Close your eyes and imagine Art Basel Miami Beach. Do you see palm trees undulating in front of Ugo Rondinone’s Miami Mountain, which towers over the Bass Museum? Do you see the unending aisles of booths in the convention center? Diplo walking on the wet sand as a gallery dinner spills out of the Soho Beach House tent? Masterpieces by Anselm Kiefer and Cady Noland and Christopher Wool in the private museums in Key Biscayne and Wynwood and Allapattah? Lavish parties at Star Island mansions? What about a bank paying for Drake to play the hits for its top spenders as Drake says extremely Drake-ish things like, “Thanks for coming to see me. I know y’all got sculptures and paintings and shit to look at.” Is that what you imagine when you close your eyes?

There’s no right answer here. It’s been more than 20 years since Art Basel first opened an outpost in Miami—two decades of hype but also backlash; of hand-to-God great art but also crass branding exercises; of glorious sun-dappled escapes from the cold but also unceasing rain that floods Collins Avenue and reminds one that the island is sinking pretty fast. This year’s edition will be no different—it’s a head-spinning collision of cultural manna and conspicuous consumption. When the once-modest Swiss fair launched the Miami edition in 2002, it was an immediate cultural phenomenon, becoming a pilgrimage event for entire cultural sectors in New York and Los Angeles (even if many attendees don’t know how to pronounce the Rhineland city that gives the fair its name). And while newer fairs in hipper cities have come to eclipse Miami in terms of pure cachet—namely Frieze LA, which launched in 2019, and Art Basel’s Paris fair, which launched last year—Miami is still an essential stop. That’s due largely to the sheer amount of big-pocketed pan-Americans who come down for the spectacle and end up walking through the fair willing to buy.

“Miami is the best city for an art fair. It’s got lots of hotels and bars and fun, and shopping is a priority,” said Adam Lindemann, the collector and dealer whose gallery, Venus Over Manhattan, has shown at the fair for years. This year, he’s bringing a serious assortment of heavy-duty work, including new paintings by Peter Saul and series examples of Raymond Pettibon.

“In my view, for most art, it’s the best venue,” Lindemann continued. “Hong Kong is a doorway to Asia, Paris is magic, so there’s lots of museums and a city to gawk at. But Miami lives for the fair. And it’s grown beyond anyone’s predictions, and should continue to do so.”

To say the fair has grown is an understatement. The sheer number of events is, in a word, insane. Twenty-five years ago, Sam Keller, who got his start as the publicity manager of the Swiss fair, dreamed up the idea that Basel could exist in a second place—a place not just beyond the Rhineland, but one that had just recently emerged from its Miami Vice reputation of being a sunny spot for shady people. A few years later, the once-sleepy week in South Beach between holidays became a global destination not just for art dealers, but seemingly anyone with something remotely trendy to sell or market.

Which brings us to all the, um, interesting stuff one will be able to experience in the 2023 edition, which will launch next week. Perhaps we can check out the Range Rover activation at the Chase Sapphire Lounge at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel? Or if Chase is not your preferred bank, you can always hang out at the UBS collectors lounge at the fair, or attend one of the dinners The Cultivist is hosting with Capital One. What’s in your wallet—is it a card that can get you into a dinner cooked by three-Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn and designed by the artist Alex Israel in homage to the Froyo stand his family owned when he was a kid? More banks on the beach: American Express recruited Tatiana chef Kwame Onwuachi for a series of cardholder dinners at the W South Beach, and Citi is sponsoring the Gary Simmons survey at the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

It wouldn’t be Art Basel Miami Beach without the world’s fashion brands coming down to upstage the fairs with a series of activations—perhaps I can interest you in the LVMH Culture House at the Moore Building? Or the Cartier boutique in the Design District that promises an “immersive exhibition” into the history of the fancy watchmaker? Marni x Ssense at the Soho Beach House? Louis Vuitton x Frank Gehry capucine bags?

Or maybe the Cincoro x Hypebeast party is more your speed. Or the “VIP pre-opening of Ikea Open House Miami, the brand’s debut at Miami Design Week 2023.” Fingers crossed there’s Swedish meatballs. Or maybe it’s time for a leisurely evening at D’Ussé Cognac’s Art Basel Miami party featuring a performance by Offset.

What else? Art Basel x OnlyFans augmented-reality activations. A Neude x The Webster x Steven Klein cocktail party. Barry’s Bootcamp x The Art of Wellness by NRVLD. Design Miami x Maestro Dobel Tequila Artpothecary—not a typo. Joe & the Juice x Miami Pickleball Club at SCOPE Art Show.

And so on, forever.

There is, of course, a lot of very good art on view in Miami next week. On Monday night the Bass Museum will open a sprawling survey of work by local hero Hernan Bas, followed by a fête for the artist by his gallery, Lehmann Maupin, at Casa Tua, the beloved Miami members club that’s set to open in New York in 2024. Nina Johnson, who’s held down a year-round gallery for over a decade, will open shows of work by Katie Stout and Yasue Maetake at her Little Haiti space, and then have friends over for barbecue at her Architectural Digest–approved, Charlap Hyman & Herrero–designed Craftsman in nearby Shorecrest.

Let’s take the start of the calendar a day at time.

Tuesday. A full day before the main fair opens and things are already hitting peak art insanity. Tuesday will see openings at the De la Cruz family’s home on Key Biscayne and the De la Cruz family’s private museum in the Design District. NADA, the longtime satellite expo for more emerging galleries, opens two days earlier than usual, leapfrogging the main fair. There’s all the museum openings at the ICA Miami, which still looks spiffy after launching its new building six years ago. And Larry Gagosian will team up with Jeffrey Deitch for another big-tent group show bound together by a big-picture theme—this year it’s “Forms,” as in artists who do cool stuff with shapes. Think Tauba Auerbach, Carol Bove, John Chamberlain, Albert Oehlen. Scoff all you want, but the Larry x Jeffrey shows always rule.

And then, a neighborhood over, in Allapattah, the Rubell Museum opens the shows of its most recent artists in residence, Basil Kincaid and Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, plus a show of LA artists in the collection. And then, after that, there’s—checks calendar—approximately one thousand dinners to attend, many of them on the beach, most featuring stone crabs and/or a surprise performer, all somehow absolutely essential to attend.

Wednesday. The mob scene at the convention center. Billionaires in sunglasses waiting in line next to their frantic art advisers. Where to first? Perhaps to David Zwirner’s booth to see a pair of Robert Ryman works, as well as The Schoolboys, a canon-level painting by Marlene Dumas—it was in the collection of the Museum Gouda in the Netherlands until it sold at Christie’s for about $1.6 million in 2011. Or to Hauser & Wirth, which has on offer new paintings by Uman, whom the mega-gallery now represents equally with Nicola Vassell, which started showing Uman in 2020. Van de Weghe will bring the expected mélange of 20th-century masters, including Andy Warhol’s Dollar Sign (1981), which last sold at Christie’s in 2017 for $7.2 million. It is “one of the best large-size dollar-sign paintings,” the gallery said. David Kordansky Gallery will inaugurate its representation of Sam McKinniss, a remarkable painter of modern life, with a few works at the booth ahead of a solo booth at Frieze LA in February 2024 and a solo show at the flagship gallery in 2025. I’m quite excited to see the presentation of work by Sedrick Chisom at Matthew Brown’s booth, ahead of his New York solo debut in May 2024 at Clearing.

But there are hundreds of booths across the various sectors of the fair, making it impossible to size up the entire fair in one go. And bear in mind, this is just the VIP opening—the fair doesn’t open to the public until Thursday. Which is why most of the hangers-on and brand activators show up not for the opening of the fair, but for the weekend, when most of the collectors are already back in Palm Beach or on Park Avenue. When one major airline announced it would be chartering its first-ever invite-only private flight, they set it to arrive not in time for the VIP opening, but for general admission on Thursday.

Spending millions on art and design can work up an appetite. Thankfully, Miami has a way of sustaining an ever-churning hype machine that makes its hot restaurants impenetrably packed. A few years back, the Major Food Group guys had the bright idea to do a pop-up version of their New York hit Carbone at the Edition Hotel…despite the fact that they already have a Carbone in Miami, on South Beach. Mario Carbone, Jeff Zalaznick, and Rich Torrisi’s next big Magic City move is their first foray into Mexican food with Chateau ZZ’s, which I’m told will open its Brickell doors soon. If you must eat at an enormous clubstaurant to really get the full Miami Basel experience, maybe go to David Grutman’s new coastal Italian emporium, Casadonna, where Drake had his birthday party earlier this year.

There’s a chance the art set sticks to what it knows—and what it knows is, quelle surprise, Estiatorio Milos, the seafood-heavy spot that flies in the fancy fish from exotic ports of call. Ordering from the cooler means we’re talking sea creatures that cost around $160 a pound—the stone crabs you ordered for the table could set you back two stacks, Chief. And it’s the same food, at the same prices, as the Milos in Dubai and the Milos in Hudson Yards and the Milos in London. Collectors spend all week asking for the Batphone to get a reservation like it’s the last place to break bread on earth.

But there’s a new arrival on the scene, conveniently located in the Loews, where nearly every art dealer with their name on the door of a gallery books a room each year. (As I said last year, the place is a reality show waiting to happen.) Owned and operated by collector and hotelier-about-town Alex Tisch, the posh Collins crash pad has a new in-house boîte: an edition of the hallowed Harlem red-sauce temple Rao’s, the place that has appealed to power brokers of all stripes with its extremely clubby policy of only seating those who “own” a table.

This Collins Avenue Rao’s facsimile—it’s referred to by regulars as “The Joint”— first seems like a relatively easy res to snag. For one, it’s way bigger. It’s got 160 seats, whereas the original has just four tables and six booths. And the “own a table” thing in Manhattan doesn’t apply here. The description on Resy notes that “the room is bigger than the Harlem original (and tables aren’t just for regulars and friends of the family).” So I plugged in my dates, desperate for anything, even just something at 10:30 p.m. in Siberia. But no tables appeared. I set a Notify.

And then I reached Frank Pellegrino Jr., co-owner of Rao’s, and he told me that it’s not just Basel week that The Joint is booked. The tables are spoken for until next summer.

“Presently, we are fully committed throughout Q1 and Q2, 2024,” he explained.

Might as well give Frank a call and book the table for next December.