This year I won't be at Art Basel Miami Beach, the annual art-world fantasia/free-for-all/you know, sale. (See "The Good Binge.") Which just means I'll be gazing and drooling from afar. Want to join me? Start by following The Art Newspaper on Twitter; I'll throw more tidbits your way here and on my own Twitter feed.

Remember Bert Rodriguez? The Miami artist whose big, black Weeping Monolith just spent the month of December down in Pioneer Square (following a residency at UW by the artist himself this fall)? Well, now you can see a whole lot more of him. He's taken it all off—almost—in honor of Kim Kardashian's silver-spraypainted W spread.

For those in search of, ahem, harder news, here's a report about Miami Art Museum breaking ground this morning on its new Herzog & de Meuron facility.

And yesterday's Miami Herald had an interesting piece called "What Is Art Really Worth?" about art's investment potential (it's been stronger, in recent times, than real estate or stocks, for example—but it's nowhere near as solid as gold, and yet "new wealth follows new art").

Here's a good take from an artist preparing to go to Miami. Her name is Kimberly Brooks:

John Baldessari once likened an artist going to a fair to catching one's parents having sex. Artists don't like to think of their work as merchandise, let alone see their dealers in the "act" of treating it that way. For most artists, the fair hovers around our consciousness like a distant moon or planet that we know is there but that we don't actually visit. My paintings had attended for a few years with my gallery before I had come in person. But now that I've gone several years in a row, I'm hooked. I'm ready for the artist pilgrimage where I will no doubt pray, cry and enjoy some of the best people watching on planet earth.

On the flight home, my camera will be full and I will feel like I always do, like I've just gone through a car wash without a car.

Okay, I admit it. I WANT TO GO TOO.