Art Basel Miami Beach and SCOPE Miami Beach sit at the center of Miami Art Week. Together they draw collectors, curators, and culture lovers from around the world. Art Basel Miami Beach anchors the week at the Miami Beach Convention Center, while SCOPE Miami Beach activates the sands of Ocean Drive with ultra contemporary programming and more than 130 exhibitors.
This guide focuses on booths that combine rigorous concepts with visual impact. Think major historical figures in dialogue with rising voices, powerful narratives around identity and migration, and installations that rethink scale, space, and the art fair booth itself.
Art Basel Miami Beach 2025: Galleries Sector Highlights
David Castillo, Booth H27: Scale, Surrealism, and Abstraction
At David Castillo (Booth H27), scale becomes the central theme. The gallery stages pairings of large and small works by Belkis Ayón, Sanford Biggers, Pepe Mar, Glexis Novoa, Alexandria Smith, Studio Lenca, Su Su, and Vaughn Spann. Sculpture, painting, collagraphy, drawing, and assemblage are all in play.
The booth explores scale as more than size. It reads as a system that shapes how we move through architecture, how we understand catastrophe, and how we hold intimate gestures in our hands. Each artist presents a large work in conversation with a smaller partner, creating a rhythm where monumental statements and miniature intensities shift your perception rather than compete for attention.
Surreal figuration stretches into myth and psyche, while abstraction pulls you into altered spatial experiences. Marble scored with graphite, silk washed into terrain, and assemblage that spills past the frame turn texture into a carrier of history and labor. Ayón’s collagraphs move from grand to intimate without losing intensity. Biggers uses textiles and sculpture as portals to time and tradition. Mar builds icons that sit between relic and totem. Novoa carves imagined cities into salvaged marble blocks. Smith, Studio Lenca, Su Su, and Spann each use scale as an emotional and political register, from diaspora visibility to spiritual interiority and seismic painterly gestures.
For collectors and curators who track conceptual rigor and material innovation, this booth is essential.
Jeffrey Deitch, Booth A2: “The Great American Nude”
At Jeffrey Deitch (Booth A2), Tom Wesselmann’s iconic The Great American Nude VIII (1961) becomes the anchor for a sweeping thematic presentation, The Great American Nude.
Deitch stages Wesselmann alongside a multigenerational lineup that includes Isabelle Albuquerque, Amanda Ba, Vanessa Beecroft, Ana Benaroya, Isabelle Brourman, Judy Chicago, Nadia Lee Cohen, Karon Davis, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Cheyenne Julien, Anna Park, Mickalene Thomas, Kehinde Wiley, and many others. The result is a conversation about the body, desire, and power that stretches from Pop history to hyper contemporary portraiture and figuration.
This booth is a must for anyone interested in how the American nude has been constructed, critiqued, and reclaimed across time.
GRAY, Booth H9: Modern and Contemporary Icons
At Booth H9, GRAY presents a tightly curated cross section of its Modern and Contemporary program. The gallery brings works by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Candida Alvarez, McArthur Binion, Roger Brown, Alexander Calder, Jim Dine, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates, Richard Hunt, Alex Katz, Judy Ledgerwood, Joan Mitchell, Jaume Plensa, Leon Polk Smith, Evelyn Statsinger, John Stezaker, and Bob Thompson.
In the Kabinett sector, GRAY focuses on Roger Brown’s Virtual Still Lifes series. These works merge painting and assemblage to stage domestic vignettes that shift between satire and allegory. Ceramic objects and miniature elements extend the picture plane into three dimensions, turning the installation into a theatrical meditation on collecting and the uncanny presence of everyday things.
For viewers who want a single booth that connects postwar heavyweights with sharp contemporary voices, GRAY delivers.
Stephen Friedman Gallery & Goodman Gallery, Booth D15: Yinka Shonibare’s Library
Stephen Friedman Gallery joins forces with Goodman Gallery at Booth D15 for a major presentation of Yinka Shonibare’s Library collections. Thousands of books bound in Dutch wax print transform the booth into a sculptural library that addresses migration, citizenship, conflict, and ideas of home across the United Kingdom, United States, and Africa.
The installation includes The War Library, first unveiled in Shonibare’s 2024 Serpentine exhibition Suspended States. Here, books function as stand-ins for treaties, conflicts, and histories that shape national and personal identity. The collaboration between the two galleries underscores the scale and complexity of the project and signals Shonibare’s growing institutional footprint, including upcoming museum commissions and a major public artwork at JFK Airport.
Alongside the Library, visitors will find works from both galleries’ programs, including artists such as Kenturah Davis, Deborah Roberts, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Caroline Walker, and others, reinforcing the booth as a key stop for those tracking global contemporary discourse.
Uffner & Liu, Booth H32: Female-Forward Narratives and Migration
At Uffner & Liu (Booth H32), the focus is on artists who push against the canon with innovative processes and deeply personal narratives. The presentation features Piper Bangs, Anne Buckwalter, Gianna Commito, Bernadette Despujols, Hilary Harnischfeger, Sheree Hovsepian, Sacha Ingber, Arghavan Khosravi, Talia Levitt, Pam Lins, Reginald Madison, Sarah Martin-Nuss, Joshua Petker, Anna Jung Seo, and Roger White.
Highlights include historic and recent works by Reginald Madison, an octogenarian artist whose practice bridges abstraction, figuration, and the energy of free jazz. A new sculptural diptych by Arghavan Khosravi draws on Persian miniature painting and baroque sculpture to address women’s strength in restrictive conditions. Bernadette Despujols brings an intimate yet politically charged painting about Venezuelan migrants sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Pam Lins’s Crying Eyes installation uses clusters of ceramic eyes to turn tears into a collective gesture of solidarity. New sculptures by Hilary Harnischfeger and Sacha Ingber preview solo exhibitions scheduled for 2026, while Talia Levitt presents a new painting in her faux-tapestry style. The booth feels like a snapshot of a program that puts women and diasporic perspectives at the center.
Nina Johnson Debut Booth (Art Basel Miami Beach)
Miami’s own Nina Johnson celebrates its first appearance at Art Basel Miami Beach with a presentation focused on artists that have shaped the gallery’s direction over time. The selection highlights material experimentation and perspectives rooted in history, place, and identity. Featured artist include Anna Betbeze, Rochelle Feinstein, Dara Friedman, Patrick Dean Hubbell, Emmett Moore, George Nelson Preston, Nathlie Provosty, and Katie Stout.
Katie Stout’s sculptural lamps and topiaries greet visitors at the entrance, turning everyday materials into decadent, slightly feral fantasies. In the center, a monumental painting by Nathlie Provosty plays with perception and depth. Patrick Dean Hubbell’s work uses natural pigments, horsehair, buckskin, and beads to connect studio practice with ancestral knowledge.
Rochelle Feinstein’s Static Prismatic pieces pin rainbow color fields in place, while Anna Betbeze’s layered textile totems create a vertical landscape of silk, fur, and wool. Dara Friedman’s reflective Star People works turn the body into a mirror, and Emmett Moore’s furniture-like sculptures blur the line between design and fine art. The booth reads like a compact manifesto about who gets to speak within abstraction and how.
Night Gallery, Booth H29
At Booth H29, Los Angeles based Night Gallery brings its sharp curatorial voice to Miami Beach. The gallery presents new work in the Galleries sector that continues its commitment to experimental practices and artists who explore rhythm, structure, and contemporary image culture. Night Gallery’s presence at Art Basel Miami Beach 2025 has been announced through its own and partner channels, marking the booth as one to watch for collectors who follow the Los Angeles scene.
Gladstone Gallery, Booth C8: Global Heavyweights
Gladstone Gallery (Booth C8) offers a survey of artists whose practices have shaped contemporary art over several decades. The booth features works by Matthew Barney, Kerstin Brätsch, Robert Colescott, George Condo, Maureen Gallace, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Wangechi Mutu, Shirin Neshat, Elizabeth Peyton, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Carrie Mae Weems, Christopher Wool, and many more.
Headquartered in New York with spaces in Brussels and Seoul, Gladstone uses the fair to stage encounters between historical icons and contemporary innovators. For visitors seeking a concise view of the gallery’s global influence, this booth is essential.
YveYANG, Booth N15: Nova Sector Debut
New York and Beijing based YveYANG debuts at Art Basel Miami Beach in the Nova sector with a focused three-artist presentation: Anastazie Anderson, Huidi Xiang, and Wang Ye.
Anderson’s Children of Paradise paintings reframe close-up portraits of children from film and photography, exploring the uneasy space between innocence and moral ambiguity. Xiang’s sculptures begin with domestic objects like toys and pincushions, then twist them into uncanny architectures of control and comfort. Wang Ye uses collaborative silk embroidery with hometown artisans to transform Hunan traditions into atmospheric fields of color and intergenerational memory.
The booth offers a fresh, conceptually tight counterpoint to the larger, more historical presentations elsewhere in the fair.
El Apartamento, Booth B19: Contemporary Cuban Perspectives
Havana based El Apartamento (Booth B19) spotlights contemporary Cuban art with works by Ariamna Contino, Roberto Diago, Diana Fonseca, Orestes Hernández, and Miki Leal. The gallery’s program has already placed artists in major collections such as MoMA, Tate Modern, Kadist, and PAMM.
Founded in 2015 as an independent project outside the official Cuban institutional circuit, El Apartamento focuses on incisive, critical positions within Cuban art. The booth expands that mission to an international audience in Miami, making it a key stop for collectors interested in Latin American and Caribbean perspectives.
SCOPE Miami Beach 2025: Ultra Contemporary Highlights
Located directly on the beach at 801 Ocean Drive, SCOPE Miami Beach runs December 2 to 7, 2025, with VIP previews on opening day and general admission through the weekend.
Below are the SCOPE booths that stand out for narrative depth, artist rosters, and curatorial ambition.
Claire Oliver Gallery, Booth F001: Textiles, Ceramics, and Portraiture
At SCOPE’s Booth F001, Claire Oliver Gallery presents a powerful seven-artist lineup: BK Adams, Erica Morales, Dave Ortiz, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, Sami Tsang, Gio Swaby, Stan Squirewell, and Beatriz Williams. Works from the presentation can be previewed on the gallery’s Scope 2025 page.
The booth centers on storytelling and materiality. BK Adams brings avant-garde mixed media works that fold resilience and accountability into dense surfaces. Erica Morales reflects on place, education, and lived experience from the Bronx to Miami to Brooklyn. Dave Ortiz, whose practice grew from the language of graffiti and street art, focuses on heritage and cultural assimilation.
Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz channels seventeenth and eighteenth century portraiture, comics, and performance to tackle race, bias, and healing. Sami Tsang’s ceramic figures and installations layer Chinese proverbs, domestic scenes, and personal histories into charged narratives about repression and self expression. Gio Swaby’s textile portraits celebrate Black women’s presence and intimacy. Stan Squirewell connects Afrofuturism, science fiction, and ancestry across painting and sculpture. Beatriz Williams brings vivid portraits that blend identity, landscape, and color.
For visitors who want a single booth that merges textile innovation, ceramics, and portraiture with a strong curatorial thesis, this presentation is a priority.
Mortal Machine Gallery, Booth C009: “If Mortal Loses We Riot!”
New Orleans based Mortal Machine Gallery arrives at SCOPE with its most ambitious project to date, “If Mortal Loses We Riot!” at Booth C009.
Located at Ocean Drive and 8th Street, the booth marks the gallery’s sixth year at SCOPE and features a powerhouse lineup that includes Shepard Fairey and Mab Graves, along with special projects by Dan Witz and others. The presentation also revives the gallery’s beloved Salon Room format, with works by more than thirty artists in a dense, energy-packed installation.
Expect a mix of street art lineage, pop surrealism, and lowbrow influences, staged with the visual intensity that has become a Mortal Machine signature.
Richard Beavers Gallery, Booth E001: Desmond Beach’s “Hush ‘Arbors’”
At Booth E001, Richard Beavers Gallery presents Hush ‘Arbors’ by Desmond Beach, curated by Dr. teddy raShaan.
The project honors the “hush harbors” of the antebellum South, where enslaved people gathered in secret to worship beyond the gaze of their captors. Beach translates historical accounts of wet quilts hung to absorb sound into vibrant quilt-based works that depict intergenerational figures and spiritual resistance. Color becomes song, and pattern becomes a record of survival.
The installation asks visitors to consider where sanctuary lives today and whose voices are still being silenced. It is one of the most thematically focused and emotionally resonant presentations at the fair.
Tanya Weddemire Gallery, Booth C13: Portraiture and Identity
Brooklyn based Tanya Weddemire Gallery brings an intimate yet impactful presentation to Booth C13. The gallery’s mission is to spotlight emerging and established artists through thoughtful curation that connects cultural and historical narratives.
Here the focus is on portraiture and shifting identities, highlighting artists such as Moses Salihou and O’Neil Scott. Salihou’s thick, gestural application of paint creates portraits that feel like composites of many people at once. Features blur into textured fields, inviting viewers to project their own experiences into the work. Scott’s oil paintings, informed by Old Master techniques and contemporary realism, tackle social justice, climate anxiety, and Black Lives Matter through quietly intense portraiture.
The result is a booth that feels human scaled yet conceptually rich, ideal for collectors seeking figurative works with depth.
FPI Art Initiative x Gallery Kub’art: Cross-Continental Collaboration
At the SCOPE Miami Beach Pavilion (801 Ocean Drive), FPI Art Initiative presents a collaborative exhibition with Gallery Kub’art, which operates between the Congo and Montreal.
The presentation pairs Priska Munkeni Monnier Lafurie with Cloe Galasso of Buenos Aires. The show emphasizes collaboration and cross cultural dialogue, a core value of FPI’s advisory and curatorial practice. The two women artists explore resonance and contrast between their practices, inviting visitors to consider how different geographies and lived experiences can intersect within a single booth.
FPI, which specializes in emerging and mid career artists and integrated art advisory, uses the fair to model how thoughtful collaborations can expand both visibility and context for new voices.
The Melrose Gallery, Booth D003: “Resonant Realities” on Display
At Booth D003, The Melrose Gallery presents “Resonant Realities: Contemporary Voices from Africa,” a curated showcase of Pan African contemporary art. The booth is open daily from 11:00 to 20:00 during SCOPE Miami 2025 and brings together intergenerational artists whose practices span tradition, abstraction, photography, and sculpture.
Anchored by the legendary Dr. Esther Mahlangu, the presentation highlights her globally celebrated Ndebele geometric compositions, which turn color and pattern into a living language of heritage and innovation. Clint Strydom’s photographic series “Ain’t That America” offers an evocative look at place and identity, while Paul Blomkamp’s spiritually charged abstractions bring a luminous, meditative energy to the space.
Ayanda Mabulu contributes bold socio political canvases that confront power structures head on. Carol Cauldwell’s playful “Hip Hop Rabbits” sculptures introduce a note of humor and pop inflection, and Samuel Allerton’s bronze “Warrior” series grounds the booth with a sense of strength and monumentality. Together, these works map a landscape where heritage and experimentation converge and affirm Africa’s central role in shaping what the gallery frames as The New Contemporary.
Founded in 2016, The Melrose Gallery has quickly become one of South Africa’s most dynamic contemporary spaces. With a gallery in Johannesburg and a new San Francisco location opening in February 2026, it champions artists from across the continent and the diaspora. As the exclusive representative of Esther Mahlangu, the gallery supports both established figures and a new generation of artists who are stepping onto the global stage. The SCOPE presentation is a concise yet powerful survey of this mission.
Quick Reference: When and Where
- Location: Miami Beach Convention Center, 1901 Convention Center Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33139
- Dates: December 3 – 7, 2025
- Location: Scope Miami Beach Pavilion, 801 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33139
Dates:December 2 – 7, 2025