An insider's guide to Art Basel Miami Beach 2010

The noticeable absence of financially cautious European galleries at Art Basel Miami Beach during the last two years seems to be over. I too am returning after a two-year hiatus, and I’m looking forward to seeing the fair’s peripheral programme, visiting Miami’s wealth of private collections, and, in particular, catching up with what American galleries will be showing. Whilst Art Basel Miami Beach is by no means the largest of the world’s art fairs, it does have an abundance of North and South American galleries that rarely take part in European fairs.

I’ll be heading to some of the Art Salon talks, particularly - as someone who commissions site-specific projects - the discussion between Marnie Weber and Emi Fontana, entitled Art and Fiction: How to Make Artists' Dreams Possible – a West of Rome Project. West of Rome is an organisation, established by Emi Fontana, which focuses on the city as a location. So far they have produced projects with Mike Kelley and Mike Smith, and a ‘viral’ city-wide project with Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman.

I will also try and see The Future of Artistic Practice | The School Makers, a panel discussion with artists who have founded schools or alternative education programmes in the past. The ongoing debate surrounding art education is currently an urgent one as students are priced out of an art education that is becoming increasingly ineffective. The arts need to be supported from a grass roots level, so I will be interested to hear what artists like Tania Bruguera, the Bruce High Quality Foundation and Piero Golia have to say about their unconventional approaches to art education.

The Art Video programme is curated by Lauri Firstenberg, of LAXART, Los Angeles. It focuses on artists from Los Angeles, and features film and video by artists whose sculptural practices I am familiar with, but whose film and video I have never seen, such as Kori Newkirk, Evan Holloway and Eric Wesley. 

This year, an addition to the programme is a number of Oceanfront events. Each night explores one of four cities: Detroit, Glasgow, Berlin and Mexico City. The focused evenings begin with music from that city, so I will try to head there to hear some great music as each of the chosen cities have such pioneering and distinctive scenes. Glasgow’s night in particular has performances from excellent artists such as Stephen Sutcliffe and Sue Tompkins.

Sarah McCrory is Curator of Frieze Foundation