Travel advisories: holiday forecast, city respite

BY JENNIFER KAY | The Associated Press

November 25, 2007

It's the quintessential South Beach scene: Beautiful people lounging alongside shimmering water. Art imitates social life here next month with a fashion photography exhibit installed around a swanky hotel pool.

It's one of the many ways Miami transforms into a contemporary art hub in early December. About 20 art fairs and other independent exhibits and performances lure serious collectors to mingle for a week with the locals in the city's parks, trendy hotels, giant air-conditioned tents and private galleries.

Paintings hang from the walls, sculptures and videos enliven tropical gardens, performers entertain bus riders, and shipping containers are reborn as gallery and concert spaces.

The centerpiece of the annual visual overload is Art Basel Miami Beach, the four-day international contemporary art fair at the Miami Beach Convention Center showcasing work by more than 2,000 artists. First opened in 2002, it's the sister fair of the annual art event held in June in Switzerland.

From Dec. 6 to 9 in Miami, Art Basel's "Art Supernova" will link exhibit, performance and storage spaces together in one hall. A more compartmentalized approach to exhibitions, "Art Kabinett," focuses attention on small, curated shows.

The fair extends to a beachfront village of repurposed shipping containers titled "Art Positions," and injects glitz into Miami's more natural landscapes. The Miami Beach Botanical Garden will sparkle with the Cartier Dome, a dramatic jewelry display that accompanies video artwork. Monumental sculpture, ranging from 8 feet to 30 feet high, by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, will loom over the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, starting Dec. 8.

Art Miami, a contemporary art fair, will be staged Dec. 5-9 in Miami's Wynwood Art District.

The models captured by fashion photographers Thierry Mugler, Jean-Baptiste Mondino and 18 others replace the usual sunbathers around the palm-lined pool at the oceanfront Doubletree Surfcomber Hotel in Miami Beach Art Photo Expo's "In Fashion '07" exhibit, Dec. 2-9.

The Sagamore Hotel, also oceanfront in South Beach, could be described as a "hotel installation" with its tradition of being featured in work created for Art Basel. Photographer Massimo Vitali memorialized the first Art Basel in 2002 with a live photo shoot at the Sagamore's end-of-fair brunch, now an annual event. This year's Art Basel Brunch on Dec. 8 will feature the unveiling of the large-scale, mass-nudity photographs Spencer Tunick shot at the hotel last month.

Robert Chambers' "Rotorelief," a functioning helicopter with its propeller blades replaced by hypnotically swirled discs, has been permanently installed on one of the hotel's low roofs in advance of Art Basel.

Art can be found in traditional museum spaces as well during Art Basel: the Miami Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, the Wolfsonian in Miami Beach's historical district and other area museums and private family collections will host special exhibits.

There's so much art to take in that guides will be available for many of the fairs and exhibits. And, Art Access Guide '07, a compact insider's guide to Art Basel and its satellites, picks out the highlights from thousands of paintings, photographs, sculptures and installations on display.

ART BASEL: Miami Beach, Dec. 6-9, artbaselmiamibeach .com or 305-891-7270. Miami Beach Convention Center is the main exhibition venue, with smaller displays at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens and beachfront Collins Park. Guided tours and children's programming available.

ART MIAMI: Miami's Wynwood Art District, Dec. 5-9, art-miami.com or 866-727-7953.

SAGAMORE HOTEL: Miami Beach, Dec. 3-9, sagamorehotel .com or 305-535-8088. Photos and video from Spencer Tunick's Oct. 8 Sagamore installation will be unveiled at the annual Art Basel Brunch, Dec. 8.

ART ACCESS '07: Limited supply of the guides to Art Basel and its satellite art fairs and exhibits, Dec. 3-9, available through Urban Art Access, urbanartaccess.com.