People come to Art Basel Miami Beach to buy art, attend parties, gawk at social-media-famous socialites, or some mixture of the three. Museums generally don’t offer the public any opportunities for any of that, and so, even though Miami has plenty of institutions, these spaces must play second fiddle to Art Basel and the other fairs that orbit it. But there are good reasons to venture beyond the fairs and into institutional walls this week—not the least because museums offer a temporary reprieve from dealers trying to hawk their wares.
Here is the good news: Miami, unlike the other cities where Art Basel hold its fairs, has no MoMA-scaled museums, which means that the institutional offerings are manageably sized. Here is the bad news: museums here are not immune to the whims of the market (note the mentions of “support” from blue-chip galleries in wall texts), which results in watered-down curation.
This all can make the crop of institutional shows variable in quality at best and downright bad at worst. Which museum exhibitions are actually worth your time? Below, a look at six of the most high-profile shows on view in Miami and the surrounding area this week.
