By Sebastian Spreng, Visual Artist and Classical Music Writer

People who still insist that Miami is synonymous with no-culture will have to change their tune. It may never be Paris, London or New York – and why should it? – but the compass is slowly moving in a direction that is hard to ignore. This multifaceted town with it’s own legitimate aspirations is the gateway to Latin America increasingly has become an art destination as well. It hasn’t stopped being a traditional shopping mecca, but with the landing of Art Basel – the international art fair based in the Swiss city – twelve years ago, it has also become a focal point of the international art market. This gigantic luxury art-supermarket is a mother ship that throws up satellite art fairs, attracting multitudes and energizing the local art scene. In the 2013 season – Art Basel 12^th edition – more than 20 fairs signed on, in addition to approximately 100 Miami galleries displaying the work of 6,000 artists.

From the vicissitudes of the art itself, to the traffic nightmare and the banality of the party scene, it’s impossible to escape. Miami may not have a carnival, but instead it has Art Basel, a great attraction and a good reason to celebrate when the circus comes to town every year, transforming entire neighborhoods with tents, banners and a stream of both celebrities and unknowns reminiscent of the closing parade in  Fellini’s 8 ½.

We Miamians are a diverse tribe. We take every cultural milestone as a personal triumph. We have ample reason to, given the titanic effort involved in laying each and every brick of culture on this porous coral terrain, besieged as it is by all kinds of winds and waters. This year, the excuse of Art Basel provided the city with the golden opportunity to achieve a local achievement of international importance: the opening of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). It was the right time and the right place to unveil a building that masterfully conveys the fusion of man, art and nature represented in these latitudes.

Culturally, if slowly, things are finally coming together. The Adrienne Arsht Center, designed by Cesar Pelli, was followed by the New World Symphony “American Orchestral Academy”, designed by Frank Gehry. Now it’s the PAMM, the work of Herzog & de Meuron, a structure whose essential trait is being our first cultural establishment by the water. Like Buenos Aires, which Le Corbusier defined as “the city with its back to the river,” culturally, Miami had turned its back on the sea that surrounds it. PAMM is the first art venue to break the spell. At last, art competes with sports, embodied in the nearby American Airlines Arena. The Swiss architects’ design is exemplary. Like Gehry’s building, PAMM has the virtue of not trying to be just an iconic landmark. It only strives to be a receptacle and an engine for art. Inspired in the curious “Stiltsville,” a group of homes built on stilts in Biscayne Bay in the 1940s, it evinces a curious mix of solidity and lightness that’s somewhat frightening, even if its panes of hurricane-resistant glass are the largest on the planet. In the mixture and textures of concrete, stone and wood – atypical for the Miami area – and in the absolutely magical light provided by strategically placed windows that let you glimpse the sea and the city at every step, the building has created a unique environment, one that signals a turning point and provides an emblematic oasis. To the ancient Greeks, dolphins meant good luck, and the surprise of seeing them frolic in the bay from the museum’s wide balconies strikes me as an image as auspicious as it is colorful, surpassing all Disney. Definitely, pure Miami.

Currently more container than content, PAMM could also be a platform for a collection that will have the opportunity to reflect the convergences of a unique city while perhaps contribute to a better understanding of the immense artistic legacy of the southern part of the continent. The inaugural exhibit reflected various artistic currents; its main implicit theme was all types of exile. From the vast exhibit by Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei to the one devoted to Cuban modernist Amelia Peláez, to the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry (a fascinating room that is the museum’s crown jewel), to the work of Monica Sosnowska and the Americana currents, no detail has been left to chance, certainly not even the notes that accompany each work, flawlessly translated into Spanish. Perhaps the Hew Locke installation that greets visitors – a colorful parade of boats suspended in midair – conveys the museum’s essential message, bearing unsurpassed testimony to the experience of exiles, both material and spiritual, for which Miami has been an anchor and a refuge.

Displaying 250 galleries from 35 countries, this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach exhibition at the city’s Convention Center evinced a more conservative bent than last year’s. Painting (abstract and concrete) was the undeniable star, followed by photography, while installations, videos and sculptures were relegated to a less prominent role. In fact, the most cutting edge art could be seen in Miami’s museums and collections – as the Margulies (featuring spectacular Anselm Kiefer pieces), De la Cruz, CIFO and Rubell, in addition to the Bass Museum, the Wolfsonian, FIU and MOCA– as mainly at fairs like Untitled and Scope, held in gigantic tents in the middle of the beach, plus Pulse were photography predominated. At the fortunately rediscovered Bacardi Building (now National Young Arts Foundation), Marina Abramovic presented her 3D portrait by Matthu Placek; only one among innumerable events in a busy week that did not allow a minute’s rest and boasted splendid weather, to the delight of northern visitors. The film was co-produced and presented by YoungArts and Visionaire Films.

across the bay, Art Miami (and its newest child, Context) was held in the Wynwood/Design District area. In conjunction with the nearby parallel art fairs; it made for a rich, eclectic, though uneven, panoply. As in Art Basel, a strong German and Brazilian presence was evident. Important pieces from Latin America were on display, with such galleries as Leon Tovar, Ascaso and Durban Segnini leading the way. Nevertheless, the 2013 edition seemed more of a mixed bag that last year’s.

Back at Art Basel, there were the – fortunately – usual museum staples: Ernst, Munch, Miró, Nolde, Magritte, Kandinsky, Lucien Freud, Schlemmer, Feininger, etc, as well as Louise Bourgeois, Kapoor, Brancusi, Motherwell, Gormley, Fontana, Duchamp, Baldessari, William Kentridge and Maya Lin. It would be impossible to leave out Georgia Russell and her amazing paper filigrees, El Anatsui’s monumental mantles, Doug Aitken’s nocturnes, Ugo Rondinone’s totemic “soul”, Tim Eitel’s figures, Edda Renouf’s asceticism, Dean Byngton’s curious drawings and Paul Fägerskiöld’s serene canvases, among the works of countless contemporary artists. In the Latin American field, Henrique Faría’s gallery displayed caustic humor; Montevideo’s Sur exhibited its Torres García de rigueur, and Mary Anne Martin brought a memorable Gunther Gerzso, as well as, among other delights, Wolfgang Paalen’s Ancestors to Come, a 1948 little jewel that sums up East and West.

This year’s Hurricane Art Basel, ushered in by the opening of PAMM, left our community in good spirits. Few now doubt that Miami is bent on growth as necessary as it is inevitable; the city feels no longer an ugly duckling. And that is definitely cause for celebration. HEW LOCKE’s installation FOR THOSE IN PERIL OF THE SEA – PAMM – FOTO daniel azoulay