The 22nd edition Art Basel Miami Beach concluded on Sunday, and everyone should be safely back home by now, with artworks following soon after. The consensus view seems to be that business was middling and that big-budget events were few and far between.

And yet! There were still exciting works on view at the Miami Beach Convention Center (here are a few picks), and there were superb events of every type all over town. Below, seven highlights from beyond the big fair.

At left, Allen Yu’s South Korean Breakfast Sandwiches (2024), which was presented by Philadelphia’s Center for Creative Works at the Open Invitational. At right, a wall of works brought to the fair by the Living Museum of Queens. Photos by Andrew Russeth

Most Enjoyable Art Fair: The Open Invitational

Miami is not exactly short on art fairs, so news of an another one should fill any sensible person with dread—and even anger. Thankfully, though, this year’s big newcomer, the Open Invitational, was a stunner, the quiet hit of the week. Organized by New York dealer David Fierman and Miami art patron Ross McCalla, it featured just 11 exhibitors (a very nice size for a fair) in an event space in the tony Miami Design District. All of the participants were studios that focus on artists with disabilities, and they included the Center for Creative Works in Philadelphia, Creative Growth in Oakland, Calif., and Vinfen’s Gateway Arts in Boston. One highlight: the meticulous, loving portraits of South Korean breakfast sandwiches by Allen Yu in CCW’s section. (The price was just under four figures; I regret not buying it.) “It was the best-feeling art fair I’ve ever participated in, with collaboration in the place of competition and a genuine feeling of mutual support,” Fierman told me after the fact. “We will definitely be back in Miami next year and hope to grow.” Here’s hoping.

A work by Nari Ward in the lobby of the Historic Hampton House in Miami, which is presenting “Invisible Luggage” through February 15. Photo by Andrew Russeth

Best Off-Site Exhibition: “Invisible Luggage” at the Historic Hampton House in Miami

I regret that it took an art exhibition to get me to the Historic Hampton House in Miami’s Brownsville neighborhood. A Green Book hotel where Black travelers, including Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King Jr., stayed during Jim Crow, it is now a cultural center. Right before the start of Miami Basel, it opened a massive group exhibition with works by more than 50 artists, titled “Invisible Baggage” and curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody, Laura Dvorkin, Maynard Monrow, Zoe Lukov, and Auttrianna Ward. There are superstars like Frank Bowling and Firelei Báez, Florida Highwaymen landscape painters, including Alfred Hair and Mary Ann Carroll, and lesser-known greats. The work in the show is strong, and it amounts to a multilayered look at how travel and migration shape identity. Best of all, unlike so much that takes place during Miami Art Week, the exhibition is still up, and it will be until February 15. If you pass anywhere near Miami, don’t miss it. And don’t miss the two hotel rooms that have been carefully restored.

In William Kentridge’s The Great Yes, The Great No Charon, the ferryman of the dead, played by Hamilton Dhlamini, conducts the ship’s journey from Marseille to Martinique. Photo by Monika Rittershaus

Best Performance, Contemporary Art: William Kentridge at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Art

This past summer, William Kentridge premiered a new chamber opera, The Great Yes, The Great No (2024), at the Luma Foundation in Arles, France. In Miami last week, it made its U.S. debut, and it is a stunner—an intricate mixture of video, singing, and dancing, a heady gesamtkunstwerk. It concerns a ship sailing in 1941 from Vichy France to Martinique with passengers like Claude Lévi-Strauss, Wifredo Lam, and André Breton—a real historical episode that the South African artist has enlivened by inviting aboard additional luminaries, like Frida Kahlo and Frantz Fanon. Charon, the ferryman of the Greek underworld, is the captain. While it’s set during World War II, the piece feels bracingly of the moment, urgent, as a kind of poetic exegesis on the power of art in dark times. How does Kentridge manage to craft such astonishingly satisfying works? You can try to figure that out at upcoming performances in California, at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills in February and at the University of California, Berkeley in March.

Hajime Kinoko and Marie Sauvage performing at the Ground.

Best Performance, Non-Contemporary Art: Hajime Kinoko and Marie Sauvage at the Ground

On the night of the dress rehearsal for Kentridge’s triumph, Hajime Kinoko and Marie Sauvage—experts in shibari (Japanese rope bondage) based, respectively, in Tokyo and Paris—kicked off a U.S. tour at the Ground, a venue inside the action-packed Club Space. As hundreds watched and foreboding techno grew more intense, the Tokyo-based Kinoko (who is also an artist) spent about an hour threading rope from metal trusses into a kind of starburst shape. Then Sauvage appeared, staring down the audience as he tied her, pulled her into the air, and guided her through an astonishing array of positions. It looked painful, though she betrayed no hint of discomfort. The work concluded with Kinoko weaving Sauvage into his web so that she seemed almost to be floating.  “I always feel grateful to share my vulnerability in the form of an artistic symbol with Kinoko,” she said, “to inspire others to be more open-hearted.” That’s an important message to deliver in rough-and-tumble, dog-eat-dog Miami.

The Resy Lounge at Untitled, “brought to you by Delta Air Lines and American Express®.” And its dessert table, by Jon & Vinny’s. Photos by Andrew Russeth.

Best VIP Lounge (and Best Brand Collaboration): The Resy Lounge at the Untitled Art Fair

There were disturbingly few collaborations between powerful brands this year. (We didn’t know how lucky we had it back in 2017, when Porsche, Sonos, Surface, and Chateau d’Esclans had Eleven Madison Park chef Daniel Humm sling truffle burgers for an event.) A welcome exception was the Resy Lounge, which was sponsored by Delta Air Lines and American Express, at the Untitled Art Fair. I am not an Amex cardholder, have few Delta miles, and use Resy begrudgingly, but I summoned every ounce of entitlement I have (it was not difficult) and asked to enter. “You’re in luck,” the kind receptionist said, almost whispering. “We are taking walk-ins right now.” I was more than lucky. A feast of delights from Los Angeles’s estimable Italian restaurant Jon and Vinny’s awaited: luscious slices of steak, a Caesar salad with a surprising kick, cocktails, wines, and a full dessert table with made-to-order affogatos. Heavenly.

Straight to jail: A Miami Police Department cruiser in Wynwood. Photo by Andrew Russeth

Most Surprising Art Collaboration: An Artist-Designed Police Car in Miami

Apparently it’s something of a tradition for local artists to create work for the Miami Police Department. A few years ago, the big-selling Romero Britto conceived a very energetic paint job for one of its SUVs. While in Wynwood last week, I came across this memorable design on a cruiser. It is not, as I first thought, the work of the irrepressible Alec Monopoly, a pioneer of this cartoon-luxury style. One Victor Gosa is responsible. On the opposite side of the car there is graffiti reading, “Woop-woop! That’s the sound of da…” Imagine being arrested and shoved into the back of this thing. Can’t be a great feeling.

The Frenchie: French salami, brie cheese, and all the toppings on a croissant. Photo by Andrew Russeth

Best Sandwich: The Frenchie at La Sandwicherie in South Beach

Since 1988, La Sandwicherie has been serving massive sandwiches at manageable prices to Miami Beachers, a short walk from the notorious dive Mac’s Club Deuce (and, more recently, the Untitled Art Fair). Six years had passed since I last visited Magic City—six years long years since I had tasted La Sandwicherie’s offerings—and I can confirm that these sandwiches remain peerless and unsurpassed. My go-to is the Frenchie: French salami, brie cheese, and all the glorious toppings. If you wanted to be critical, you could say that the enormous slabs of brie that adorn this sandwich are perhaps not sourced from the world’s greatest brie producer, but that would be churlish. These sandwiches want you to be happy, they aim to please, and they succeed. Being happy: That is what Miami is all about.