Miami Beach celebrates the centennial of its Art Deco legacy in high style this month with exhibitions and events, giving locals and visitors a chance to learn and experience traditional and new multicultural perspectives of the glamorous architecture style. It also is a joint celebration with Mumbai, India, and marks a rare cross-cultural collaboration that highlights how this global style took on distinctly local flavors under palm trees, though half a world apart.
“Both are coastal cities. Miami’s a port city; Mumbai is also a port city,” said Gayatri Hingorani Dewan, a cultural entrepreneur who cofounded Art Deco Alive! “When I moved to Miami three years ago, I felt I had moved back home to Mumbai, just having the palm trees, the banyan trees and the peacocks. The vegetation is also very similar. It’s hurricane season here in Miami and it’s Monsoon season in Mumbai. They’re both cultural hotspots. I think people from all over India that move to Mumbai and I think Miami is almost the capital of Latin America, in many ways a melting pot.”
ART DECO ORIGINS
(Courtesy Art Deco Alive!)
The Liberty Cinema in Mumbai
Art Deco was born in Paris, its name derived from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Emerging in the aftermath of World War I, the style rejected austerity, instead embracing optimism, modernity, and luxury. Architects and designers drew on Cubism’s sharp geometries, ancient Egyptian motifs, and the sleek new boldness of the Machine Age. Zig-zags, chevrons, sunbursts, stylized flora and fauna, all crafted in opulent materials such as chrome, marble, exotic woods, and lacquer, signaled a marked departure from Art Nouveau, which had borrowed from prior Victorian excesses. The movement quickly spread to New York, London, Shanghai, and beyond. Manhattan’s Chrysler Building and Empire State Building epitomized the style in skyscraper form.
Miami Beach’s Art Deco emerged from a disaster. The Great Hurricane of 1926 devastated much of the city, while the Great Depression stunted redevelopment. Yet in the 1930s, architects and developers seized the opportunity to rebuild with the fashionable Art Deco themes. in Miami, they are distinctly "Tropical Deco" style, blending the iconic 20th-century movement with cultural influences from the city's large Caribbean and Latin American populations. This local art deco style incorporated porthole windows, nautical motifs, tropical palms and floral reliefs, neon signage and terrazzo floors, into the familiar pastel geometric and modern, curved architecture.
A SHARED HERITAGE
(Courtesy Art Deco Alive!)
Postcard of the Abbey Hotel in Miami Beach
Meanwhile, Mumbai, then Bombay, also experienced a construction boom in the 1930s and 1940s. At the center of India’s film industry, Mumbai embraced Art Deco as the face of luxurious progress. Dozens of cinemas sprang up, residential buildings soon followed, lining the seaside neighborhoods. While Miami’s Deco leaned nautical, Mumbai’s leaned cinematic, blending Deco geometry with Indian cultural flourishes such as lotus flowers, peacocks, and traditional Hindu patterns.
Miami Beach is globally recognized first for its significant collection and high density of Art Deco buildings – more than 800 within its historic district – while Mumbai holds the title for the largest number in the world, with over 1,400 Art Deco buildings, but over a much denser population area.
Together, Miami Beach and Mumbai represent the largest numbers of Art Deco architecture globally, Mumbai was recognized by UNESCO as part of a World Heritage site in 2018.
(Courtesy Art Deco Alive!)
Plymouth Hotel in Miami Beach
To honor this shared heritage, a new initiative called Art Deco Alive! launches this fall in both Miami and Mumbai, cofounded by Dewan, Smiti Kanodia, and Salma Merchant Rahmathulla. The project brings together the Miami Design Preservation League and the Art Deco Mumbai Trust, along with museums and cultural institutions in both cities.
“When [people] think of Bombay they don’t think of Art Deco,” said Dewan. “Now, it really is getting a platform. We’re changing the narrative of what people think about when they think about India. I think Art Deco really is the entry point for cross-cultural collaboration. When people think about coming to Miami you have that picture postcard in your head – It’s the Art Deco buildings that line Deco Drive. My whole family is from Bombay, Salma is from Bombay, so it just makes sense to connect Miami and Mumbai with this architecture that both cities share.”
The festival founders see this kinship as an opportunity to initiate creative partnerships, so Miami Beach exhibits will include many elements relating to the Mumbai Deco, and aims to bring together the diverse cultures, while contrasting and comparing the two cities. And for both, preservation has been key. By the late 1970s, neglect and the threat of demolition loomed over the districts. But thanks to the efforts of community activist Barbara Baer Capitman, the Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL) was founded in 1976 to list the Art Deco Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 — the first U.S. historic district dedicated to 20th-century architecture. Without activists like Capitman in Miami or heritage advocates in Mumbai, countless buildings might have been lost to unchecked development. The centennial is also a call to stewardship, reminding us that Deco’s value is cultural, economic, and aesthetic. These districts attract millions of visitors annually, fuel local economies, and serve as living testaments of history.
THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION: ART DECO ALIVE!
Most of the Miami events take place between October 8–12, and will include the Twin-City Centenary Museum Exhibition at the Art Deco Museum in collaboration with the Art Deco Mumbai Trust and Miami Design Preservation League, which will spotlight pioneering architects, conservationists, and women trailblazers on both continents.
(Courtesy Art Deco Alive!)
Postcard from the Belmont Hotel in Miami Beach
“It really is a collaboration between Miami and Mumbai,” said Dewan. “Salma and I think a lot of local people who live in Miami have never done a Deco walk in the district. This is for the locals to celebrate the city and appreciate this living museum that’s on display, especially on this 100th anniversary.”
The celebration kicks off Oct. 8 with a 1920s-themed Rewind Cocktail Party at the FIU-Wolfsonian Museum. Other events include the Art Deco Art Exhibition, running from Oct. 10 through Dec. 1 at the Art Deco Museum in Miami Beach. There are also heritage walking and cycling tours, curated tours of private homes, and family scavenger hunts where participants will step inside iconic hotels like the Carlisle, Colony, and Cavalier. The Art Deco Symposium on Oct. 11 will present talks on architectural conservation, urban revival, and cross-cultural design histories and identity, featuring architectural pioneers. The festival will also offer jazz soirées, burlesque performances, Latin music, and Indo-Latin retail collaborations with Deco-inspired design by Indian and Latin designers, exploring design crossovers. Fashion and jewelry showcases will highlight both archival pieces and contemporary works inspired by Deco motifs.
“There could be an India interior designer working with a Miami-based artist,” said Rahmathulla. “Buildings are buildings, but it’s the people inside them and the people that appreciate them that give the buildings their life. It’s about human beings from two corners of the world to celebrate: What makes us similar but also what makes us different. And boy, do we need that right now.”
For more information, visit artdecoalive.org