Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Putting Miami on the Arts Map
Miami's citizens and their memories, realities and visions have created a burgeoning art
scene that truly began to be noticed with the 2002 introduction of
Art Basel Miami Beach
,
the US outpost of an annual erudite gathering that's based in Switzerland. By its second
year, the event had created a buzz throughout the national art world - and had succeeded
in wooing 175 exhibitors, more than 30,000 visitors and plenty of celebs to take over the
galleries, clubs, and hotels of South Beach and the Design District. It has grown, in both
size and strength, each year since, and its impact on the local art scene cannot be over-
stated; today, Art Basel Miami is the biggest contemporary arts festival in the Western
Hemisphere.
BRIGHT BRITTO
If the top public artist of a given city determines how said city sees itself, we must con-
clude Miami is a cartoon-like, cubist, chaotic place of bright, happy, shiny, joy.
That's the aesthetic legacy Romero Britto is leaving this town. The seemingly perpetu-
ally grinning Brazilian émigré, clad in jackets leftover from a 1980s MTV video, was the
hot face of public art in the 2000s, having designed the mural of the
Miami Children's
Museum
, the 'Welcome' structure at Dadeland North Station, the central sculpture at the
shops at Midtown and many others. You might need sunglasses to appreciate his work,
which appeals to the islander in all of us: Saturday-morning cartoon brights, sharp geo-
metric lines and loopy curls, inner-child character studies and, underlying everything, a
scent of teal oceans on a sunny day.
Gloria Estefan loves the guy, and former governor Jeb Bush gave Tony Blair an original
Britto when the ex-PM visited Miami in 2006. However, not everyone feels the Romero
love; plenty of critics have dubbed Britto more commercial designer than pop artist (but,
like, what is art, man?). Rather than get mired in the debate, we suggest you check out a
Britto installation for yourself, or the
Britto Central
gallery at 818 Lincoln Rd. The man's
work is as ubiquitous as palm trees and, hey, if you've got a spare $20,000, you can buy
an original (a small one) before you go home.
