Artful beginning in Miami Beach

Art Basel Miami Beach -- America’s version of Art Basel, the world’s most prestigious marketplace for international modern and contemporary art -- wrapped up its debut last Sunday with attendance of 30,000 and a lot of happy dealers.

“We sold everything but the Scotch tape,” said Tim Blum of Blum & Poe Gallery in Santa Monica.

Even participants who were less euphoric said they made enough sales and contacts to return next year.

Looky-loos wandered through the booths during the four-day event at the Miami Beach Convention Center, but so did serious collectors, museum directors and leading curators and art consultants. The crowd included collector groups from nearly 50 museums, including Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, Sao Paulo’s Museum of Modern Art, Madrid’s Contemporary Art Museum and New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

With all those fancy folks in town, there were some odd sightings on the periphery of the fair.

Designer Karl Lagerfeld, who showed his fashion-inspired photographs at Gmurzynska Gallery’s booth and flaunted his glitzy dresses at a hot-ticket program, plopped down at a tacky sidewalk cafe. With his white hair pulled back in a ponytail and his neck encased in an impossibly high, starched collar, he looked like a peacock in a chicken coop.

-- Suzanne Muchnic