Our shortlist of art experiences across the city

Every December since 2002, Art Basel Miami Beach has been the magnet that draws artists, curators, gallerists, art collectors, and art lovers from around the world to South Florida for what now verges on a full week of contemporary art encounters. Prepare yourselves for a sensory overload! Here’s a free tasting of the two dozen art fairs, special museum and gallery exhibitions, monumental public art installations, film screenings, sound art, and performance events that will take place around Miami this year.

Follow our adventures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and listen to our daily broadcast from inside the tent at Untitled Art Fair on Miami Beach!

Tide by Side Artistic Processional Performance, 27 Nov 3-6pm
Tide by Side inaugurates the new Faena Art District with an elaborate processional featuring live music, a global banquet, and more than 100 performers. INFO re ALL 27 Nov-4 Dec Events HERE.
@ Collins Avenue, between 32nd and 36th Streets

Art Basel Public Sector, 30 Nov 8-10pm Opening Event
Inspired by David Bowie, this year’s theme is “Ground Control.” Public art installations explore ways in which artists imagine and invent new physical, social, and psychic spaces. Highlights:

• For the opening, artist Naama Tsabar presents Composition 18, a sculptural-live sound field formed by three bands of musicians, each atop their amplifiers, performing separate musical compositions.
• Ugo Rondinone’s Miami Mountain is a towering stack of fluorescent boulders commissioned by The Bass Museum. Note: This ponderous and playful work will be a permanent public art feature of Collins Park.
  • @ Collins Park, Collins Avenue, between 21st and 22nd Streets, Miami Beach

Sun Xun: Reconstruction of the Universe, 28 Nov-3 Dec
Sun Xun’s large-scale immersive environment features 2D and 3D animation, traditional scroll paintings, ink drawings, and sound.
@ Collins Park, beach front between 21st and 22nd Streets

Art Basel Film & Sound, 30 Nov-3 Dec 6-11pm
Stretch out on the great green lawn of Soundscape Park for an immersive experience of moving image and sound works by emerging and established artists. Full schedule HERE.
@ SoundScape Park, 500 17th Street, Miami Beach

Christie van der Haak: More is More
Lose yourself in contemporary Dutch design at The Wolfsonian. The artist/designer has wrapped the museum’s iconic facade and immersed the lobby in her signature tapestry and batik-inspired patterns. On view through June 2017.
@ The Wolfsonian–FIU, 1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach

The F Word Film Screening, 30 Nov 5:30PM Exhibition opening, 6:30PM Film/Q&A
The F Word by Robert Adanto explores radical “4th wave” feminist performance through interviews with a new generation of artists who use their bodies as subject matter.
@ Miami Beach Cinematheque, 1130 Washington Ave, Miami Beach

Yvette Mattern: Global Rainbow, 28 Nov-3 Dec
A beautiful site, Mattern’s large-scale, laser light beam installation will cast a spectacular array of light across the city in a 20-mile radius and over Biscayne Bay.
@ Miami Design District

Julio Le Parc: Form Into Action 1 Dec Free First Thursday
Perez Art Museum Miami celebrates Argentinian artist Julio Le Parc, a central and influential figure in participatory kinetic art with Form into Action, the first solo museum exhibition and only comprehensive survey of the artist’s work in North America.
@ Perez Art Museum, 1103 Biscayne Blvd, Miami

Alexis Gideon Performs The Comet and the Glacier, 28 Nov-4 Dec
A new video opera and immersive installation by Pittsburgh-based artist Alexis Gideon features his musical compositions, sculpted clay reliefs, glass paintings, stop-motion animations, videos. Live performance schedule HERE.
@ Locust Projects, 3852 North Miami Avenue, Miami

Prizm Perform: Nyugen Smith’s: A Letter Home: Hoping To Reach You Soon, Part 2, 1 Dec 6:00pm
The artist performs inside the Prizm art fair with a small ensemble of Miami-based Haitian family members and friends that play in their church (Salvation Army) band. Fair open through 11 Dec.
@ 7230 NW Miami Ct., Miami

No History is Innocent: Politics & Porn (Carlos Enriquez & José Angel Toirac)
Exploring the history of art censorship in Cuba, this exhibition features erotic imagery in the work of Cuban artists Carlos Enriquez and José Angel Toirac.
@ Pan American Art Projects, 6300 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami

Note: All Miami Art Week experiences featured here are FREE and open to the public.

Watch our adventures on Facebook, Twitter,  Instagram and listen to our live broadcast from inside Untitled Art Fair!

Contributed by Cathy Byrd with Evelyne Zapata for Fresh Art International.