Miami and Miami Beach are home to many significant collections of art.
Art Basel Miami Beach, the largest contemporary art event in North America showing about $3 billion in works, has been situated in Miami Beach since 2002.
Some of the works of art are housed in residences maintained in any of the more than 400 luxury condo towers that have been developed since 2011. Some are kept in single family homes. Of course, works of art are also to be found housed in museums, both public and private, and in cultural centers.
Marion Maneker of Art Market Monitor, writing from the 2017 Global Auction House Summit presented by Invaluable, reports:
“At the Invaluable Auction House Summit in Boston, Thomas Burns from Fortress Fine Art Storage and Simon Hornby of Crozier both addressed the problems with hurricane preparedness in South Florida’s Gold Coast.
“Burns says his teams have been working all week to move their clients art into Fortress’s facility and prepare the building for an unprecedented blow. “Starting Tuesday we were inundated with clients who were completely unprepared,” Burns said. It turns out major works are in place without insurance and the insurance companies have placed a moratorium on new insurance in the area this week.
“Fortress has a program that allows collectors to put their works in storage in June when they leave the area. The big question is how many have had their works moved back to the beach houses so early in the season.
“Hornby pointed to the fact that art insurance carriers were slow to engage these kind of hurricane preparedness programs waiting until this Tuesday to call for logistical support. By then, it was already too late to add capacity amid the jammed traffic and fuel shortages caused by the massive evacuation taking place.”
Meanwhile, workers at the Faena Hotel Miami Beach have been working to fortify the bullet-proof glass that protects Damien Hirst’s life-size, gilded with 24-karat gold sculpture of the skeleton of a mammoth. Entitled “Gone But Not Forgotten” (2014), the sculpture was acquired at auction in 2014 for $15 million by Ukrainian-American Len Blavatnik. “Gone But Not Forgotten” was then installed in the garden of the Faena Hotel Miami Beach ahead of the opening of Faena Forum in 2016. Mr. Blavatnik is owner of Warner Music Group and a partner, with Argentine entrepreneur and developer Alan Faena, in the Faena Forum.
Mr. Hirst explains the sculpture of the mammoth as “an absolute expression of mortality, but I’ve decorated it to the point where it’s become something else, I’ve pitched everything I can against death to create something more hopeful.”
“The mammoth comes from a time and place that we cannot ever fully understand. Despite its scientific reality, it has attained an almost mythical status and I wanted to play with these ideas of legend, history and science by gilding the skeleton and placing it within a monolithic gold tank. It’s such an absolute expression of mortality, but I’ve decorated it to the point where it’s become something else, I’ve pitched everything I can against death to create something more hopeful, it is gone but not forgotten.”
See:
“A Miami Transformed by Wealth Braces for the Storm” | Michael Smith and Katya Kazakina, Bloomberg, 8 September 2017
“Irma Threatens Art Spread Throughout South Florida Homes” | Marion Maneker, Art Market Monitor, 8 September 2017
“Culture’s a carnival for opening of dazzling Faena Forum” | Andres Viglucci, Miami Herald, 25 November 2016
“Hirst’s golden mammoth on display at Faena Hotel Miami Beach” | Damien Hirst.com, 8 December 2015
“Len Blavatnik buys Damien Hirst work for $15M at amfAR gala” | Emily Smith, Page Six, 23 May 2014
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