Once an ambitious upstart and now a reliable highlight of the art world’s calendar, Art Basel Miami Beach returns for its 22nd in-person edition from Friday to Sunday with 286 galleries from around the world.
For most collectors, curators, advisers and dealers, it marks the last major event of the year before the holidays arrive. For a seller or a buyer looking to make a big deal, the time is now.
Housed as always in the Miami Beach Convention Center, the event is also the last major art fair in a year full of them, including previous Art Basel editions in Hong Kong in March; Basel, Switzerland, in June; and Paris in October. Not to mention four far-flung Frieze fairs and a couple put on by the European Fine Art Foundation.
The Miami Beach fair is both large and popular — last year, 79,000 people attended. So here are some ways to navigate the big event.
A key strength of the fair has always been its ability to take advantage of Miami’s geographic position and diverse population to highlight Latin-American galleries, artists and institutions. “It’s the nexus between North and South America,” de Bellis said.
Brazil has a strong presence this year. The São Paulo gallery Carmo Johnson Projects offers a philanthropic spin on the market by showing the works of the Indigenous artist collective Huni Kuin Artist Movement (MAHKU) led by the artist and activist Ibâ Huni Kuin and located in the Brazilian state of Acre, in the far western reaches of the country. Sales proceeds of the works on view — which include “Dau Shawa Pêturi” (2024), a colorful acrylic painting — go toward local causes.
The São Paulo gallery Gomide & Co. has shown at the Miami Beach fair for 10 years, and its founder, Thiago Gomide, is now on the gallery selection committee for the event.
Gomide will be exhibiting a variety of works in the main Galleries section, including Beatriz Milhazes’s “Sinfonia Nordestina” (2008), a brightly colored abstraction.
He also has a separate booth-within-a-booth that is part of the fair’s Kabinett sector, for focused presentations, with work by Miriam Inez da Silva (1937-96), including the painting “Amor de sereia com pescador” (1983).
“It’s an exciting introduction of someone not known to the American public,” Gomide said of da Silva, who frequently painted scenes of leisure pursuits. “She had a slightly surreal approach and a light, humorous touch.”
