The Landscape
Miami has long occupied a particular position in the international art market: a city where Latin American, Caribbean, and North American cultural currents converge, and where the annual arrival of Art Basel Miami Beach each December transforms the entire metropolitan area into something resembling a temporary world capital of contemporary art. Yet the city's gallery ecology is far more than a fair-week phenomenon. Spread across distinct neighbourhoods — the Design District, Wynwood, Allapattah, Little Haiti, Little River, and Edgewater — Miami's private galleries operate year-round, sustaining serious curatorial programmes, maintaining international artist rosters, and generating significant market activity well beyond the December event horizon.
The city's gallery infrastructure has matured considerably since Art Basel's arrival in 2002 catalysed a broader cultural transformation. Spaces that were once concentrated in Wynwood have dispersed and evolved, with newer institutions finding homes in post-industrial buildings in Allapattah and the quieter residential pockets of Little Haiti. The result is a distributed but coherent ecosystem that serves both local collectors and the international art world.
Key Private Galleries
Fredric Snitzer Gallery
Few institutions in Miami carry the weight of history that Fredric Snitzer Gallery does. Founded in 1977 — a quarter century before Art Basel Miami Beach existed — it is one of the earliest sustained champions of contemporary Latin American and Cuban art in the United States. The gallery has exhibited work by Luis Cruz Azaceta, Carlos Alfonzo, Tomás Esson, and Enrique Martínez Celaya, among others, and has gradually expanded its scope to encompass broader Caribbean diaspora voices alongside emerging and mid-career artists from further afield.
The current space at 1540 NE Miami Court in the Arts and Entertainment District holds approximately 3,000 square feet of indoor exhibition space and a 2,600-square-foot outdoor sculpture garden. The gallery maintains a rigorous schedule of at least eight rotating exhibitions per year across painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, photography, and performance. Fredric Snitzer himself has served on the Art Basel Miami Beach selection committee since the fair's first local edition in 2002, a fact that reflects both the gallery's standing and its role in shaping the city's art calendar.
Extending into the new year, Snitzer presented Inside Out by Deborah Brown, which ran from 30 November 2025 through 17 January 2026.
David Castillo Gallery
David Castillo Gallery, located at 3930 NE 2nd Avenue, Suite 201, in the Design District, has established itself as one of the more curatorially rigorous spaces in the city. The gallery has a pronounced focus on artists of colour, women, and queer artists, and has been recognised for identifying emerging talent at a formative stage. It participates regularly at Art Basel Miami Beach, and its programme engages critically with questions of representation and cultural marginality.
The gallery opened December 2025 with Studio Lenca: Landscapes, a solo presentation that ran through 31 January 2026, showing the Honduran artist collective's work through the gallery's Design District premises.
https://www.davidcastillogallery.com
Nina Johnson
Originally founded as Gallery Diet in 2007 — just months before the global financial crisis — Nina Johnson has grown into one of Miami's most considered platforms for experimental and emerging practice. The gallery occupies a compound of mid-century bungalows in the Little Haiti neighbourhood at 6315 NW 2nd Avenue, a setting that lends it an architectural distinction at odds with the white-cube orthodoxy prevalent elsewhere.
The gallery made its debut at Art Basel Miami Beach's 2025 edition, presenting a booth of artists and long-time collaborators whose work embodies the gallery's evolving vision. Simultaneously, its Miami space opened three concurrent projects: Acid Bath House, a group exhibition curated by Jarrett Earnest; Dara Friedman's solo show Star People; and Emmett Moore's outdoor functional works in the gallery courtyard. All three ran from 1 December 2025 through 7 February 2026, the latter two well into the new year.
Spinello Projects
Anthony Spinello opened his first gallery in 2005 at the age of twenty-two, and Spinello Projects has since moved through several Miami locations — Wynwood, the Design District, the Upper Eastside — before settling in Allapattah at 2930 NW 7th Avenue. The gallery is known for a programme that foregrounds underrepresented and underserved communities, with a roster that includes men, women, artists of colour, and queer practitioners.
To mark its twentieth anniversary, the gallery presented Changes: Reflections on Time & Space, a group exhibition running from 1 December 2025 through 10 January 2026.
https://www.spinelloprojects.com
Mindy Solomon Gallery
Mindy Solomon Gallery focuses on contemporary emerging and mid-career artists working across painting, sculpture, photography, and video. Located in the Allapattah neighbourhood, the gallery has developed a programme that brings together artists at different stages of their careers within a coherent curatorial framework.
For the December 2025 season, the gallery presented three simultaneous exhibitions running through January 2026: Indigenous Futurism by Celia Vásquez Yui, My Sunshine by Asif Hoque, and Who By Fire by Zoe Buckman, all closing on 10 January 2026.
https://www.mindysolomongallery.com
Emerson Dorsch
Founded by Brook Dorsch in 1991 and one of the original institutions that helped develop Wynwood as an arts district, Emerson Dorsch is now located at 5900 NW 2nd Avenue in Little Haiti. The gallery has maintained a consistent focus on serious contemporary practice over more than three decades, building a programme that rewards sustained attention rather than chasing market trends.
Locust Projects
Locust Projects, situated in the Design District, operates as a non-profit alternative exhibition space dedicated to commissioning and presenting new work by local, national, and international artists. While not a commercial gallery in the traditional sense, it functions as a central node in Miami's professional art ecosystem, regularly presenting work that informs collector and institutional interest. In late 2025, the space presented LA ESQUINITA (Little Corner) by Tara Long, which ran from 15 November 2025 through 17 January 2026.
https://www.locustprojects.org
Perrotin Miami
Perrotin maintains a significant presence in Miami, participating annually at Art Basel Miami Beach and operating from a dedicated space in the city. Founded by Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris in 1989, the gallery now operates across New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Los Angeles, London, Dubai, Las Vegas, and Shanghai, making its Miami engagement part of a deliberately global footprint.
At Art Basel Miami Beach 2025, Perrotin's presentation was notable. The gallery reported a sold-out Lee Bae solo presentation, with individual works priced between $60,000 and $200,000. Additional sales included works by Genesis Belanger and Oli Epp in the $30,000 to $60,000 range, works by Vivian Greven, Nikki Maloof, GaHee Park, and Xiyao Wang in the same bracket, three works by Izumi Kato also at $30,000 to $60,000 each, and a Daniel Arsham painting for approximately $95,000. Perrotin's booth was also notable for presenting works by MSCHF, whose interactive sculptures attracted considerable public attention.
The Rubell Museum
The Rubell Museum, located at 1100 NW 23rd Street in Allapattah, is one of the most significant private collection museums in the United States. Founded by Mera and Don Rubell in 1993, it holds more than 7,700 works by over a thousand artists — among them Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Cindy Sherman, Kehinde Wiley, Rashid Johnson, Yayoi Kusama, and Mickalene Thomas. The current premises, designed by Selldorf Architects within six interconnected former industrial warehouses, spans 100,000 square feet and includes dedicated long-term installation galleries, a rotating exhibitions programme, a 40,000-volume art research library, a museum store, and a restaurant.
Approximately sixty-five percent of the gallery spaces are given over to long-term installations, with the remaining thirty-five percent available for special exhibitions. The Rubell has since expanded to Washington D.C., where it occupies the historic Randall Junior High School in the Southwest Waterfront district.
Into 2026, the museum is presenting First Light, a solo exhibition by Thomas Houseago, which opened 1 December 2025 and runs through 27 September 2026. A solo presentation by Lorenzo Amos also opened in December 2025 and continues on an open-ended basis. The museum's long-running Yayoi Kusama installation, featuring her Infinity Rooms and Narcissus Garden, remains on view.
Gary Nader Art Centre
A landmark presence in Miami's Edgewater neighbourhood, the Gary Nader Art Centre has operated for several decades as a specialist in Latin American modern and contemporary masters. The centre holds an extensive collection of works by Fernando Botero, along with significant holdings of work by other major Latin American figures. It draws collectors with substantial international interests, particularly those focused on the Latin American canon.
Pan American Art Projects
Pan American Art Projects operates within the Design District and specialises in work by Latin American and Caribbean artists, with a programme that spans historic and contemporary positions. The gallery represents artists including Sandra Ramos and has maintained a consistent focus on the cultural specificities of the region.
https://www.panamericanart.com
Dot Fiftyone Gallery
Dot Fiftyone Gallery, located in Miami's Little River area, presents a programme of contemporary art with a particular interest in emerging and mid-career practitioners. The gallery opened Now Voyager by Anastasia Samoylova in late November 2025, with the show running through 30 January 2026.
Art Basel Miami Beach 2025: Market Context
The December 2025 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach — the fair's twenty-third edition — featured 283 galleries from 43 countries. The mood at the VIP preview on Wednesday, 3 December, was described as unusually animated, with long queues at the convention centre entrance and strong early sales across price tiers. Prominent collectors present included the Rubells, Beth DeWoody, Jorge M. Pérez, Komal Shah, and Lisa Goodman.
Among the more noted transactions reported at the fair, David Zwirner sold Dana Schutz's The Cooks (2025) to an American museum for $1.2 million; the work was completed just days before the fair opened. Pace Gallery led with Sam Gilliam's Heroines, Beyoncé, Serena and Althea (2020) at $1.1 million. Gladstone Gallery reported the sale of Robert Rauschenberg's Tarnished Honor (Copperhead) (1989) for $1.5 million. Sprüth Magers sold George Condo's Open Forms (2024) for $1.2 million. White Cube sold Tracey Emin's To Much Force (2025) for $1.6 million. David Kordansky Gallery placed Rashid Johnson's God Painting: I Dream A Lot (2025) for $750,000, alongside Shara Hughes's Good Choreo (2025) in the $450,000 to $500,000 range. At the higher end, a George Condo painting sold through one major gallery for just under $4 million, and a Louise Bourgeois work for $3.2 million.
The fair also introduced a new digital-art section, Zero 10, which drew crowds and reported approximately sixty-five percent of works sold by mid-afternoon of the opening day.
Exhibitions Running into 2026
For those planning institutional visits or collector itineraries in the early months of 2026, the following exhibitions were confirmed as running at the time of publication:
At the ICA Miami (Design District), Joyce Pensato: A Major Survey runs through 15 March 2026; Andreas Schulze: Special through 15 March 2026; Masaomi Yasunaga: Traces of Memory through 22 March 2026; and Richard Hunt: Pressure through 29 March 2026. Igshaan Adams's Lulu, Zanele, Zandile, Savannah extends through 1 November 2026. The ICA Miami website is at https://icamiami.org
At the Rubell Museum, Thomas Houseago's First Light runs through 27 September 2026. https://www.rubellmuseum.org
At The Bass museum in Miami Beach, Lawrence Lek's NOX Pavilion is on view through 26 April 2026. The museum's website is https://thebass.org
At the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Woody De Othello's coming forth by day is on view through 28 June 2026. The museum's website is https://www.pamm.org
At Nina Johnson, the concurrent exhibitions including Dara Friedman's Star People and Acid Bath House run through 7 February 2026. https://www.ninajohnson.com
At Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Deborah Brown's Inside Out ran through 17 January 2026. https://www.snitzer.com
At Locust Projects, Tara Long's LA ESQUINITA ran through 17 January 2026. https://www.locustprojects.org
A Note on the Broader Ecology
Miami's gallery scene functions as more than a convenient stop during Art Week. The city's proximity to Latin America and the Caribbean, its large and economically active community of collectors from across the Americas, and the presence of major private collections — including the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse and El Espacio 23, Jorge Pérez's private space — sustain a serious year-round conversation about contemporary art. For institutions and galleries considering partnerships, loans, or strategic relationships in the region, the city rewards engagement beyond December. The galleries listed here operate genuine curatorial programmes and maintain artist relationships that extend well beyond the fair calendar, making Miami a substantive rather than seasonal presence in the broader international gallery landscape.