#miami-art-week

#miami-art-week

THE SNARLING DOG astride the handily engorged cock by Jimmy De Sana; the puckered chapeau of Ryan Wilde; and the sign by Lizzi Bougatsos advertising "For Sale-My Pussy" all felt like a tasteful beginning to another Miami Art Week. Lugging a cotton candy pink backpack, I went straight from the airport to the Tuesday night opening of "Hard Art: Unruly Work from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection" at the Snøhetta-designed Museum of Sex downtown.

Every December, Art Basel Miami Beach turns the city into a weeklong collision of creativity - and not just inside the Miami Beach Convention Center, where more than 250 leading galleries descend with blue-chip works, emerging artists, and plenty of spectacle. Across Miami, Art Week spills into hotels, restaurants, rooftops, and beach clubs, transforming the city into a pop-up playground where art, fashion, and food mingle late into the night.

Or you could choose to see things differently. You could celebrate with the long-running Miami spaces that are ushering in big milestones this year, like the Bakehouse Art Complex and Spinello Projects, which are hosting their 40th- and 20th-anniversary exhibitions, respectively. You could visit Dimensions Variable, Tunnel Projects, Homework Gallery, or any number of other local art galleries and organizations that are thriving beyond this week.

Miami Beach, a city founded on the principle that nothing should ever take longer than ordering a cortadito, has finally admitted defeat. The traffic is bad- biblically bad-and the municipal solution is wonderfully literal: water taxis. For the second year in a row and beginning on December 1, the city will run a small flotilla of free boats shuttling people between Miami Beach and the mainland every ten to fifteen minutes, complete with connecting shuttles to the Convention Center and Collins Avenue.