VIP and visitor wrangling seems to be a constant issue for Art Basel, whose main lament seems to be that they are too many; ABMB (Art Basel Miami Beach) last year hosted some 75,000 visitors—7 percent more than the previous year, and expects a big crowd again in 2014. In Miami, the traditional Wednesday opening is apparently being over-attended (in 2011, it was closed early for fire-safety issues). In response, this year the official art fair Vernissage will be on Thursday morning, with the public opening in the afternoon. Only the most exclusive tiers of visitor will be admitted on Wednesday—”First Choice VIPs” at 11 am and “Preview VIPs” at 3 pm. According to the Art Basel fair director Marc Spiegler, “We are confident that this opening structure will allow us to provide our galleries with the best opportunity to spend quality time with both existing and potential patrons.” There will be no rest for the wicked, it seems, at the shiniest of Basel’s three annual art fairs.

Visitors will be privy to 500,000 square feet of exhibition space in the Miami Beach Convention Center (which, it has been decided, is soon going to be re-modeled, not replaced). Nine sectors aim to punctuate the content: Survey, Galleries, Nova, Positions, Edition, Kabinett, Public, Film, and Magazines. Survey is new for 2014, and will present so-called “precise” projects by individual artists or group shows which in some way reference art history. The main Galleries section will feature 200+ booths from around the world. From China, big hitters ShanghART and Long March Space will be there. Nova is the section for wet paint, featuring new works made within the last three years (among these will be Beijing Commune). Positions and Kabinett aim to generate a closer focus; the former asks each participating gallery to bring just one major artist project, where the latter requires that a curated show is presented within a separate area inside the gallery booth—from Beijing, Galerie Urs Meile will present Yan Xing’s “The History of Reception” (2012) in this section. Public is held each year in collaboration with Bass Art Museum (which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year) at Collins Park, and will include sculptures and outdoor installations. Film, too, goes beyond the walls of the convention center, with a 7,000-square-foot projection wall to showcase video art in SoundScape Park, designed by Frank Gehry. Talks at the fair are split into daily Conversations and the Salon events which require a ticket or VIP card.

Beyond Basel, a host of satellite fairs, dubbed “indie” in relation to the main event will also open around town (expect smaller scale, less-well-known artists and galleries and lower prices, and perhaps fewer “glitterati” visitors). Bringing the Miami Art Week total up to some 20 events are, in Miami Beach: Aqua, Ink Miami (both hotel-based), Art Miami, Design Miami (held adjacent to Art Basel), NADA Art Fair, Pulse Miami, Select, Scope Miami and Untitled. In Miami, there are Art Miami, ArtSpot, Concept (new for 2014, held on a downtown mega-yacht), Context, Fridge Art Fair (which started in New York’s Lower East Side last year by Eric Ginsburg, who says “People should not be afraid to go and see art, and it should not cost a fortune.”), Miami Photo Salon, Miami Project, Miami River Art Fair, Pinta, Prizm, Red Dot Miami, Sculpt Miami and Spectrum.

Among the museum highlights in 2014 is the Rubell Family Collection, which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary. Commissioned solo exhibits by Will Boone, Lucy Dodd, Mark Flood, David Ostroski, Aaron Curry and Kaari Upson (the last two of whose work has just been shown as part of “The LA Project” at UCCA in Beijing) open there on the 3rd of December. But the main event is “To Have and To Hold”—major works from the collection accompanied by a 700-page catalog called “Highlights and Artists’ Writings”. Included in this will be the Chinese artists Ai Weiwei, He Xiangyu, Li Shurui, Li Songsong, Liu Wei, Qiu Zhijie, Xu Zhen, Zhang Enli, Zhang Huan and Zhu Jinshi. Also on the Asian radar is “ADinfinitum”, a show of huge photographic works by Beijing-based artist Wang Qingsong at Frost Art Museum. This year marks the first anniversary of the new Herzog & de Meuron-designed Perez Art Museum with multiple exhibitions. Also worth a visit should be 15th anniversary show at The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse—a non-profit institution inside a retro-fitted warehouse in the Wynwood Arts District of Miami (formerly a run-down area, but now host to many galleries and some impressive public murals), showing works from the collection Martin Z. Margulies. CIFO (the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation) will stage a group exhibition of abstract art entitled “Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict.” At the de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space is “Beneath the Surface”, a large group exhibition addressing, in its own words, “our new American landscape.”

As is true every year, Miami Art Week 2014 will hover between the label “art with parties attached” and its reverse; every night has a round of social events whilst pop-ups, promotions, breakfasts, openings, tours, screenings, talks—and, of course, art fairs—during the day are bound to keep a buying majority of well-and high-heeled visitors tired. The question for Art Basel will most simply be whether last year’s record sales are matched, or outdone.