Miami becomes the undisputed center of the art world each December with the arrival of Art Basel. Although Art Basel is undoubtedly a must-see event for any art lover or collector visiting South Florida, Miami offers so much more to experience during its eclectic Miami Art Week.

The city of Miami takes over the art world with its renowned art fair Miami Art Week, hosting more than 20 satellite art fairs, 1200 galleries and showcases works by thousands of cutting-edge contemporary artists and galleries around the world. 

Since its launch in 2002, Miami Art Week has attracted countless collectors, art luminaries and art lovers to its bustling metropolis; so much so that satellite fairs are spreading wild across the city, from the famed Miami Beach to Wynwood, Downtown, Brickell, all the way to the budding new art neighborhoods such as Little Haiti or Kendall. Just because you’ve visited the main fair, several satellite fairs and some South Beach club for the after-party, doesn’t mean you’ve seen all that Miami Art Week has to offer, actually you’ve barely scratched the surface. 

Sometimes the best representation of Miami Art Week is outside of the big fairs, outside the great white tent.

Here are some recommendations:

 AfriCOBRA: Messages to the People at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami

“North Miami, MOCA’s home, is a majority-minority city, a microcosm of the diversity of Miami as a whole and represents the city’s largely African and Caribbean-American demographics…. MOCA strives to feature exhibitions that connect the interests of our diverse community with important, historic contemporary art movements. The exhibition AfriCOBRA: Messages to the People does just that.”

             – MOCA North Miami Executive Director Chana Budgazad Sheldon said

Against Gravity by Doral museum at Collection suites

DORCAM presents a compelling display of today’s most evocative modern and contemporary art pieces at Collection Suites, a stunning environment crafted for the most discerning collectors. The exhibition features striking contemporary authors across various creative fields: from cutting-edge artworks by prominent modernist painters and sculptors. More than 50 artists and 20 unique collectors joined DORCAM and Collection Suites to unveil this immersive experience that will display over 200 compelling artworks and collection pieces – plus an exclusive performance by contemporary artist Marielle Plaisir and opera singer Angel Refusé.

Baker’s Brunch by Bakehouse Art Complex

 “The Bakehouse is at a pivotal point in its 30-plus year history, as it is planning its next phase of growth and development. Its assets are increasingly more valuable, as Miami-based artists, paradoxically, have not always benefitted from Miami’s rapid and successful urbanization. Bakehouse, always, has aimed to support the most promising talent, so Quinn was an obvious curatorial choice—and voice—for the institution as it embarks on this new chapter. The exhibition metaphorically explores the conceptual power of the individual and the collective as it relates to the past, present, and future of Bakehouse. The organization’s birth was, and its future is, dependent on the collective good will and efforts of the artists it serves, the community it aims to engage, and the generosity of the public and private sectors who believe in its potential to be a place where great art is made.”

             -Cathy Leff, Bakehouse Acting Director 

Demons InKpirations by Vicente Dopico-Lerner at the Kendall Art Center

Dopico-Lerner’s work refuses to settle into anything in particular, yet holds shape and displays a strange clarity. This is the inner resistance in Dopico, fighting the urge to express, in order to more fully embody. In a sense, one expresses only what one already knows. However, what Dopico is after is not what he already knows, but rather what he does not. These are undiscovered territories that he wanted to reach. So he looked for things to create emotional, aesthetic and conceptual frictions for the drawings to work against. The essential unsettledness in his work is the sedimentation—in form—of this struggle situated at the heart of everything he made. In “Demons Inkpirations,” every mark is the embodiment of a wish to resist what is, to best become what it wants to be. This is what is most unsettling in his practice and revealing in this exhibition.

D FINE Artists and Exhibitions in the Rodríguez Collection at the Kendall Art Center

An all-inclusive book on the works, artists and exhibitions of The Rodríguez Collection, with more than 50 superbly reproduced artworks from one of Miami’s foremost collectors of Cuban contemporary art. This title is dedicated to showcasing the unique visual traditions of the island, spanning decades of styles and subjects, culminating in a volume sure to be an indispensible addition or introduction for any art enthusiast. With more than 20 of Cuba’s internationally recognized modern artists illuminated through an important compilation of critical essays by prominent art critics, including: José Ramón Alonso, Gary Anuez, Gabriela G. Azcuy, Janet Batet, Samuel Beck, Roxana M. Bermejo, Willy Castellanos, Elvia Rosa Castro, Raisa Clavijo, Carol Damian, Orlando Hernandez, Dennys Matos, Aldo Menéndez, Hortensia Montero, Gerardo Mosquera, Píter Ortega, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Jesús Rosado, Andrés Isaac Santana and José Veigas, this title presents an ideal tour and scholarship on some of the best this comprehensive collection and Miami, has to offer.

             -Odette Artiles, back cover blurb of D FINE Artists and Exhibitions in the   

              Rodríguez Collection

FREE! by Anthony Spinello at Brickell City Centre

Gallerist/curator Anthony Spinello and downtown’s Brickell City Centre are once again teaming up in a non-traditional, non-commercial (and completely free) FREE! Site-specific installations, videos and performances explore ever-shifting concepts of race, gender, nationality, sexuality and religions. Participating artists include Genevieve Gaignard, Norberto Rodriguez, Antonia Wright, Cara Despain, Amanda Keeley and Wangechi Mutu. 

Judy Chicago: A Reckoning at ICA Miami

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami presents “Judy Chicago: A Reckoning,” a major survey of works by the pioneering feminist artist. This exhibition highlights Chicago’s iconographic transition from abstraction to figuration, and explores the ways in which the artist’s strong feminist voice transforms our understanding of modernism and its traditions. During the exhibition, the artist will present a new site-specific fireworks performance.

La luna en el espejo: Una mirada propia by Aluna Art Foundation at Galería Ninoska Huerta

The Moon in the Mirror: A Gaze of Her Own at Ninoska Huerta Gallery in Coral Gables. This international group show of women artists features five from Cuba: Aimée García, Aimée Pérez, Marta María Pérez, Mabel Poblet, and Gladys Triana. Curated by Aluna Curatorial Collective (Adriana Herrera and Willy Castellanos).

New Collection at the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse

The Margulies Collection is worth a visit for its dreamy permanent exhibition — featuring pieces by Ernesto Neto, Sol LeWitt, Isamu Noguchi, Willem de Kooning, and more—and new installations of works by Barry McGee, Imi Knoebel, Ibrahim Mahama, Cate Giordano, Peter Buggenhout, and photographers Walker Evans and Helen Levitt. 

Purvis Young exhibition at Rubell

Purvis Young is a large-scale exhibition, featuring over 100 paintings from this Miami-born artist who spent the entirety of his life (1943-2010) observing and documenting the lives, deaths, struggles and dreams of the people around him. Numerous universal themes within Young’s paintings are highlighted and presented in depth. This marks the foundation’s largest solo exhibition to date. All of the paintings are from the Rubell Family Collection’s permanent collection. Several of the paintings on view were recently received as a donation to the foundation in memory of Janet Fleisher.

Uninhabited Order by Alexandre Arrechea at Fredric Snitzer-Gallery

Fredric Sntizer Gallery hosts “Uninhabited Order,” the solo exhibition of Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea. His interdisciplinary practice investigates the nature of both public and domestic spaces, leading him to produce, in recent years, several monumental installations. Some of his pieces are part of the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum in New York, CAB Burgos, Spain, Museum of Latin American Art, California, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Daros Collection, Switzerland and the Museo Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Reina Sofia in Madrid.

Watering Past Ground by José Bedia at Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts

“Watering Past Ground” complements Bedia’s prior artistic collaborations with the Arsht Center and includes the first public exhibition of four new works in a new series of paintings that explore two-dimensional and three-dimensional juxtapositions within irregularly shaped, large canvases. The public will have an opportunity to view the art up close prior to performances and during free behind-the-scenes tours, sponsored by American Airlines, offered each Monday and Saturday at noon. 

          -“Watering Past Ground” is supported by the Miami Diaspora Fund, which was made possible in part by a grant from The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation at The Miami Foundation.