지금 Miami 에서는 뜨거운 여름 태양과 푸른 파도의 음향속에 아트바젤 과 더불어 프린지 아트페어30 개가 동시에 열리고 있다. 지주촌의 많은 작가와 작품들,갤러리 화상, 디렉터,아트딜러와 많은 컬렉터 유명인사, 미술 애호가 등 이 분야에 종사하는 모든 직업군이 모여 미술시장의 각축전을 벌이고 있다. 이와 더불어 크고 작은 세미나 파티 등도 모든 참가한 사람들을 열광하고 있다.
All the key art world participants were present: affluent collectors, museum curators, local artists and not least, investors like Mr. Cho, chief executive of Metro 1 Properties in Miami and a figure associated with the art-linked real estate surge in the once-industrial Wynwood neighborhood, 30 blocks south.
Signs of Little Haiti’s impending transformation are everywhere. Gallery Diet is one of nearly a dozen art galleries that have relocated from Wynwood to Little Haiti and its adjoining Little River area, including the Michael Jon Gallery (one of only two Miami dealers selected for the annual Art Basel Miami Beach fair...
There is a novel twist to this exodus from Wynwood, however. Many art world denizens are buying their buildings instead of renting them, despite the attraction of Little Haiti and Little River rents that top out at $15 a square foot. Artists and gallery owners are drawing on the painful lessons of the past decade’s explosive growth, when many were priced out of the once-cheap industrial zones in Wynwood that had been the area art scene’s center.
The game-changing nature of this shift — a break from the traditional rootlessness of the bohemian art class — is not lost on Nina Johnson-Milewski, director of Gallery Diet. When Mr. Cho warmly clasped her shoulder and teased: “Congratulations! You’re a developer now,” Ms. Johnson-Milewski looked slightly taken aback. She wryly corrected him: “I’m a micro-developer.”
Ms. Johnson-Milewski said she realized what’s truly at stake: control. “It’s not just about avoiding having your rent jacked up,” she explained. “Ownership symbolizes independence, and for those of us who produce culture, longevity.”
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The artist Randy Burman at an opening party for "100+ Degrees in the Shade," a survey of art from south Florida.Credit Ryan Stone for The New York Times
Longevity can be a novel concept in a city like Miami. The 2002 arrival of Art Basel Miami Beach transformed the area, once derided as a cultural backwater, into a feverishly developing destination for art. Scores of galleries sprang to life in Wynwood, helping to create an American art mecca, behind only Los Angeles and New York.
Wynwood pioneers moved into a down-on-its-heels warehouse district and invested their sweat equity, only to find themselves priced out of the neighborhood they helped make so attractive. Wynwood rents fetch upward of $60 a square foot, triple that of just four years ago; spacious warehouses can command $100,000 rental fees during Art Basel for corporate product introductions and media events. Art may remain part of the marketing of Wynwood, used to sell everything from cocktails to condos. But almost all the galleries that put it on the cultural map are gone.
