Helen Toomer Gives Us the Inside Scoop on Pulse Miami Beach 2015

Since she was appointed director of Pulse Contemporary Art Fair, Helen Toomer has redefined the typical Basel exhibition. When she took the helm of the commercial behemoth, the fair was comprised of a long and disjointed selection of galleries and artists from around the world, held far afield on Miami’s…

Art Basel Miami Beach 2015 Brings the Party Bigger Than Ever

Miami’s art climate is changing rapidly, fueled not by hydrocarbons but by an ever-expanding global market hungry for the Magic City’s scene. With last year’s messy birth of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) — which acrimoniously broke away from the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami — Miami now…

Pulse Miami Announces Its 2015 Art Week Lineup

In anticipation of Miami Art Week, Pulse Miami Beach has announced its lineup for the 2015 season. The lineup looks promising, and it includes a number of founding galleries who have been with the fair since its beginning, as well as three Miami galleries. The local galleries showing are familiar…

Women Artists Underrepresented at Art Basel 2014

Micol Hebron had a standout Art Basel. She performed Roll Call , a Carolee Schneemann-inspired performance during which Hebron read aloud the low percentages of women artists represented by art galleries, information written on scroll that she slowly unfurled from her vagina. Anyone familiar with Hebron’s work would have hardly…

Art Basel Miami Beach 2014: Winners and Losers

Art Basel is finally over. The behemoth art fair that sweeps into our fair city every year has packed its bags and blown us a very European kiss goodbye. And in its wake, it’s inevitably left both the victorious and the conquered. We here at the Miami New Times have…

Comedian Steve Berke Punks Art Basel, Sells Fake Art

As if you needed more proof that many Art Basel attendees know little about art. Miami-Dade native, Miami Beach mayorial candidate, and comedian Steve Berke conducted a “social experiment” during Miami Art Week to see if he could go from zero to “artist” in less than 24 hours and sell…

“Zero Tolerance” at YoungArts: Police, Protests, and Art Basel

The ubiquitous sounds of protest filled the intimate, transparently constructed exhibition space: people yell, groups chant, impatient drivers honk their horns, police blow their high-pitched whistles. These are the familiar noises that greet you when you enter YoungArts’ Basel exhibition, “Zero Tolerance.” Curated by MoMA PS1 Director Klaus Biesenbach, the…

Art Selfies Galore at PAMM’s Art Basel Birthday (Photos)

This time last year, the biggest thing on everybody’s Art Basel agenda was getting a peek inside the newly opened Perez Art Museum Miami. One year later, traffic and unpredictable rainstorms did their best to spoil the downtown institution’s first birthday party. But hundreds still flocked to the museum’s hanging…

Karen Finley Wants to Paint Your Psychic Energy

Once upon time, in another world, Karen Finley gave the people what they did not yet know they wanted. She got a lot of flack for it, and a lot of praise, too. Yet neither could stop her from doing whatever it was she decided to do. Had Finley come…

Peter Marino’s One Way at Bass: Luxury and Leather Done Right

The name “Peter Marino” was on the well-moisturized lips of every privileged attendee at the New York Times-hosted International Luxury Conference at the Mandarin Oriental in Miami this week. And why wouldn’t it be? Of all the people on display during the Art Basel Miami Beach fair, the architect, art…

Baz Luhrmann Dazzles at Basel, While Local Gallery Snubs Us

Every year there’s always the ridiculous cry that Art Basel’s Miami Beach incarnation (and Miami’s entire art scene) is all fluff and no substance, and that the art world is ready to pack up and leave. (For example: see Brett Sokol’s hilarious piece for the New York Times.) Fact is,…

Pearl Paint Art Supply Store Recreated in Wynwood

If you were a kid with an affinity for anything artistic, you definitely visited a Pearl Paint Art Supply Store. Heck, you could have even bought watercolors or a brush at the South Miami location as recently as a few months ago. But like library card catalogs and VCRs, Pearl…