Audi hopes art steers sales its way

Art Basel brings some of the world's priciest contemporary art to Miami Beach. Audi figures that market wouldn't mind spending $100,000 on a car -- even in a grim economy.

What: Audi pavilion: Temporary museum/showcase built by the German automaker as part of Design Miami show.

Where: City parking lot at 46th Street and Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, a block north of the Eden Roc hotel.

Features: ``Art of Progress'' exhibit with installations from the Rubell Family Collection and British designer Tom Dixon.

Schedule: Opens to the public Wed., Dec. 2 through Saturday, Dec. 5. Hours: noon to 7 p.m. Wednesday, noon to 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.

Admission: Free

Audi wanted to unveil its newest luxury car during Art Basel week but couldn't find a venue grand enough for the occasion. So it built one instead.

Rising five stories above an oceanfront Miami Beach parking lot north of the Eden Roc hotel, the boxy and black temporary complex boasts 42,000 square feet of space.

That includes a 1,000-seat auditorium, an underground kitchen, a stage with two revolving platforms for showing off the new $100,000 Audi A8 and an art gallery for installations from Miami's Rubell Family Collection. The pavilion opens Wednesday.

The German luxury automaker expects to spend upwards of $10 million on the effort, setting a high-water mark for brands attaching themselves to the deep-pocketed hoopla surrounding Art Basel Miami Beach.

And though 2009 saw cutbacks on all levels of Basel spending, the event remains one of the country's prime platforms for targeting the world's elite consumers. ``We're all there because our target audience is there,'' said Johan de Nysschen, president of Audi's U.S. division. ``You find an unusually high concentration of this audience in one place at one time.''

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