Schwartz opened in the Design District half a dozen years ago. He was one of the first chefs to arrive on the scene, and it took some convincing to get others to come along for the ride, at least at first. The art fair quickly changed all that, and now he sees the Basel Effect everywhere he looks. “It gave people with an artistic identity some hope in a place that was really dominated by a trendy, clubby sensibility. I think it sort of coaxed those people—and there are a lot of them—out of the woodwork, spurring the creative direction Miami’s gone in.”
If the Design District has already up and come, it’s the Wynwood neighborhood, just to the south, that’s riding the crest of the next wave. Home to two private contemporary art museums—the Rubell Family Collection and the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse—this still-industrial area is now ground zero for Miami’s gallery scene. One of the most prominent spaces is Fredric Snitzer, with its roster of established and emerging talents, many of them local; another is the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, which concentrates on female and minority artists.
Other businesses have been slower to arrive, but they’re finally coming along. “I couldn’t get a cup of coffee the first year here. The first five years, actually,” recalls gallerist Snitzer. In the last two years, however, the area has received a jolt of energy from Wynwood Walls, an ambitious, ever-expanding mural project that to date has brought in more than 20 international street and graffiti artists. And from this public-art initiative, a neighborhood has grown.
