Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday.

Amid a sluggish art market and concerns about new tariffs, the design category keeps growing. Earlier this month, as much of the art world was in Basel, the major auction houses each held design sales that outperformed expectations.

Sotheby’s design sales in New York totaled $37.5 million, and Christie’s totaled $23.6 million; Phillips, which staged just one sale in this category this time, brought in $4 million. By comparison, last year, Sotheby’s reported $19.5 million in design sales, Christie’s reported $15.5 million, and Phillips reported $5.1 million across two sales with significantly more lots. Across all three houses, that’s a 62.3 percent year-on-year increase.

Experts told ARTnews there are multiple factors behind the category’s continued momentum for established names and a broad range of artists.

Lewis Wexler, who previously served as Christie’s assistant vice president of 20th-century decorative arts, told ARTnews there has been a “paradigm shift,” with collectors purchasing design in the same way they approach fine art.

“There’s always a demand for lighting, benches, sofas, and things along those lines,” said Wexler, who currently runs an eponymous gallery in New York and Philadelphia. “I think there has been a realization that you can obtain the same quality and caliber in the design world that you can find in the paintings hanging on your walls.”

That awareness has increased due to larger budgets for interior design, notable gallery exhibitions and institutional acquisitions, greater auction data about the investment value of collectible pieces, and the re-evaluation of artists such as Sonia Delaunay and Toshiko Takaezu, both of whom were the subject of major shows in New York last year.

Claire Warner, cofounder of Chicago’s Volume Gallery, which focuses on material-driven art practices and design, told ARTnews that the ongoing “technological revolution” has pushed collectors toward items that are “handmade” and “well-crafted.”

“People’s understanding of this work is becoming much more fluid and not as siloed,” said Warner, who previously worked as a design specialist at the Wright auction house in Chicago.

Betsy Beierle, a senior sales associate at the design gallery Carpenters Workshop, told ARTnews that collectible design has a “cross-market fluidity” that draws buyers from multiple sectors.

“It appeals to art collectors, institutions, people working in design, architecture, fashion, and industrial design,” Beierle said.

Global interest in the category, especially from younger buyers, has also helped many design items exceed high estimates at auction.

At Sotheby’s design sale on June 11, 76 percent of the lots sold above their high estimates. Christie’s and Phillips also noted that a significant number of lots in their sales surpassed high estimates, including the three-pane, six-foot-tall Goddard Memorial Window by Tiffany Studios, which sold for $4.29 million on a $2 million–$3 million estimate. That is the second-highest price at auction for a window from the artist’s studio. Those results are especially notable given the few house and third-party guarantees offered at the sales.

The houses also saw an expanded audience this month, with Sotheby’s and Phillips reporting that more than 20 percent of buyers at their major design sales were new to the houses. Sotheby’s reported a 64 percent increase in bidders compared to last year, and a 76 percent increase in buyers. Phillips noted that millennial and Gen Z collectors made up 20 percent of bidders at its design sales this year.

“At least half the people I sold [Les Lalanne works] to last year are younger than me, which is extremely encouraging,” 56-year-old art dealer Ben Brown told ARTnews, noting his London gallery’s representation of Les Lalanne since 2007 and the ‘Planète Lalanne’ exhibition in Venice, Italy last year featuring more than 150 works. Brown added that he is frustrated that Lalanne works have been categorized as design.

The success of design objects at auction has been apparent even outside of dedicated sales, underscoring their crossover appeal. In May, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Double-Pedestal Lamp from the Susan Lawrence Dana House sold for $7.5 million at Sotheby’s modern evening sale, far exceeding its $3 million–$5 million estimate. But the spike in design interest has been most apparent in the market for works by François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, as ARTnews reported in April. Four of the top 10 auction sales for works by François-Xavier took place last year, and at Sotheby’s design sale on June 11, Grand Rhinocéros II sold for $16.4 million—his second-highest price at auction.

Meanwhile, the result at Christie’s for the Tiffany Studios window was boosted by recent acquisitions of other large Tiffany windows by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Dealers told ARTnews that institutions have increasingly acquired design works by both established and emerging artists. For example, Carpenters’s Beierle placed Spanish artist Nacho Carbonell’s One-Seater Concrete Tree (2022) with the Cincinnati Art Museum for its outdoor sculpture garden in 2023, and Marcin Rusak’s Van Florum 23 (Hybridae Florales) at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta last year.

According to Volume’s Warner, when the gallery has worked with institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago and LACMA in recent years, curators from multiple departments—including contemporary art, design, American art, fiber art and architecture—have collaborated to acquire design works, with the idea that they may be used across different exhibitions.

The strength of the design category was also reflected in works priced under $500,000, many of which exceeded their estimates and helped set new artist records at auction this year.

American artist and furniture designer Judy McKie is one who has seen that kind of market bump. At Phillips’ design sale in New York on June 10, the top lot was her Fish Bench, which sold for $406,400 with fees, on an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000—setting a new auction record. By comparison, another edition of the same patinated bronze sculpture sold for $327,600 on a high estimate of $100,000 at Rago Auctions in 2023. Other editions of the bench are in the collection of the Longhouse Reserve, at Eastport Park in Boston, and in a public park in Walnut Creek, California.

Despite institutional acquisitions at places like the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, McKie’s prices at auction and in private sales remain relatively accessible.

“Even with the tariffs, the prices are still more easily digested than Les Lalanne,” said Wexler, who has represented McKie for years. “In fact, I literally just sold a monkey chair this week for $110,000.”

Other auction records in design have been set this year for Louis Cane, Maria Pergay, and Jean Puiforcat.

Expectations of even more growth in the future

Multiple dealers told ARTnews they expect prices in the design category to continue rising as buyers get priced out of works by top names; as design furniture, ceramics, and textiles continue their shift from craft to fine art; and as expectations for masterpieces recalibrate.

Aside from the Lalanne effect, Wexler said the prices for McKie’s bronzes are also likely to rise due to limited inventory. “I think that’s also increasing the desire for collectors to purchase the work,” he said.

Brown similarly believes auction estimates for Les Lalanne works remain too low, particularly when comparing limited-edition masterpieces like Grand Rhinocéros II to other works like the Mouton wool and concrete sheep sculptures.

“You can’t have a situation where a masterpiece is worth 10 times a perfectly nice medium-plus object by an artist,” Brown said, noting the sheep were in editions of 250 compared to the Grand Rhinocéros II, which exists in an edition of 8. “When you’ve got a discrepancy of 10 between a good and a great work, there’s something wrong.”

Brown said he expects more people to understand the appeal of Les Lalanne through his gallery’s upcoming exhibition on the French couple, René Magritte, and Surrealism, opening this fall in New York.

“When you’ve got Lalanne standing next to Magritte and standing up for themselves and looking strong, I don’t think anybody’s doubting that Magritte is a great artist,” Brown said.

Design Miami recently announced its events for its 20th anniversary year, including a new initiative which aims to highlight local design communities.

Design Miami will hold a one-day event in Aspen in July, a new 14-day exhibition in Seoul in September, a third edition of its fair in Paris in October, and the 21st edition of its flagship fair in Miami Beach in December.

In an emailed statement to ARTnews, CEO Jen Roberts said the year’s programming marked the organization’s largest expansion of its global footprint and its “most ambitious program to date, with more destinations, diverse formats, and a deeper engagement with our community”.

The Design Miami.In Situ event in Aspen is curated by Ashlee Harrison and will take place alongside the Aspen Art Museum’s annual ArtCrush event.

The event in Seoul is a collaboration with the Seoul Design Foundation that will focus on Korean collectible design. The event will be curated by Hyeyoung Cho—the current chairperson of the Korea Association of Art & Design—and take place in the Dongdaemun Design Plaza.

When ARTnews asked how the concept for Design Miami.In Situ originated, Roberts wrote in an email that it “evolved organically” after the organization had “explored new modes for presenting our fairs” in recent years, and Paris offered “a compelling case study” for a “a deeply localized, context-sensitive approach”

“We found that presenting the fair in an architecturally meaningful setting created an intimate and culturally relevant experience,” Roberts wrote. “In Situ builds on this concept – it offers us an opportunity to have a presence in different localities, and the flexibility to present in new and experimental ways.”

Roberts noted the location of the Seoul exhibition at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, designed by Zaha Hadid, “is a major international landmark of architecture and culture, not only significant to Hadid’s renowned body of work, but also a symbol of Seoul’s fusion of transition and future.”

“So while we remain steadfast and confident in our traditional fair setting, In Situ offers an exciting next step for Design Miami to further cultivate design communities internationally, in ways that feel authentic and immersive to the respective surroundings,” Roberts wrote.

Over the last two decades, Roberts said attendance at Design Miami events has become more international, interdisciplinary and grown to reflect “the evolution of the collectible design market itself.”

In addition to emerging and seasoned collectors, new and renowned gallerists, and other professionals in the design world, Roberts also noted attendance from the fashion, architecture, and music industries. “For example, we’ve also seen a steady increase of luxury fashion houses engaging in the collectible design market, which as a result brings new audiences to Design Miami,” she wrote. “It will be interesting to experience how In Situ projects will allow us to connect with new audiences in their localized settings.”

Finally, when ARTnews asked about the impact of tariffs and ongoing litigation over an earlier decision by the US Court on International Trade, Roberts said Design Miami was “continuing to monitor the situation, and remain closely informed on these developments – working alongside our other fair colleagues to share resources. We recognize our role in supporting our galleries and collectors through providing a stable and connected marketplace; ultimately, our mission is to ensure that Design Miami remains a reliable space for global exchange.”

To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter.

The Headlines

THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR. Miami’s Rubell Museum has tapped Caitlin Berry to be the director of its forthcoming branch in Washington, D.C., the Art Newspaper reports. Berry has led the Cody Gallery at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, and will be taking the reins of a 32,000-square-foot space in a former school that is is slated to open near the end of October. Over in Cincinnati, the Taft Museum of Art has hired Rebekah “Becky” Beaulieu to be its next president and CEO, per the Cincinnati Business Courier. Beaulieu is coming from the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, where she is currently director. And art adviser Sheri L. Pasquarella, a cofounder of the New Art Dealers Alliance, has been named executive director of the Church, the arts center in Sag Harbor, New York, created by artists April Gornik and Eric Fischl, Art & Architecture Quarterly reports.

ARTIST UPDATES. Salman Toor got the profile treatment from Calvin Tomkins in the New Yorker, in a story that includes guest appearances from Rachel Feinstein and John Currin (who has “started to look a bit grizzled, according to Tomkins). The one-namer Badiucao, whose work critiques the Chinese Communist Party, was featured on 60 Minutes. Pipilotti Rist , with an exhibition on tap at Tai Kwun in Hong Kong, was featured in the South China Morning Post. Tiona Nekkia McClodden has a doubleheader of exhibitions in New York, at the Shed and 52 Walker, and is in Cultured. And José Parlá, who was in an induced-coma for three months after contracting Covid-19 in early 2021, is in the New York Times, timed to his new show at the Library Street Collective in Detroit. “It’s a miracle that I’m here talking to you,” Parlá told the paper.

The Digest

A rare incense table from the late Ming dynasty went for more than three times its high estimate at Poly Auction in Beijing, selling for the equivalent of about $6.2 million. [The Value]

The late Claude and François- Xavier Lalanne are having a market moment, with Christie’s and Sotheby’s readying one auction each of their work, sourced their daughters Marie and Dorothée Lalanne, respectively. [Penta]

The inaugural Paris edition of Design Miami has been nixed after police officials denied organizers a permit to stage the fair in the Place de la Concorde, citing security concerns about that public space. The event had been slated to run in late October alongside Art Basel’s Paris+ fair. [Archinect and Artnet News]

Amid Black Lives Matter protests, the National Museum Cardiff in Wales removed from view a portrait of Thomas Picton, a British military officer notorious for his brutal rule as Trinidad’s governor around 1800. Now it is back on view, in a packing crate, with newly commissioned art and educational materials. [The Guardian]

As part of a new round of action, Russia sanctioned the U.K. arts nonprofit Calvert 22, which has focused on culture in Russia and the former Soviet region. The move may restrict people involved with it from entering the country. The group’s Calvert Journal, which ceased publishing when Russia invaded Ukraine, has condemned the war. [ArtReview]

The Kicker

POSTER CHILD. In the Los Angeles Times, columnist Carolina Miranda has a rollicking Q&A with the guerrilla poster artist Robbie Conal, whose recent work has attacked the Supreme Court for overturning Roe v. Wade. Artists Leon Golub and Nancy Spero “were my art mom and dad,” said Conal, who shared a great story about a fistfight breaking out at a lecture by Golub that he organized. Miranda asked: What makes him undertake a postering campaign? “I have to get really pissed off—which is easy,” he said. “There’s so many bad guys and so little time. You know those thermometer things at state fairs where you hit the thing and it goes up? I have one of those inside my body.” [LAT] 

Below is a concise guide to 13 art fairs taking place in Miami during the first week of December, from Art Basel to NADA to Untitled. Note that, while some have VIP or premium-ticket previews, these listings include only public days and times. (Which is to say: consult their websites—and your network of contacts—for special access.)

Art Basel Miami Beach
Miami Beach Convention Center, December 6–9
At Art Basel Miami Beach, the marquee event of the week, some 268 galleries, including 29 newcomers, will present their wares. Big names—Gagosian, David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, and Pace Gallery among them—will abound, joined by closely watched young galleries, and its conversations program will feature some of the art world’s most prominent figures, including Judy Chicago, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Michelle Grabner, Jeffrey Gibson, and many others. A single-day ticket costs $50.
Hours and tickets

Art Miami
Art Miami Pavilion at One Herald Plaza, Miami, December 5–9
The 29th edition of Art Miami, which will take place in downtown Miami, will have presentations from Hollis Taggart Galleries, 313 Art Project, Maddox Gallery, and Avant Gallery, among other international exhibitors. Special events at this year’s fair include an exhibition of work by alumni of the New York Academy of Art’s MFA program, an interactive augmented reality experience by nonprofit organization Unleashed, and, as part of a collaboration between Art Miami and Gallery Wendi Morris, screenings of artist Ana Teresa Fernández’s video Drawn Below. Single-day tickets—which include admission to its fair for emerging and mid-career art, Context Art Miami—cost $55.
Hours and tickets

Aqua Art Miami
Aqua Hotel, Miami Beach, December 6–9
A sister fair of Art Miami, Aqua Art spotlights work by emerging and mid-career artists. The show will include 212 Arts (New York), Ben Gallery (Guangzhou), AC Contemporary Art (Buenos Aires), and other international exhibitors. DJ performances, artist talks, and a mobile tattoo tent are also on the agenda at Aqua. Single-day tickets go for $25.
Hours and tickets

Design Miami/
Meridian Avenue & 19th Street, Miami Beach, December 5–9
Design aficionados come together at this fair, located essentially across the street from Miami Basel, to shop high-end furniture, lighting, and art objects. The 2018 edition boasts a specially commissioned section focused on the work of artist Pedro Reyes and fashion designer Carla Fernández, as well as talks on design-related subjects with artists, collectors, and critics. Presenting in the “Galleries” section are Carpenters Workshop Gallery (London, New York, Paris, San Francisco), The Future Perfect (Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco), Salon 94 Design (New York), Functional Art Gallery (Berlin), and others. And various designers, curators, and gallerists will display cabinets of curiosities throughout the fair for Design Miami/’s “Curios” exhibition. One-day access is $27 online and $32 at the door.
Hours and tickets

Ink Miami Art Fair
Suites of Dorchester, Miami Beach, December 5–9
As its name suggests, Ink specializes in exhibitions of modern and contemporary works on paper. The fair, presented by the International Fine Print Dealers Association, will turn hotel rooms into individual art galleries. The lineup includes Childs Gallery (Boston), Stoney Road Press (Dublin), TAG Fine Arts (London), Upsilon Gallery (New York), Hamilton-Selway Fine Art (West Hollywood), and other exhibitors. Admission to Ink is free.
Hours and registration

No Commission Miami
Faena Forum, Miami, December 6-7
Organized by the Dean Collection and Bacardi, No Commission Miami 2018 is an all-photography fair. The show will feature work by artists including Zalika Azim, Nailah Davis, Deana Lawson,  Yuanyuan Zhao, and others. Special events include a panel discussion, titled “The Evolution of Photography in the Digital Age” and moderated by Aperture Magazine managing editor Brendan Embser, and various musical performances.
Hours and registration

NADA Miami
Ice Palace Studios, Miami, December 6–9
One of the few major American art fairs produced by a nonprofit organization, the New Art Dealers Alliance fair in Miami is now in its 16th year. Artadia (New York), Hannah Barry Gallery (London), and Shane Campbell Gallery (Chicago) are among this year’s 125 participating exhibitors. A few noteworthy special projects that will be on view are a new tree sculpture by Detroit-based artist Tyree Guyton and new hanging rawhide works by artist and writer Rindon Johnson installed across palm trees. There will also be a group exhibition of work by 11 past grantees of the NADA Artadia Award—including Margaret Lee, Jackie Saccoccio, and Farah Al-Qasimi. Single-day admission is $20, and proceeds from ticket sales go to the NADA acquisition gift for the Pérez Art Museum Miami’s permanent collection and the NADA International Gallery Prize, which supports first-time exhibitors that will travel internationally to the 2019 fair.
Hours and tickets

Pinta Miami
Mana Wynwood, Miami, December 5–9
Pinta Miami’s 12th edition will gather together some 60 galleries from Latin America, the United States, and Europe in its main section. There, works by over 300 artists, including Carmen Herrera, Jorge Eielson, and Wilfredo Lam will be on view. The “Countries Section” will highlight emerging artists from five countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. The fair also has two new programs: “Pinta Platforms,” comprising solo exhibitions curated by Roc Laseca, and the “Projects Section,” featuring large-scale projects curated by Ysabel Pinyol. General admission is $30.
Hours and tickets

Prizm Art Fair
Alfred I. Dupont Building, Miami, December 4–9
Focusing on contemporary art of the African Diaspora, Prizm 2018 will convene Emerson Dorsch (Miami), Morton Fine Art (Washington, D.C.), September Gray (Atlanta), N’Namdi Contemporary (Miami), and other galleries. The fair’s special projects are organized in two exhibitions. One, titled ”transceivers: channels, outlets and forces” and curated by William Cordova, considers the intersections of futurism, ritual, and folklore, and it features site-specific installations by Nyame Brown, Yanira Collado, Onajide Shabaka, the late Purvis Young, and more artists. In another show, called “The Dark Horse,” which is curated by Mikhaile Solomon, artists explore the ways marginalized communities “negotiate, reappropriate, and reclaim the currencies used against them to build a future that is inclusive of prosperity for all.” Prizm’s opening reception on December 4 is free and open to the public, and single-day admission is $15.
Hours and tickets

Pulse Miami Beach
Indian Beach Park, December 6–9
Pulse’s programming this year includes site-specific projects, solo exhibitions, artist talks, and more, and Hosfelt Gallery (San Francisco), Sim Smith (London), and M77 Gallery (Milan) are among the enterprises that will be on hand. Single-day tickets are $25.
Hours and tickets

Red Dot Miami
Mana Wynwood, December 6–9
Red Dot Miami will bring together modern and contemporary works by more than 500 artists, presented by over 75 international galleries. Art talks and other special events are also part of the show, which was established in 2006. Single-day tickets are $25 online or $30 at the door, and admission to its sister fairs, Spectrum Miami and ArtSpot Miami, is included.
Hours and tickets

Scope Miami Beach
8th and Ocean, on the beach, December 5–9
Scope, which also has fairs in New York and Basel, Switzerland, will include 140 exhibitors in a pavilion on the beach for its 18th edition in Miami. Some of the galleries showing work are Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea (Milan), Christopher Martin Gallery (New York, Dallas, Aspen), Kahn Gallery (New York), and Octavia Art Gallery (New Orleans and Houston). A single-day ticket is $40.
Hours and tickets

Untitled, Miami Beach
12th and Ocean, on the beach, December 5–9
Untitled, Miami Beach will welcome 46 new exhibitors—including Edel Assanti (London) and Davidson Contemporary (New York)—this year, and the fair will feature 10 special projects by artists like Michael Joo, Claudia Peña Salinas, and Pep Duran. Other programs are an ongoing, durational performance about labor in the Miami area called #NeverNotWorking and a book launch and signing for Devan Shimoyama’s recently published catalogue accompanying his solo exhibition “Cry Baby” at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. A single-day pass, which is good for any day of the fair, costs $35.
Hours and tickets

An obituary for German writer and artist Günter Grass. [The New York Times]

Design Miami, the fair now showing alongside Art Basel in Miami and Switzerland, will most likely open a Hong Kong edition in 2017. [The Art Newspaper]

Five galleries at contemporary art hub Gillman Barracks in Singapore—The Drawing Room, Equator Art Projects, Space Cottonseed, Tomio Koyama Gallery and Silverlens—  will close in May. [The Art Newspaper]

Read about the art of contemporary political Photoshopping. [BBC]

Japanese-Americans are protesting the auction of artifacts from WWII-era Japanese internment camps. [The New York Times]

Artist Romero Britto is suing Apple and a London design firm in a Miami federal court, claiming that the logo for Apple’s global “Start Something New” ad campaign is derived from his artwork. [The Miami Herald]

Alejandro Cesarco at Midway Contemporary Art in Minneapolis. [Contemporary Art Daily]

An interview with Syrian-born, Ohio-raised artist Diana Al Hadid on her show “Ground and Figures” currently on view at OHWOW Gallery in Los Angeles. [i-D]

PhD student at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden Martin Bellander interpreted the data of 94, 526 paintings created between 1800 and 2000, and discovered that the incidence of blue colors have increased in art while those of orange pigments have sharply decreased. [Hyperallergic]

At the opening of Art Basel Miami Beach, a few confused visitors were standing in front of the Beyeler Foundation’s booth, tucked into a corner, where several people were lying on cots, cuddled up with colorful blankets, wearing noise-canceling headphones, and having a nice rest. The mystery of this paradox–a nap at an art fair–was resolved when Marina Abramović, clad in all black, seemed to appear out of thin air, announcing, “Everybody can use it! You’re tired, you put your headphones on, it blocks the sound, and you sleep like a baby!”

At this point, a man sidled up to Abramović with an iPhone in hand and asked for a picture.

“You want selfie?” Abramović said, taking the man’s phone and snapping a picture of herself making a blowfish face.

The Marina Abramović Institute, the artist’s Upstate New York facility devoted to training others in her performance style, has been all over Miami this week in a PR blitz.

“I don’t think it’s great for artists to see how people sell art,” she told me, “but at the same time I’m not here in Miami as an artist, I’m here as a promoter and fundraiser.”

The Institute is staging performances at the YoungArts Jewel Box, where people will walk in slow motion, and another at the Design Miami fair called “Counting the Rice.” (“You go there and just count rice for an endless amount of time,” she said.)

Abramović recently started referring to her work as “the Abramović Method,” which she described to me as “the summary of 40 years of my experience in performance,” and a way of weening people off of technology–“to perceive something else and not be a visual junky.” Like in her recent show at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, visitors to the nap booth must place their belongings–phone, computer, etc.–in a locker.

“Artists, we don’t pay attention to our needs,” Abramović said, “and our need is to have space to create something that people can experience. But this,” meaning the fair, “is madness. We’ve become commodity, and that takes away from the experience. When that Francis Bacon painting sold for $145 million–how could you see art without seeing money after that? We don’t. We don’t.”

When I asked her if she thought this could change, her tone became grave. “I think we’re getting tired of so much. But the thing is, how do we go back to simplicity? The Earth is dying! We fucked it up. And the human brain hasn’t changed in 3,000 years! But we have all this new technology and there’s so much of life that we can’t follow. So if we don’t go back to simplicity, we’re actually lost. We become godless. It’s very easy to complain about the world, but I’m not interested in complaining, I’m interested in finding solutions, and this is my own personal solution. My contribution.”

Then she had to go. Someone else wanted a selfie.

The opening of Design Miami on Tuesday had one of the most apathetic press conferences I’ve ever encountered, with the fair’s director, Rodman Primack, talking softly into a microphone, flanked by an unsmiling Peter Marino (in his usual leather S&M gear) and Marina Abramovic, wearing scrubs and staring hypnotically at-what? I don’t know. (“Not sure what she’s doing up there!” a publicist offered; turns out her Marina Abramovic Institute had its own booth with a special chair designed for “long durational performance,” at least according to the guy in the booth with the ponytail who looked exactly as I would expect a member of the Marina Abramovic Institute to look.) A swell of people walking around the opening had decided to waive this experience entirely and were loudly walking around the fair instead.

During a week where everything carries a corporate sponsor, Design Miami took things a step further by earnestly installing an Audi sports car on a revolving platform, complete with two suited representatives eagerly discussing the car’s features. “There’s a hybrid element as well!” one of them said. Good to know. Elsewhere, right next to the Fendi booth, there was something called “Perrier Presents Ephemera.” According to the wall text: “In celebration of beauty, and with a belief of infusing art into everyday life, Perrier-Jouët has commissioned Mischer’traxler to create a series of works inspired by its artistic heritage…Follow Champagne Perrier-Jouët on Instagram.” No, thank you! (As for the works, they were a bunch of tiny sculptures of plants. Some of them moved.)

Peter Marino was his own brand and had designed a booth, which was wrapped in leather with a cold steel floor and featured a wax sculpture of the architect, a chair that could only have been a black ballsack with a saddle on top of it, and the man himself, seated in a far more innocuous chair. Let’s call Marino the Selfie-King of Design Miami, eclipsed in a circle of people three-deep surrounding him in perpetuity.

In a veritable sea of fancy furniture, one surprise was the presence of Leo Koenig and Joe Sheftel, New York art dealers who were showing works by the Italian architecture collective The Memphis Group, about which both galleries are prepping exhibitions. (Sheftel, gesturing to a row of intensely angular lamps, dramatically uttered, “Sculptures,” and left it at that.) Both Koenig and Sheftel are regulars at Miami Basel, and this was their first time doing the design fair.

“Design is giving us a chance to collaborate in a way that we probably wouldn’t do with art,” Sheftel said. “Here, we’re not playing the field exactly.”

Koenig jumped in: “We’re approaching this with the enthusiasm and excitement that only a child would have.”

Later, I learned that the Ladd Brothers, Steven and William, who were standing in the booth of the New York dealer Cristina Grajales, are huggers. (My meeting them was, I believe, the first time an artist has hugged me at an art fair.) Steven described their installation of “shared childhood landscapes,” as stemming back to the playground antics of “boys vs. girls” and William went on to list how each work was specifically about some childhood friend or another, rattling off both first and last names. Then they asked me who my playground rival was. (Not that it matters, but: Patrick Evo–the name triggered a ghostly “Ooooh” from Steven. Patrick Evo, if you’re reading this, I still think you’re a dick.)

Grajales, the dealer, demonstrated the mechanics of a very complicated table, the functionality of which I do not have the vocabulary to describe. Removing a “do not touch” sign, she said, “We only put that there because people are brutes.”

Showing some skin in Miami
A Hitchcockian scene in Wynwood.

Here’s something you don’t see every day in today’s art—a hunky, heroic worker. That’s the point Esther Shalev-Gerz hammers home in “Describing Labor,” her elaborate conceptual project at the Wolfsonian that involved immersing herself—and a group of advisers—in the collections of decorative arts, propaganda, architecture, and industrial and graphic design from the period 1885–1945. They picked images of work and workers that themselves became the basis of the new multi-media pieces in the show.

Moving Pictures
A post-Degas mural by Anthony Lister on NW 23rd Street.

Nearby, a new fair called “Moving the Still,” a collaboration between Tumblr and Paddle8, spotlighted the suggestive, hypnotic computer animations that are created with the Graphics Interchange Format and known as GIFs. (The format is 25 years old, but people are still arguing over how to pronounce it.)

The works, assembled after an open call and selected with the help of a committee including Roselee Goldberg and Michael Stipe, feature quick movements–a smiley face melting, a banana being peeled–repeated in endless loops.

Keep your eye on this Cindy Sherman film still.

Stop that, doing exactly the opposite.

Not Just Any Body…
On Hyperallergic, Hrag Vartanian reports being surprised during his own perambulations about the absence of contemporary renderings of the human figure. But animals were everywhere–dead ones especially. Judging by the offerings in Miami, taxidermic creatures have become the new trophy heads.

Some animals are more creepy than others. On the sinister end of the spectrum, the caged cat (with a bird on top) that Eva and Franco Mattes once passed off as a Maurizio Cattelan stood guard near the door at Seven, courtesy Postmasters Gallery. More endearing were Marcus Kenney’s creatures at Jonathan Ferrara’s stand at Pulse, which brought a Mardi Gras bling to the conventional hunter’s trophy by using real animal parts mixed with buttons, fabric, feathers, sequins, leather, shells, beads, glass eyes, silk, and more.

Not advised if you have a cat
Liliana Porter via Carrie Secrist at Pulse.

Visitors to Scope were captivated by Troy Abbott’s series of caged video birds at Robert Fontaine’s stand.

Best in Show
Ged Quinn’s bizarre felines, part of the Bass’s crowd-pleasing exhibition of artists riffing on the Renaissance, included a stigmata-bearing kitten wearing a crown of thorns, another going medieval on a mouse, and this one, Who Killed Walter Benjamin. (The German Jewish writer committed suicide in 1940 in flight from the Nazis.)

Don’t Call it a Comeback
Like Duchamp, Benjamin was a haunting recurring presence in Miami. Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain reproduced the writers’ works in the font Helvetica Concentrated, making them impossible to read. The piece, Benjamin Concentrated, is in “Unsaid/Unspoken,” a show about language and its limits at the Cisneros-Fontanals Collection.

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction?

A handmade iPod by Cuban artist Abel Barroso, who is also showing his carved pinball machines in a solo turn at PanAmericanArtProjects.

Good Vibrations
With work in a spectrum of galleries from the U.S., Brazil, and Europe, Venezuela’s kinetic-art pioneer Jesús Raphael Soto was a huge presence at Art Basel Miami Beach. His friend and colleague Antonio Asis, an Argentine-born master of Op who moved in 1956 to Paris (where he still resides), is having a moment of his own, with a solo show at Kabe Contemporary in Wynwood.

Still Life with Nipples and Press-ons
Dead tulips and a skull are two of the few more conventional elements in Jessica Stoller’s update on the nature morte tradition, which also includes bejeweled manicures and random breasts.

Plate tectonics
Amid all the luscious ceramics on offer it was surprising to spot some relatively dowdy flea-market finds on a back wall at Design Miami. This was the stand of the Tel Aviv-based Design Space, featuring plates that Noam Dover and Michal Cederbaum had selectively and strategically sandblasted to remove parts of their original glaze. The resulting ghostly images reflect the circumstances in which the original plates were made, as well as a new historical reality. The plate at top center here, originally made in Bavaria, bears an image of the wall separating Israel and Palestine.

I’ll be your mirror
There was a profusion of reflective artworks at the fairs, among them Monica Rowe’s untitled piece at D’Amelio. In a sense, these provided the figures: they were us.

Use Your Illusion
As the fair recedes in the past, a lingering impression remains. Chul Hyun Ahn’s Railroad Nostalgia tricked the eye, the mind, and the camera.