The world’s largest and most important contemporary art fair takes place at the Miami Beach Convention Center this week, and Forbes reports on the Art Basel Miami Beach highlights. For one, Galerie Gmurzynska will present visitors with an extraordinary exhibition of Russian Avant-Garde works curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal with an exclusive booth design by Claude Picasso.

Some of the programming to catch includes Conversations, Art Basel’s acclaimed talks series, which will start on Thursday, December 1 with the Premiere Artist Talk. The artist Julio Le Parc (b. 1928) will speak with curator Estrellita B. Brodsky on the occasion of his major exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM).

On Friday, December 2, the program will see a new Conversations series – Artists' Influencers. Conceived and moderated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London, the talk will feature the artist Glenn Ligon (b. 1960), New York, in conversation with a poet and writer who has had a great influence on his practice, Claudia Rankine, Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University, New Haven. Conversations will continue with Art Basel’s Public/Private series.

The panel ‘Debating Disruption: Has Technology Really Changed the Artworld?’ on Saturday, December 3, will bring together Sebastian Cwilich, President and COO, Artsy, New York; Laurent Gaveau, Head of the Lab, Google Cultural Institute, Paris; Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of Digital Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and artist Simon Denny (b. 1982), Berlin. The conversation – moderated by author and cultural consultant András Szántó – will seek to clarify what is truly new and what digital innovation holds in store for tomorrow's art world.

On Sunday, December 4, ‘The Artist and the Gallerist’ will present a conversation about the unique and fundamental relationship between artist Jill Magid (b. 1973) and her gallerist Pamela Echeverría, Owner, Labor, Mexico City, moderated by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Curator of Contemporary Art, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York/Caracas.

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