Financial Times

The December edition will feature fewer galleries, local well-heeled visitors and a smaller but beautiful venue

If Design Miami was beginning to look like a triumph of contemporary exuberance over historical gravitas in recent years, then the 2020 edition will surely complete that process. The design and decorative arts fair which launched in December 2005 to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach has grown into a swanky tent opposite the Convention Center where the main art fair takes place, with up to 60 galleries from all over the world. 

But this year it returns to its roots — the Moore Building in the Design District — in a scaled-down, but real life, exhibition. Not surprisingly, Europe’s blue-chip galleries, the purveyors of grand 20th-century design at increasingly high prices, will not be making the journey (though Mercado Moderno has managed to bring a haul of Brazilian mid-century modernism from Rio). And you wonder if they’ll ever come back. Miami is so much better suited to the fun stuff. 

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