| Every vocation, corporate franchise, sexual perversion or cultural obsession has its own annual convention. No matter what obscure hobby or freaky shit floats your boat, there is a fair, festival or convention to celebrate it. You could be a dental hygienist, C.F.O., foot fetishist or video game enthusiast. It doesn’t matter. I guarantee you that out of the six billion other people on this blue orb, there are at least 500 other nerds like you. |
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By Thomas Seely
Every vocation, corporate franchise, sexual perversion or cultural obsession has its own annual convention. No matter what obscure hobby or freaky shit floats your boat, there is a fair, festival or convention to celebrate it. You could be a dental hygienist, C.F.O., foot fetishist or video game enthusiast. It doesn’t matter. I guarantee you that out of the six billion other people on this blue orb, there are at least 500 other nerds like you. I also bet that at some point the most passionate of those nerds got motivated one day, and organized an annual convention for the other nerds. Then, every year since, an increasing number of professional and amateur connoisseurs flocked to the same location for a week long circus in honor of their collective obsession—be it for classic cars, sex in public or contemporary art.
The amazing thing about the Miami art fairs—held every December in and around South Beach, Florida—is that they are hybrids of every other kind of convention or fair imaginable. Art Miami brings together a crowd that spans the entire art world hierarchy—from assistants and young "emerging" artists, to pearl and leather encrusted celebrity patrons and the museum directors who grovel for their donation dollars— and drops them into a sunny city located at the bottom of Florida.
Brilliant, right? Ask anyone here with any sense and I think they’d tell you that Art Miami is essentially a circus disguised as a vocational retreat, turned corporate shareholder meeting, turned fetish party, turned Star Trek convention. Over the next four days contemporary art will be celebrating itself. All its exciting possibilities and revolting short comings with be laid on the table next to enough free booze to put Shane MacGowen on his ass for a week. It’s an orgy of looking, networking, buying, drinking, napping and being seen (by the right people of course). If I don’t loose my press pass boogie boarding or get it taken away for drunkenly terrorizing hotel staff, I’ll be sending back daily reports and doing some "art collecting" of my own. Call your dealer, ready your checkbook and take a plane down to the palm tree lined, salmon colored vortex of Miami Beach! Apparently, it’s gonna be huge.
A Guide to all the fairs can be found here: http://art-collecting.com/miami_art_fairs.html
