This article is the first installment in a four-part series about the history of Art Basel Miami Beach published in the run up to Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. The next chapter will be published on November 16, 2022.
Sipping Champagne at the Delano hotel with artists Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist. A Picasso going for just under $20 million. An intimate reading by actor and collector Steve Martin from his then-new book about a young woman trying to make it in the artworld. Talk to any member of the artworld and you will hear different stories from Art Basel Miami Beach over the last 20 years. Those who were involved from the beginning perhaps appreciate most keenly how far the fair has come since its inception in 2001, when the December opening had to be delayed for a year due to 9/11.
Although the fair has become something of an international juggernaut, at the beginning, there was just a small core group of people who helped get the concept off the ground and bring the first fair to life. In a three-part story, the first of which is here, Robin Pogrebin recounts the early history of Art Basel Miami Beach.
Present at the creation
Many of them trace the genesis of Art Basel Miami Beach back to the Miami-based collector Norman Braman. He and his wife, Irma, were among very few Americans who attended Art Basel in Switzerland in the 1980s. They had a house on the Cote d’Azur and the dealer Jeffrey Deitch, then an art adviser, brought them to Art Basel. ‘We began a tradition of trying to find the best work at the fair and acquire it for their collection,’ Deitch says. ‘From the mid-’80s through the ’90s, they attended every Art Basel.’
During his visits to the Bramans in Miami, Deitch would walk down Collins Avenue, fascinated by the deteriorating Art Deco hotels. The couple introduced Deitch to other collectors, and by the end of the ’80s, he had several important art advisory clients in Miami, one of whom was partners with the father of Craig Robins (Gerald Robins), who became the visionary developer of the Design District. ‘I arranged to send auction catalog subscriptions to Craig at his dorm room at the University of Michigan,’ Deitch says. From 1989 through the mid-1990s – years in which he ran his own art advisory business – Deitch says he suspects he was ‘the top buyer at Art Basel’ in Switzerland and became friendly with the fair’s chief, Lorenzo Rudolf, and its Director of Communication Sam Keller. Both were instrumental in the Miami fair’s development.
When Art Basel was thinking about a US location, Braman championed the idea of Miami Beach, brokering discussions between the fair’s executives and local leaders.
Robert Goodman, president of Miami Beach-based Garber & Goodman Advertising and Marketing, remembers attending one such meeting at Braman’s invitation, which centered on viability questions such as whether people would travel to Miami so close to Christmas. Braman firmly believed visitors would be attracted by the relatively reasonable pre-holiday hotel rates as well as by the climate, insisting, ‘The weather is perfect,’ Goodman says.
Similarly, Alberto Ibargüen says Miami was well suited to the fair. Now president of the Knight Foundation, he was at the time the publisher of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald. ‘The hemispheres collide and combine here,’ he says. ‘It’s a place of startups and entrepreneurs and new beginnings. For anyone who wants to build community, it’s ideal because no one has a corner on history. Our surveys by [analytics and advisory company] Gallup and our own experience show art and culture top a short list of what attaches people to place and to each other, and no place shows that better than diverse Miami. And the water’s warm.’
When the idea of a US-based Art Basel was being hatched, Keller came to visit Ibargüen while in the process of scouting possible locations. ‘He was considering Chicago, New York, and some West Coast sites,’ Ibargüen says. ‘I said we would support the fair in every corporate way we could, and that I thought the newsroom would regard this as a big story.’
Collector Lauren Taschen says she encouraged Rudolf and Keller to choose Miami. ‘I said, “Miami is the gateway to South America. You’re going to be able to show a lot of galleries who wouldn’t be able to show in Switzerland because they couldn’t afford to.”’
According to longtime Art Basel VIP Representative and Senior Business Advisor Stefanie Block Reed, New York, Los Angeles, and even Orlando’s convention center had been in consideration. The Art Basel team visited Miami for intense weeks of meetings. They met with Braman, as well as Robins. An initial meeting with the Miami Beach Convention Center proved demoralizing, Robins shares. ‘We needed a foot in the door. One of my good friends Nick Pritzker owned the company that managed the convention center, so he organized a meeting for the director to meet with Norman, Sam, and I.’
The trio aimed to overcome two challenges. Art Miami, the longest-running Miami art fair at Miami Beach Convention Center, met the city’s stipulation of 1,500 hotel rooms sold to secure its fair dates. Art Basel Miami Beach would need the same guarantee. Braman called Goodman, then president of Garber & Goodman Advertising and Marketing, to help find a way. Based on the hotel statistics of Art Basel in Switzerland, Goodman confirmed it could happen... and went on to work with Art Basel for 22 more years.
The second challenge was that Art Miami opened each January, with a deal stipulating that no art fair could take place 45 days on either side of its dates. Art Basel Miami Beach was cornered to December, at that time considered off-season. But it proved ideal for access to hotels and restaurants, and superlative for Latin American and European travel. To seal the deal, collector Mera Rubell explains, ‘We arranged for a delegation of Miami Beach city officials, including Mayor Neisen Kasdin and Commissioner Nancy Liebman, to accompany me to Switzerland to experience the world-class nature of Art Basel firsthand. The trip was a success.’
In 1999, the contract was signed. A 2001 e-flux announcement promised, ‘The art world’s new favorite winter meeting place will offer unique experiences as well as lots of sun!’
Once Art Basel had settled on Miami, a local team was assembled that included Goodman, who worked on promoting the fair as the Florida representative for Art Basel; Taschen, who became events manager; and Reed, who became responsible for VIP relations along with Sara Fitzmaurice and Sascha Nikitin.
Having helped develop the Art Basel VIP relations network, as well as the concept of art fairs hosting trustee groups at their shows, Sara Fitzmaurice – founder and president of public relations firm Fitz & Co. – became part of the effort. The small but determined group went into high gear, planning details and getting the word out.
‘One of Sam’s great allies in making the fair successful was Isabela Mora, whose role was described to me as an “art connector”,’ remembers Marc Spiegler, who joined Art Basel in 2007 as co-director and has led the organization since 2012. [As of November 2022, he will pass the baton to Noah Horowitz, who’ll take on the new role of Art Basel CEO.] ‘They traveled relentlessly – sometimes together, sometimes apart – and she helped build up a group of super loyal collectors, people who at the time were not nearly as famous as they are now, such as Eugenio Lopez, Patricia and Juan Vergez, Patrizia Sandretto, and Dakis Joannou. Today, we have a VIP team of more than 30 people, but I’ve never met anybody with Isabela’s ability to make people incredibly passionate about both collecting contemporary work and being part of the artworld.’
Fredric Snitzer, the longtime Miami gallerist, says he was ‘very excited’ at the prospect of luring Art Basel to Miami Beach. While Art Miami existed, Snitzer says it ‘was not doing a good job in terms of quality’. Snitzer, who opened his gallery in 1977, was one of the early champions of contemporary Latin American art in the United States and has led the way with Cuban artists, launching careers such as that of Hernan Bas. His shows have included ‘They would rather Die’, an exhibition of a documentary film, paintings, and actual rafts used to flee Cuba. When the fair decided to come to Miami, Snitzer was asked to serve on the selection committee, and did so until 2021. He has also had a booth in the fair every year since the beginning.
The second installment of this story will be published on Wednesday, November 16, 2022.
This article was originally commissioned for the Art Basel Miami Beach magazine 2022.
Robin Pogrebin has been a reporter for The New York Times since 1995, where she covers cultural institutions, the artworld, architecture, and other subjects.