Olivia Smith
Director, Magenta Plains
“By early December, I’ll be in Miami for Art Basel with the rest of the art world. Between art fairs and the beach, I’ll plan to swing by the Pérez Art Museum to see Matthew Ronay’s show in the project space (through Jan. 15, 2017). Come nightfall, you’ll find me ice-skating in the Basement at The Miami Beach Edition or dancing at FDR, the nightclub in the Delano.”
“Later in the month I’m traveling to my hometown of Dallas, Texas, where the local food and art scenes have exploded in the last few years. At the Dallas Museum of Art, the artists Lucie Stahl and Nicolas Party have solo exhibitions that I want to check out (respectively through March 12 and Feb. 5, 2017). I’m also excited to see Kathryn Andrews’s satirical Bozo the Clown sculptures in her show at the Nasher Sculpture Center (through Jan. 8, 2017). I always plan a trip 50 miles south to 100 West Corsicana, an artist residency set in an 1898 Odd Fellows Lodge. I’ll ring in the New Year at Midnight Rambler in The Joule Hotel with a few friends, and maybe end up at Bar Belmont, the best place for a fantastic view of the city’s skyline. Any trip to Dallas would not be complete without a meal at Kalachandji’s, a vegetarian oasis inside a Hare Krishna temple, and a cup of coffee at my favorite spot, Novel Coffee Roasters.”
“If I want to escape to the cinema I’ll visit The Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff, which, aside from being the location where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, lets me bring my own vinyl to listen to at the bar.”
Deyan Sudjic
Director, Design Museum London
“The city of Basel, Switzerland, is as important for contemporary architecture and design as it is for art, and I’m planning a trip to the area in December. In the neighboring town of Weil am Rhein, just across the German border, is the Vitra Design Museum. I am going back for another look at the recently completed Herzog and de Meuron-designed wing, which features a recreated Eames studio.”
“Back in Basel is one of my favorite hotels, the Krafft. It’s comfortable, unpretentious, and the design makes you feel like you might be a 1950s intellectual in a serious polo neck. It makes me think about what I will be missing by skipping Art Basel Miami Beach and Design Miami. It’s hard to think of two hotels more different than the Krafft and Faena Hotel Miami Beach, the operatic Baz Luhrmann-like extravaganza that it is, complete with gold-plated Damien Hirst mammoth on the beach. Before Christmas I’ll be in Edinburgh, Scotland, to catch up with my brother. We always go to the Café Royal for oysters in an atmosphere of 19th-century Victorian splendor. Later, I will travel to Vienna, where I want to stop by the MAK (short for the Museum für angewandte Kunst, which translates to the Museum of Applied Arts). Across the street is one of architect Otto Wagner’s masterpieces, the now somewhat neglected Austrian Postal Savings Bank. You haven’t experienced Vienna until you’ve had a martini in Adolf Loos’s American Bar, and you can also buy the whisky tumblers that Loos designed at J. & L. Lobmeyr, a sixth-generation, family-owned lighting and glassware shop around the corner.”