists and visitors worldwide. “Goldman Properties has been revitalizing neighborhoods in the US for 50 years, starting with SoHo in New York. In tandem with Art Basel, Wynwood Walls was key in how Miami came to be viewed on the global stage,” Jessica Goldman Srebnick, Goldman’s daughter and current co-chair of Goldman Properties, says of the open-air street art museum.
Roughly 20 minutes away by foot and once characterized by warehouses, empty lots, and crime, the Design District has been revitalized into a luxury shopping and cultural destination. LVMH’s Bernard Arnault spearheaded this transformation in collaboration with developer Craig Robins, introducing high-end retail, art installations, and cultural institutions, thereby redefining the area's identity. Robins’ company, Dacra, believes in cultivating strong and vibrant communities through a distinctive combination of commerce and culture, using art and design to enrich the built environment.
”Miami is in its infancy, but we’re competing to be one of the top cities in the world,” says Mayor Francis Suarez. “If you think what’s happened in the city is exciting, wait until you see what’s to come.”
Years ago, even before moving to Orlando for a few years after buying a company office from a former employer, I visited a friend and his wife who lived in Key Biscayne. He was a retired Senior Pilot with United Airlines who learned to fly a Jenny from a barn stormer as a teenager when the Jenny landed in his father’s pasture in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He wrote a book about his many flying exploits including barn storming himself, flying the US Mail, and flying supplies to Alaska during the war. During his career with United Airlines he operated out of NYCity. He lost a home he owned in Cuba when Castro took over and that’s why he eventually settled in Key Biscayne. He and his wife Faye would spend half the year in Florida and the other half at his boyhood home in Stillwater. They converted the old barn into a bridal registry that Faye managed and I met them both when I was selling radio time for the OSU KVRO radio station. Faye bought some ads for “The White Barn” and Bob recruited me to help build some storage shelves in the barns loft.