Miami's galleries beyond the fair: Little River, Allapattah and the Design District

Art Basel Miami Beach lasts three days, in a convention center. Miami's own galleries are open from October to May, and in fair week most of them put on their best shows of the year. If you have a spare day, spend it on the mainland: start in Little River, cross to Allapattah, and finish downtown. You will see work the fair does not have room for, often by Miami artists, in buildings the dealers own.

That last point is the story of the scene. Twenty years ago Miami's galleries were in Wynwood. Today most of the serious ones are a few miles north and west, and the ones still standing tend to be the ones that bought. Six of them also have booths in the fair's main Galleries sector this year (Art Basel).

What follows is by neighbourhood, with each gallery's address, its story and, where it has posted one, its Art Week show. We checked every gallery's own site on October 24, 2026. Most had not yet announced their December shows; we will update this page as they do.

How the galleries left Wynwood

The short version: Wynwood made Miami's gallery scene, then priced it out. In 2014 Fredric Snitzer, the city's senior dealer, moved downtown, and David Castillo left for Lincoln Road. Around the same time a handful of dealers answered the rents by buying buildings farther north. Nina Johnson, then running Gallery Diet, left her Wynwood lease for a former church compound on NW 2nd Avenue, and Dorsch sold its Wynwood building to buy one on the same avenue (Art F City).

By 2022 The Art Newspaper was calling Little River Miami's next big art hub, for its relatively cheap industrial buildings; Locust Projects said it had been pushed out of Wynwood by rising costs (The Art Newspaper). Allapattah followed the same logic, helped by the Rubell family, who moved their museum there in 2019 (Biscayne Times). Developers followed too: AJ Capital Partners bought a 24-acre Little River portfolio for $79.9 million in December 2021 (Commercial Observer). The squeeze that emptied Wynwood is now under way here, slowly. For the longer story, read our guide to Wynwood's galleries.

Little River and Little Haiti

This is the place to start. Little River sits north of Little Haiti, and the art spaces run along NW 2nd Avenue, NE 2nd and 4th Avenues and the side streets between NE 54th and NW 79th. It has no business district or official arts designation; it is a working neighbourhood of warehouses, churches and auto shops with galleries in some of them.

Nina Johnson, 6315 NW 2nd Avenue, is the anchor. Johnson opened Gallery Diet in Wynwood in 2007 and moved it in November 2015 to the church compound she bought here, years before the art press had a name for the area; the gallery later took her name (Art F City). Its roster runs from Judy Chicago and Beatrice Wood to Woody De Othello and Katie Stout. For Art Week it opens three shows on November 29, all running to January 30: new paintings and works on paper by Ana Benaroya, Hide and Seek; Balarama Heller's The Void Which Binds; and Let Me Fix Your Crown by the Miami architect Germane Barnes (Nina Johnson). It is also in the fair. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 11 to 5.

Locust Projects, 297 NE 67th Street, is Miami's longest-running alternative art space. Three artists founded it in a Wynwood warehouse in 1998; it moved to the Design District in 2009 and here in 2023, into a warehouse of more than 8,000 square feet (Locust Projects). It commissions new work, often room-sized, that artists could not make anywhere else. This season's commission opens in mid-November: Edison Peñafiel's Tides and Passages, Chapter I: MARE MAGNVM, a 360-degree video, sound and textile installation in which 14 boats carry 81 masked figures across a grey sea. The free Meet the Artist party on Saturday, December 5, from 7 to 10 pm, is the one gallery night in the neighbourhood posted so far (Locust Projects). Open Wednesday to Saturday, 11 to 5.

Two artist-run spaces are a few blocks apart. Dimensions Variable, 101 NW 79th Street, was founded in 2009 by the artists Frances Trombly and Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova and has moved four times, landing here in 2019 (Dimensions Variable). In fair week it shows at UNTITLED, in the nonprofit section. Primary, 7410 NW Miami Court, is a curatorial collective started in 2007 by Books Bischof, Cristina Gonzalez and Typoe Gran, with a strong line in public art; it is at NADA this year (Primary).

Central Fine, 36 NE 54th Street, is the bridge to Little Haiti. One of the four people who run it is Tomm El-Saieh, grandson of the Port-au-Prince dealer Issa El-Saieh, and it shows Haitian masters such as Myrlande Constant beside contemporary painters, as equals (Central Fine). Our guide to Haitian art in Miami tells the longer story. Open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 11 to 5, and by appointment on other weekdays.

Piero Atchugarry, 5520 NE 4th Avenue, came from Garzón, Uruguay, and opened here in December 2018 in a 1955 warehouse of about 9,000 square feet; Miami is now its base (Piero Atchugarry). It shows Pablo Atchugarry, Arcangelo Sassolino and Artur Lescher, and moves up to the fair's main sector this year. Dot Fiftyone, 7275 NE 4th Avenue, run by Alfredo Guzmán and Isaac Perelman since the early 2000s, is one of Miami's longest-lived contemporary galleries, strong on Latin American artists and photographers; Jeanne Jaffe's Betwixt and Between runs through Art Week to January 20 (Dot Fiftyone). The Bonnier Gallery, 51 NW 71st Street, is by appointment only, and makes its first appearance in the fair's Survey sector with Lynne Golob Gelfman (Bonnier).

The studio side of the neighbourhood is Laundromat Art Space, 185 NE 59th Street, an artist-run building of subsidised studios in a former laundromat, founded in 2015 (WLRN). Several times a year the galleries open together for Little Haiti Little River Art Days, a free self-guided walk; in 2024 one fell in Art Week, but no December 2026 date has been posted (LHLR Art Days).

Allapattah

Allapattah, west of Wynwood, has the city's densest single block of galleries and its biggest private museum. The Rubell Museum and El Espacio 23 are on NW 23rd Street; our guide to Miami's private collections covers both. The galleries are one block south, at the 800 block of NW 22nd Street.

Mindy Solomon, 848 NW 22nd Street, tells the neighbourhood's story in one gallery. Founded in 2009, it was in Little River until Solomon bought a building here and opened in April 2021 (Biscayne Times). It is strong on ceramics and material work, from Marie H Hermann to Frances Trombly, and shows at Design Miami. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 11 to 5.

Next door, Voloshyn, 802 NW 22nd Street, has the most unusual origin of any gallery in the city. Max and Julia Voloshyn founded it in Kyiv in 2016, closed it after the full-scale invasion in 2022, reopened in Kyiv in 2023 and added Miami; it runs both programmes side by side, with Ukrainian artists such as Nikita Kadan (Voloshyn). It has a booth in the fair's Zero 10 sector. On the same block, KDR, 790 NW 22nd Street, began in the pandemic as KDR305, in a room of Katia David Rosenthal's family home, and moved here in 2023 (Artburst); it shows at NADA. Andrew Reed Gallery, at 800, is in the fair's Survey sector for the first time.

Two blocks show what renting means. Pan American Art Projects, a Latin American and Cuban specialist founded in 2001, has moved four times; it left Wynwood in 2016 and Little Haiti this April for 1557 NW 28th Street (Pan American Art Projects). Spinello Projects, 2930 NW 7th Avenue on the Wynwood edge, founded by Anthony Spinello in 2005, has spent two decades showing Miami artists and makes its debut in the fair's main sector this year (Spinello Projects).

The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, 591 NW 27th Street, the collector Martin Margulies's nonprofit space since 1999, reopens for the season with new exhibitions today, November 4 (Margulies). And if you want something louder, Superblue, 1101 NW 23rd Street, opposite the Rubell, is a ticketed space of immersive installations by James Turrell, teamLab and Es Devlin, founded by Pace executives as a separate company (The Art Newspaper). It is not a gallery, but it is a good hour.

The Design District

The Design District's art is now mostly public: the Fly's Eye Dome, the sculptures in the garages and the fashion houses' own shows. Two private exhibition spaces that tried here, the de la Cruz collection and Zilberman, have closed. The gallery to see is David Castillo, 25 NE 39th Street. Castillo opened in a Wynwood warehouse in 2005, moved to Lincoln Road in 2014 and to the District in 2020 (The Art Newspaper); in 2018 it became the second Miami gallery after Snitzer in the fair's main sector. It shows Sanford Biggers, Xaviera Simmons, Lyle Ashton Harris and the Miami artists Jillian Mayer and Adler Guerrier. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 to 6. Diana Lowenstein, 4100 NE 2nd Avenue, a Miami gallery since 2000, is a short walk away.

Further out

Fredric Snitzer, 1540 NE Miami Court, downtown, is where Miami's gallery history begins. Snitzer opened in Coral Gables in 1977, was in Wynwood from 2003 and moved here in 2014, into a space with a walled sculpture courtyard (Knight Foundation). He represents Hernan Bas and Kenny Scharf, and his gallery is in three sectors of the fair this year. Rocío García's La Parisina is on through December 19 (Fredric Snitzer).

On Miami Beach, Oolite Arts, 924 Lincoln Road, began in 1984 as ArtCenter/South Florida, when the potter Ellie Schneiderman put artists into empty storefronts on a nearly abandoned Lincoln Road. Its Art Week show, What Water Remembers, curated by Sara Cluggish with Miya Ando, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Juana Valdés and others, runs November 18 to February 7 (Oolite Arts). Omer Tiroche has moved his gallery from London to 1759 Purdy Avenue in Sunset Harbor, ten minutes from the convention center; it opens in December, date not yet announced (Omer Tiroche).

In North Miami, MOCA North Miami has Josh Aronson's A Sudden Leap through January 17, and Bridge Red Studios, 12425 NE 13th Avenue, a family-run building of studios and a project space, opens by appointment (MOCA). Havana's El Apartamento, the first Cuba-based gallery at the fair, opened a Miami space in late 2025, well south and west of all this, at 4750 SW 74th Avenue (El Apartamento).

Planning the day

Most of these galleries keep Tuesday-to-Saturday hours, roughly 11 to 5, and many close on Sunday and Monday. Several are by appointment only. Opening nights in fair week are usually announced a week or two ahead on the galleries' own sites and Instagram, so check the day before.

A good loop: Locust Projects and Nina Johnson in the late morning, lunch in Little River, then Allapattah's NW 22nd Street, the Rubell and the Margulies in the afternoon, and Snitzer downtown on the way back to the beach. It is a car day; the clusters are a short ride apart, but too far to walk in the heat.