A multi-storey carpark is rarely a thing of beauty – and hardly ever an actual work of art. But Museum Garage, in the heart of Miami’s Design District, is a riot of creativity and a genuinely joyous piece of architecture. Each section of the concrete facade has been dressed by a separate artist, working without any idea of the other artists’ designs. The result is a static firework display, a colourful gallimaufry of a garage. One stretch of the exterior wall brings to mind a lady’s fan made of black Spanish lace, while another is covered with gilded or silvered car bodies, hanging vertically like blingy earrings in a jeweller’s shop window.

As the artistic director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Mr Alex Gartenfeld works right across the road from the garage, on the other side of NE 41st Street, so he gets to enjoy that jazzy carpark every day. He has been with the ICA Miami since it was founded in 2014 and oversaw the move to its present location in 2017. His job makes him both an observer of the art scene and a player in its ongoing boom. “We commission a lot of work from young artists,” he says. “And I’m a young guy myself for a museum director, which helps foster a spirit of doing something together. Hopefully that comes across.”

So, Mr Gartenfeld’s mission is to cultivate as well as to curate; to grow art as well as show art. That goal chimes with what he sees as the dizzying evolution of the city as a whole. “Miami is being built and rebuilt right now,” he says. “It has more in common with somewhere like Shanghai than, say, New York or London, because it is redefining urban space at this very moment. I like that. It’s exciting, because it’s what art is about: things that are in flux, and looking to the future. Miami is a kind of petri dish for cultural production, a very pure expression of the dynamism of the 21st century.”

The newest member of the MR PORTER Style Council, Mr Gartenfeld’s career began in his tiny bedroom on Canal Street in Manhattan, where he staged bijou art exhibitions that caught the attention of New York’s art world. “Those events, luckily, were successful, and as a result I got invitations to do larger exhibitions at galleries,” he says. “That culminated in a project for a museum in Italy in 2013. A week after I opened the show in Rome, I moved to Miami and started my journey here.” 

Was it a culture shock to leave the mountainous grey cityscape of New York and land on the balmy Caribbean-infused streets of Miami? Mr Gartenfeld says not. “I had a friend who used to call me Miami, that was my nickname,” he says. “I guess I must have a personality that is inclined to this place, so arriving here wasn’t a total shock. But sure, it takes a while to get used to it. 

“One of the clichés about Miami is that it is the capital of South America,” he continues. “And it is true that there’s an incredible mix here, and no rhyme or reason to the mix. You have year-round residents, historic populations, a burgeoning professional community – then Venezualans, Brazilians, Brazilian-Americans, Mexicans, Mexican-Americans – plus, in the winter and spring, vacationing mid-Westerners and people down from Connecticut.”

That mottled vibrancy is reflected in the urban geography of Miami, particularly the part of town where the ICA Miami is situated. “Within one block of us is Buena Vista with its early 20th-century chartered houses. And five blocks away is Little Haiti. We are in the middle of a very complex constellation of neighbourhoods here. Maybe the reason Miami has that diverse quality is that these neighborhoods have remained so vital.”

And perhaps the same virtues – lush variety and a palpable history – also characterise the city’s art scene. If so, where would you have to go to get a sense of what’s happening, of the artists to watch? Mr Gartenfeld namechecks the two big private collections that have morphed into fabulous private museums: the De La Cruz Collection, right next door to the ICA Miami, and the Rubell Museum, just south and west of the Design District, on the other side of the interstate freeway. 

Taken together, those two museums have the gravitational pull of a binary star system, and they shine brightly. The De La Cruz Collection – free to visit, like the ICA Miami – is populated with works by European, American and Latin-American artists such as Messrs Peter Doig, Sterling Ruby, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mses Christina Quarles and Ana Mendieta. One star exhibit is a plaster bust of Queen Nefertiti in biker shades, the work of German sculptor Ms Isa Genzken. It’s as pale, beautiful and mesmerising as a winter moon. 

The Rubell Museum, meanwhile, was until recently housed in a former lock-up of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Confiscated Kalashnikovs and narcotics occupied the space that later made way for an enormous collection – some 7,000-plus works by more than 1,000 artists, acquired one at a time by collectors Mr Don and Ms Mera Rubell over the past 50 years. This is the place to see major pieces by Mr Kehinde Wiley (who painted the official presidential portrait of President Barack Obama), as well major pieces by chart-topping rock stars of contemporary art such as Ms Cindy Sherman, Mr Richard Prince and Mr Jeff Koons. 

By 2019, the Rubell Museum had outgrown its bulletproof shell, and moved to new site in Allapattah, “the first post-industrial neighbourhood really to be redesigned and masterplanned”, explains the ICA Miami’s artistic director. Many of the most dynamic and daring art galleries are up this way, north of downtown Miami. There are many in the Design District and in Allapattah, but they are also scattered across other neighbourhoods such as Little River and the jumping bailiwick of Wynwood. But which of them are the real must-sees for visiting art-lovers? 

“No one has a monopoly on Miami’s best artists, so the gallery scene is your oyster,” Mr Gartenfeld says. “But I would highlight Spinello Projects for championing a young generation of artists, including Reginald O’Neill and Jared McGriff.”

Some of Mr Reginald O’Neill’s work is sweetly old-fashioned. One of his still-life artworks, a beautifully observed oil painting of his grandmother’s reading glasses, has the accomplished air of an Old Master painting. But in his large-scale works Mr O’Neill documents his experience of growing up in the housing projects of Overtown, an area originally populated by black railroad workers, and known until the mid-20th century as “Colored Town”. 

Mr Jared McGriff, born in Oakland but based in Miami, shares Mr O’Neill’s attachment to traditional media – in his case, water colour. His portraits of the black citizens of Miami feel swiftly executed and full of curiosity, as if he had taken a fistful of brushes and a box of paints onto the Metrorail and made studies of whoever happened to be sitting opposite.

Mr Gartenfeld rattles off a string of other favourite galleries. “This is a small town, but I need to mention Fredric Snitzer, David Castillo, Nina Johnson… Then there’s Central Fine, which is important for a number of reasons but one being because they are creating dialogue with artists from the Caribbean. Take Myrlande Constant; she makes incredible Vodou flags that are covered in elaborate embroidery.”

The Haitian connection leads Mr Gartenfeld onto the subject of cuisine, one of the glories of urban life in this part of the world. “I’d advocate for some of the divier places, for the really authentic Haitian restaurants, the Cuban places, too. Oh, and I can’t pass over the Red Rooster in Overtown – not just because of the great African diaspora food, but also because of equally good African-American and African diaspora art that’s on display: Kara Walker, Chris Ofili, Theaster Gates…”

Mr Gartenfeld seems to be drawn to places that are ram-packed with the physical evidence of personal obsession, venues where a collector’s compulsive habit is there for all the see. He saves a special mention for the Nite Owl movie theatre, which now runs as a drive-in. It is the brainchild of Mr Nayib Estefan, reel-to-reel movie nerd and – because he is the son of Ms Gloria Estefan, queen of Cuban dance music – a kind of princeling of downtown Miami. “The whole interior is bedecked with movie memorabilia, because that is Nayib’s passion,” he says. “That makes it a work of art, and also the coolest movie theatre in the world. The selection of movies is always crazy interesting.”

Mr Gartenfeld finds lots of things crazy interesting. He claims that it is impossible to bore him, and that surely has something to do with the city itself. “It spoils you, living here,” he says. “The quality of life is extraordinary. These are more clichés, I know, but the mix of weather, food and lifestyle is pretty incomparable. On top of that there is the focus on making this a great art destination. People really care that it is happening. They are pleased that we are making the city more vital. Miami is changing, and I think change is good.”