|  It
takes nerve to convince your colleagues that you are going
to Miami Beach for cultural reasons, but let's face it: there
is only so much inline-skating and beach-strutting you can
do before the brain craves a bit of stimulus and the body
begs for the air-conditioning.
Sun, sand and Shostakovich: Miami hosts an excellent piano
festival
Music is what takes me to Miami, for a gem
of a piano festival that happens in May. More of that anon,
but one of the attractions that Miami Beach offers all year
round, aside from the sun, is its architecture. Much of the
area is a living museum of Art Deco, thanks to the hurricane
that devastated Miami in 1926.
The wholesale rebuilding was executed with
an eye to the latest architectural styles of Europe, but with
a tropical twist - all pastel and candy shades with sinuous
seaside curves and palm-tree shapes. Many of the smaller hotels
lining Ocean Drive, and a clutch of the gigantic ones further
up South Beach, are Deco jewels.
The buildings are as diverse as can be, most
of them now lovingly restored in an active campaign of preservation.
For the real Deco enthusiast, the Miami Design Preservation
League organises walks round the area, starting at the Art
Deco Welcome Center (1001 Ocean Drive, tel 001 305 531 3484).
Almost opposite, the fashion-conscious and the ghoulish will
want to see the palatial Spanish-style Casa Casaurina (1114
Ocean Drive), on the steps of which Gianni Versace was shot
dead in 1997.
One of the Deco buildings (2121 Park Avenue),
with a modern extension by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki,
is home to the Bass Museum of Art, in which Flemish tapestries,
a Rubens or two, plus a Botticelli altar piece and an excellent
café are the highspots.
More individual in its collecting is the
Wolfsonian Foundation (1001 Washington Avenue), where there
is a fascinating exhibition (once featured on BBC TV's Antiques
Roadshow) of what was regarded as new from 1885 to 1945, from
British Arts & Crafts to a Magic Chef gas range of c.
1935.
Art is catered for by any number of commercial
galleries along the pedestrianised Lincoln Road, and, more
particularly, by Art Basel Miami Beach, a spectacular annual
event that is set to become the most important art show in
America. This year it runs from December 4 to 7, featuring
160 leading international galleries, with paintings by more
than 1,000 20th- and 21st-century artists (details at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/exit.jhtml?exit=http://www.artbasel.com/miami_beach).
Halfway down Lincoln Road, the Lincoln Theater,
built in 1935 and formerly a cinema, is now a fully adapted
concert hall, and it is here that the Miami International
Piano Festival of Discovery occurs every year. It is worth
timing your holiday to take it in (next year's dates are May
13-17, information at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/exit.jhtml?exit=http://www.miamipianofest.com),
because the standard of musicianship is astounding. Some of
the pianists have already been "discovered" -- Steven
Osborne last year, for example, or Piotr Anderszewski this
- but alongside them are other musicians of exceptional talent
at the outset of potentially lustrous careers.
Lincoln Theater is also home to the New World
Symphony Orchestra, which, like the San Francisco Symphony,
is one of conductor Michael Tilson Thomas 's success stories.
Next season starts on October 12 and runs through to May 9
2004, with several concerts every month (details at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/exit.jhtml?exit=http://www.nws.org
or tel.001 305.673.3330, ext.233).
Eating before or after an event, outdoors
or in, is no problem, because Lincoln Road is seething with
restaurants. I ate French at the Café Papillon, Italian
at Tiramesu and Cuban at Yuca, and was more than content.
One word of warning, though: these establishments discourage
skating on the premises.
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