The return of Miami to the upper echelons of American cities is due in part to Don and Mera Rubell and the opening of their museum in 1994 (they started amassing contemporary art when they got married). While respectable art institutions did already exist in the city, the RFC added both a tie to the ‘serious’ art world of New York and some associated glamour (some of the Rubells’ money was inherited from Don’s brother Steve, the face, along with hotelier Ian Schrager, of New York’s fabled Studio 54). Only a small sample of the collection of 1,500 pieces (attached to names such as Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman and Keith Haring) is on display at a time and rotated regularly. Art historians may want to plumb the 40,000-edition strong research library. Incidentally, this place used to contain swag of a different kind; it was a Drug Enforcement Agency warehouse that served as a halfway house for stacks of money and sacks of pot and coke seized in raids.