In South Beach, Art Week Starts Three Weeks Before the Fair

"Public art has the ability to change how we experience the places we know and to generate encounters that might not otherwise happen." Nicholas Baume, Artistic and Executive Director of Public Art Fund, said that in The Bass's announcement of Between Tides. That is the show that will turn Collins Park into six ping-pong tables built as sculpture.

Art Basel Miami Beach opens to the public at the Miami Beach Convention Center on Friday, December 4, after invitation-only preview days on December 2 and 3. That is three weeks from today. Art Week on Miami Beach starts today in a dozen hotels. Over the next few weeks it spreads to a city park and to a museum that already lets residents in free.

Today the Art Arrives in Twelve Hotels

The City of Miami Beach's No Vacancy, Miami Beach program runs November 12 through December 19, 2026. That is 22 days before the fair opens to the public and 13 days after it closes. This is the seventh edition. Twelve artists were chosen from a record 228 applications. Each will receive a $10,000 honorarium to make a site-specific work for an assigned hotel, and $35,000 in prizes will be awarded. A $10,000 public prize comes from the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, and a $25,000 prize is chosen by a jury. The City says the program encourages the public "to experience Miami Beach's famed hotels as art destinations."

Several of the hotels sit on blocks South Beach residents pass every day:

• The Betsy Hotel: Ricardo E. Zulueta projects experimental animation with ambient sound onto the glowing surface of The Betsy Orb.
• Hotel Croydon Miami Beach: Justin H. Long fills an Art Deco display cabinet with a made-up collection of undersea relics.
• The Royal Palm South Beach Miami: Diana Eusebio works with textiles, photography and natural dyes.
• Marriott Stanton South Beach: Marlon Portales shows two monumental paintings set in an imagined Cuban landscape.
• Avalon Hotel: Morel Doucet reimagines South Florida's tropical flora as a nocturnal meditation.
• Balfour Hotel Miami Beach: Luján Candria covers the hotel's windows with translucent textiles printed with photographs of native South Florida plants.
• The Shelborne by Proper: Yanira Collado builds a layered installation from upcycled paper, wood and textiles.

The other five works are Kevin Arrow's at Casa Faena, Emmett Moore's at Eden Roc Miami Beach, Lulu Sanchez's at International Inn, Alex Nuñez's at Kimpton Surfcomber Hotel and Gonzalo Hernández's at Sherry Frontenac OceanFront Resort. The public prize is one of the two awards, so a mid-November walk past the Orb counts for more than browsing.

On November 29, Collins Park Becomes a Place to Play

The free part of the season opens on Sunday, November 29. Public Art Fund's Between Tides installs six playable ping-pong sculptures in Collins Park in association with The Bass. They stay through Sunday, December 6. A kiosk lends paddles and balls for free every day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and anyone who brings their own can play at any hour.

The works were first made for Rockaway Beach in Queens for summer 2026, so a few of them still carry that coastline. Each one plays differently:

1. Moko Fukuyama, Old School: A boat salvaged from the Rockaways and a tabletop held by a giant sea monster based on the Scandinavian Kraken and the Japanese Akkorokamui.
2. Las Hermanas Iglesias, DiMeLo: A stainless steel table fitted with a handpan, glockenspiel, tom drums and cymbals, so every rally makes a live composition.
3. Ilana Harris-Babou, for those of us who live at the shoreline: Four terrazzo and concrete pieces, including seating and a table set with handmade ceramic beach items. The piece is meant for experimenting more than for keeping score.
4. Carlos H. Matos, Tlachco: Ping-pong crossed with Ulama, an ancient Mesoamerican ballgame, with tilted walls and hoops.
5. Amalia Pica, Fair Play: Eight staggered tabletops that spell "FAIR PLAY" in the International Code of Signals, hung with fabric flags that read "COME PLAY."
6. SUPERFLEX, Fish Ping-Pong: A pink cantera stone table designed so that, if it were ever sunk, its color and openings could host plankton and algae.

The show's main public event comes before the fair, too. The Paddle in the Park Classic is a free ping-pong event in Collins Park on Monday, November 30, from 4 to 6 p.m., with a DJ, food vendors and other entertainment. Participants and prizes will be announced. The Bass describes it as a match between leading figures from the international art world: artists, museum directors, curators, gallerists and collectors. That puts the art crowd's showiest match on a Monday afternoon in a public park, four days before the Convention Center opens to the public.

The Bass Is Free for Residents

Across the park, The Bass changes its schedule for the week. From Sunday, November 29 through Sunday, December 6, the museum keeps extended hours from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, the same hours as the ping-pong kiosk outside.

General admission at The Bass is $15. Miami Beach and Surfside residents get in free with a valid ID or proof of residence, as do City of Miami Beach employees. The museum also offers free admission on the last Sunday of every month for Family Day and on Third Thursdays from 6 to 9 p.m. November 29 is the last Sunday of the month, so Family Day falls on the same day Between Tides opens.

Here is what is on view inside:

Every show on that list stays up long after Art Week ends, and residents get in free on any regular visit. Pica's piece connects the park and the museum. Her Fair Play table is in Collins Park. Lecturas Posibles, in The Rotunda at the northeast corner of the park, is an immersive library where the walls and objects are chalkboards that visitors can write on. In December, Susan Philipsz: Too Much I Once Lamented (2019–2026) moves to the southwest part of Collins Park, so the park will have another work after the ping-pong tables leave.

The Calendar, by Date

Most of these programs fall on the days before the fair opens to the public, and the last one is on its final day. The Bass Dialogues are free but need an RSVP, and space is limited.

The Faena installations are a short trip north of Collins Park. The Art Newspaper reports that Christopher Joshua Benton's A Lore Supreme and Marinella Senatore's An Expanded Baroque Crown will be free and open to the public December 1 through 6. Faena Art describes the first as a monumental disco-ball installation on Faena Beach and the second as a luminous sculptural work.

When the Fair Opens, Most of the Free Week Is Behind It

Between Tides gets five days with Collins Park mostly to itself before Art Basel's public days begin. The Bass's resident-free galleries keep longer hours across that whole stretch. The fair has its own ticketing at Art Basel. Every free event on the calendar above ends by Sunday, December 6, the fair's last day and the day The Bass holds Free Community Day. The No Vacancy hotels stay on view until December 19, almost two weeks after the fair closes.

Art Week is when South Beach is on show to visitors from around the world, and for us it is also a good time to look closely at the hotels and streets we know. If you are thinking about how a home here fits around a season like this one, whether as a residence or as a short-term rental during the busiest week of the year, Isabela Faria would be glad to talk it through in English, Spanish or Portuguese. Schedule a Consultation.