Covering a broad island separating downtown Miami from the open Atlantic Ocean, Miami Beach (pop. 87,933) has long been a mecca for fans of 1930s art deco architecture and design. More recently, it’s also become one of the world’s most fashionable and bacchanalian beach resorts, with deluxe hotels and high-style nightclubs and restaurants lining the broad white sands of South Beach, the relatively small corner of Miami Beach that gets 99 percent of the press and tourist attention. Here, along beachfront Ocean Drive and busier Collins Avenue (Hwy-A1A) a block inland, you’ll find dozens of glorious art deco hotels, many lighted with elegant neon signs. Guided walking tours (Wed.–Sun.; $20) of the district leave from the Art Deco Welcome Center (daily; 305/531-3484) at 1001 Ocean Drive, which also sells guidebooks, posters, postcards, and anything else you can think of that has to do with the art deco era.
No matter how intoxicating the architecture, beach life, and nightlife along South Beach are, while you’re here be sure to set aside an hour or two to explore the fascinating collection of pop culture artifacts on display two blocks inland at the Wolfsonian (closed Wed.; $5; 305/531-1001), at 1001 Washington Avenue. One of the odder highbrow museums you’ll find, the Wolfsonian (officially the Mitchell Wolfson Jr. Collection of Decorative and Propaganda Arts) fills a retrofitted 1920s warehouse with four floors of furniture, sculpture, architectural models, posters, and much more, almost all dating from the “Modern Era,” roughly 1885 to 1945. Two areas of excellence are drawings and murals created under the New Deal auspices of the WPA, and similar agitprop artifacts created in Weimar, Germany. Only a small portion of the extensive collection is on display at any one time, and most of the floor space is given over to changing exhibitions—on anything from World’s Fairs to Florida tourism to William Morris chairs—but it’s a fun and thought-provoking place, with an unexpressed but overriding theme of how art can counterbalance, or at least respond to, the demands of industrial society.
