March 19, 2024
The art of the deal: Art fairs seeing record attendance in Miami

Photo: Art Basel

Art Basel (photo) and CONTEXT Art Miami attracted more than 150,000 visitors.

Miami-Dade Roundup

The art of the deal: Art fairs seeing record attendance in Miami

Lauren Comander | 1/27/2016

Several of the more than 20 fairs that make up early December’s Miami Art Week saw record attendance in 2015. “This year was their most successful ever,” says Rolando Aedo, executive vice president of the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, which tracks tourism numbers. “Art Basel took a relatively slow time of year and made it into one of the top-performing weeks of the year. As go hotels, go everything else.”

And hotels were hot, with the average room rate up 4.4%. Art Basel saw a record 77,000 visitors during its five days in Miami Beach — a 5% increase from 2014. Attendance at Art Basel has more than doubled since its 2002 inception. Meanwhile, the main fair in the city of Miami, Art Miami/ CONTEXT Art Miami, drew 79,000 visitors during the week — and 14,500 in just one evening at its VIP preview.

Other Art Basel figures:

More than 4,000 artists

Works from 267 galleries in 32 countries

Estimated value of works on view: $2.5 billion to $3 billion

Visitors from more than 110 countries, with first-time collectors from Cambodia, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Romania, Togo and Zimbabwe

28 projects have been successfully funded and raised more than $590,000 from more than 3,500 backers through Art Basel’s crowdfunding initiative to support non-commercial art projects worldwide (as of Dec. 10).

Notable Art Basel Sales

Francis Bacon’s Man in Blue VI (asking price: $15 million)

Pablo Picasso’s Buste au Chapeau (asking price: $10 million)

Paul McCarthy’s White Snow, Dopey, Black Red White, Black (sold for $1.5 million)

Andy Warhol’s Joseph Beuys (sold for $1.4 million)

Notable Art Miami/ CONTEXT Art Miami Sales

Two pieces by Mario Carreño and Amelia Peláez sold for more than $3.5 million.

A Joan Miró piece sold for $1.5 million.

Business Briefs

AVENTURA — Travel and entertainment provider Entertainment Benefits Group acquired Bostonbased Working Advantage, an employee deals portal.

CORAL GABLES — An unidentified international institutional buyer reportedly paid $118.5 million to buy the Alhambra office property, comprising a 14-story and seven-story tower, totaling 326,415 square feet. > Capital Bank converted from a national bank to a North Carolina bank and moved its headquarters to North Carolina. It still plans to expand in Florida. The bank’s parent company, Capital Bank Financial, plans to merge with North Carolinabased CommunityOne Bancorp.

DORAL — The state’s Agency for Health Care administration gave Jackson Health System approval to build a 100- bed hospital on a site it acquired during 2015 but denied HCA’s request to open a hospital in the same area.

HIALEAH — Montrealbased Resolute Forest Products acquired tissue paper manufacturer Atlas Paper Holdings for $156 million from Peak Rock Capital.

MIAMI — Major League Soccer approved a Miami Beckham United expansion team and endorsed a proposed stadium in the city’s Overtown neighborhood. Play must begin by 2020. Just days after a planned stadium site near Marlins Park, on the former Orange Bowl site, fell through, Miami Beckham United’s owners already had some nine acres under contract from Miami-Dade County and private landowners, including Windsor Investment Holdings.

Hermès of Paris opened its 13,000-sq.-ft. flagship store in the Design District and moved out of the temporary store it had there. > The Florida Institute for the Commercialization of Public Research invested $300,000 in emotion and face analytics company Kairos after the company licensed technology from the University of Central Florida. The Florida Institute also invested an undisclosed amount in Genetic Networks, which licensed technology developed at the University of Miami and uses a data-driven approach to accelerate drug discovery and predictive medicine. > French IT company NetReviews opened its U.S. and Latin American office at the Venture Hive entrepreneurial hub. > Midtown Opportunities sold the development site for Six Midtown, as well as additional land, to Chicago- based AMLI Residential for $55 million. AMLI plans two rental buildings. > Accounting firm Mallah Furman & Co. And its 60-plus employees merged with New York-based Eisner- Amper. > Online Englishlanguage school Open English acquired Next University, a technology education startup. Both companies are based in Miami and were founded by Andrés Moreno; they have a combined 1,565 employees around the Americas.

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY — Germany-based Allianz Real Estate of America purchased a 49% interest in the Waterford at Blue Lagoon corporate park for $374.5 million from TIAA-CREF, with whom it now co-owns the six class-A office buildings on more than 26 acres. > Triple Five Group’s proposed American Dream Miami in the northwestern part of the county would be 6.2 million square feet. The development will also include 2,000 hotels rooms.

NORTH MIAMI — Bonita Springs-based Innovative Food Holdings will spin off The Fresh Diet into a separate public company.

Players

The University of Miami hired Steven M. Altschuler as senior vice president of health affairs and CEO of its Uhealth-University of Miami Health System. A physician who was CEO of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for 15 years, he replaces Pascal J. Goldschmidt, who remains dean of UM’s Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine.

U. S. Century Bank CEO and President Carlos J. Dávila left the bank on Dec. 31. Luis de la Aguilera has been named president and CEO.

Spanish Broadcasting System promoted Elisa Torres to head its Radio Network division; she had been the division’s senior vice president of affiliate corporate sales.

BioNitrogen Holdings, which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, hired Graham Copley as CEO, replacing Carlos Contreras, who remains chairman of the board.

Tags: Miami-Dade, Arts & Entertainment

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