Having taught college cinema and history classes in Hollywood for the past fifteen years, I sometimes have to check my own reactions to the most ostensibly popular and successful period dramas of our current crop of films. The appropriately titled Darkest Hour (Dir. Joe Wright) and Phantom Thread (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) were two such examples.

Pulse Art Fair returns this year to its usual location at Miami Beach — its north and south wings separated by ocean breezes and selfie-ready sculptures — with a host of international galleries displaying a wide range of talent. This year’s iteration yields surprising juxtapositions of material, layering, and scale.

The artistic personification of fertility has been practically unchanged since the prehistoric Venus of Willendorf: A young woman with large breasts and wide hips. Advancements in medicine and technology are quickly revising that image.

Mary Sibande’s Smithsonian African Artist Award: At the National Museum of African Art (NMAfA), a Smithsonian Institution, women from the motherland take center stage.

The New Art Dealer’s Alliance (NADA) Miami 2017 opens today, 12/8, albeit not on the beach. Their previous venue, the Deauville Beach Resort, is closed indefinitely after suffering an electrical fire and damage from Hurricane Irma, forcing the fair to relocate to their point of origin, Ice Palace Film Studios.

Now in its sixteenth year, Art Basel Miami Beach and its satellite art fairs stretch from North to South Beach, scattered in hotels, museums, tents, temples and domes everywhere from the beach to the sky.