Seven years ago, a Swiss art fair came to Miami Beach, and with it came the international art world. Connoisseurs, collectors, spectators and glitterati filled the Convention Center to gaze at and (in the case of some, at least) buy the art that Art Basel Miami Beach brought with it. The excitement spilled over into the streets of the Design District, to the shipping containers-turned-exhibition spaces over by the beach, to the hotels that opened their rooms to become instant mini-galleries.

The week that we call Art Basel is upon us again, with all its frenetic glamour and reflected glory. It's a week when much of Miami Beach, the entire Design District and most of Wynwood are transformed, almost magically, into a world center of art and design, into an admittedly imperfect (would we want it another way?) fantasyland.

It's a week that compresses more energy and frenzy into a few short hours than I once thought was possible -- and more art and design. There are parties, colloquia, book-signings, symposiums, showroom openings, museum openings, gallery shows and more parties. Museum patrons and collectors from across the land, from around the world, gamely hop into buses and touring cars to visit museums, private homes and see the Miami that in some respects has been invented just for them.

And then it's sundown on Sunday, and Cinderella's ball is over. The art is packed up. The tents come down. The traffic clears. The room rates come down. There was a time when I would have dismissed Art Basel as being an ''art convention'' -- the cultural equivalent of a boat show or a gathering of surgeons, here and then gone.

Further, I would have noted (somewhat scathingly) the emphasis on selling high-end real estate and the obsessive interest in the parties over the art. But something happened along the way that changed my mind. As seems to happen in Miami over and over again, fact imitated fiction, life imitated art. And what once seemed to be this five-day phenomenon of the ''Art City'' began to be much more.

Mostly it didn't happen in Miami Beach, though there is a spillover. Mostly it happened in the old (and still tattered) garment-manufacturing district of Wynwood and in the reemerging Miami Design District. It would have happened in those places anyway, or so I believe.

AMAZING GROWTH

Cities have an amazing capacity to regenerate themselves, and a life that no planner can ultimately fully predict. Yet, I don't think it would have happened so quickly or with such profound reverberations had it not been for the world attention focused on the truly remarkable galleries and exhibitions in Wynwood and the spectacular Design Miami, now in its fourth year.

The first hint, for me, that something more was going on came not in that first year, nor in the second, but in 2004 when a book-editor friend from New York said, rather vaguely, ''Let's go over across to this other show. . . . '' We headed to Overtown, to the Ice Palace to see the NADA (an acronym for the New Art Dealers Alliance) exhibition. It looked good, but more importantly, it felt good.

Troops of collectors and others had already been hiking across the bay to go see the superb Margulies and Rubell collections, as they were already there in Wynwood along with the Bakehouse Art Complex and a handful of other galleries and artists (among them the founders of the much-missed House and the 10-year-old Locust Projects).

Join the discussion

Note: If this is your first time using our NEW commenting system, you will have to LOG OUT and then LOG BACK IN.

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.CommentBody@

@Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@