If you go
(In order mentioned in this story)› The Bass Museum of Art, 2100 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, 305-673-7530, www.thebass.org› Pérez Art Museum Miami, 1105 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, 305-375-3000, www.pamm.org› Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, 1101 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, 305-434-9600, www.frostscience.org/› Institute of Contemporary Art, 61 NE 41st St, Miami, 305-901-5272, www.icamiami.org/tickets/› Wynwood Walls (central courtyard in the Wynwood Art District), 2520 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami, 305-531-4411, www.thewynwoodwalls.com
A four-story pile of rocks painted in fluorescent colors towered ahead of us as we drove north on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, dodging weaving skateboards and erratically driven cars, bicycles and scooters, all seemingly determined to flout the rules of the road. In this part of Miami Beach, a dozen blocks north of sizzling South Beach, faded if gentrifying neighborhoods of midcentury apartment houses and stucco bungalows sat behind lush, if unkempt, tropical hedges. People of all ages, ethnicities and genders crowded the sidewalks.
We parked in a public lot with a view of the beach, the main draw for decades before the southern end of Miami Beach morphed into the trendy neighborhood of glitzy restaurants, nightclubs and boutiques that it is today. We were looking for the Bass Museum of Art, which reopened recently after a two-year, $12 million renovation and expansion, the latest entry on an exploding local art scene that includes three new art museums in Miami Beach and Miami itself.
As we guessed, the cairn marked the spot.
The museum, rebranded at its opening as The Bass, was a diminutive if perfect Art Deco specimen whose Florida limestone exterior glowed warmly in the November sun. The words Eternity Now, in giant blue letters, stretched across the façade – a “site-specific neon sculpture,” we were later told.