This painting, T.O (left), by German artist Tim Berresheim, hung in the booth of Los Angeles dealer Patrick Painter. New York ­collector Ranbir Singh couldn’t make it to the fair, but he bought the piece based on an emailed JPEG. He says he paid in the “low five figures” for it. Singh, who often buys fast-rising Indian contemporary art at auctions, generally shuns publicity but is frequently spotted in galleries that specialize in emerging art. His collection includes works by ­Julian Schnabel and John Currin, and a giant Andy Warhol of Dolly Parton. Singh says Berresheim is “someone to keep an eye on.” At a time when much young art “feels computer generated,” the Cologne artist’s work, he says, “has a painterly messiness.” View other art shows around the world.

Blame Steve Wynn. A decade ago, the Las Vegas hotel magnate branded the Bellagio resort as a luxury destination by using his own spectacular art collection. Today, several hotels and hotel chains are using art to signal that their properties target a wealthy, design-conscious clientele. Art buyers for these hotels have become such a major factor in the market that their preferences are shaping it: They prefer big art, pieces without sexual or political content, and video art, all of which sold strongly in Miami and continue to sell, even as the art market threatens to soften.

At Miami Basel, the Fontaine­bleau Hotel announced it had purchased or commissioned works by Robert Rauschenberg and James Turrell and “conceptual chandeliers” from hot Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei. Miami art collectors Cricket and Marty Taplin, partners in the new Aloft W hotel in Bay Harbor, purchased a Spencer Tunick photo of nudes (above) taken a few months earlier on the grounds of their Sagamore Hotel.

This 1924 photograph, Edward Steichen’s ­Gloria Swanson, New York (left), sold from the ­Howard Greenberg gallery to a “private American” collector for an eye-popping $500,000. Steichen prices have been zooming since his 1904 landscape The Pond—Moonlight brought $2.9 million at Sotheby’s in 2006. The price shattered the auction record for a photograph and outpaced works by both Man Ray, whose market has been dented by fakes, and Alfred Stieglitz, Steichen’s contemporary. Steichen’s works have long lagged behind those of other photographers, in part due to snobbery. In a long commercial career, he photographed Hollywood stars for magazines and Jergens lotion for ads.

Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire has been spotted in the audience at contemporary art auctions in New York for years, but he’s never been seen bidding. At one of the nearly two dozen satellite fairs that run concurrently with Miami Basel, however, the actor paid $15,000 for Tailgate (Toyot) by Los Angeles artist Kaz Oshiro (above). Maguire was trailed around the fair by a few fans, but prominent Hollywood collector Michael Ovitz generated an even ­longer line when he headed to the storage stacks at the Art Supernova pavilion, which featured cutting-edge art. Oshiro, who was born in Japan, is known for meticulous paintings that replicate everyday items like kitchen cabinets and stereo speakers. Maguire is in good company: Power­house collector Charles Saatchi owns Oshiro’s Washer/Dryer No. 3. 

Real estate developer Steve Wilson and his wife, Laura Lee Brown, of the Brown-Forman distillery fortune, went on a spending spree in Miami, in part to fill the Museum Plaza, their projected multi-use tower in Louisville, Kentucky. Struck by how high-profile art projects have helped transform cities like Bilbao, Spain, Wilson and Brown hope to revitalize Louisville’s downtown district with the striking 62-story building, which features a contemporary-art museum jutting out midway up the skyscraper. The couple, longtime collectors and trustees of the Speed Art Museum, bought 25 pieces for a total of about $500,000, Wilson says. On display at the Museum Plaza will be High Seas (left), an installation by “cinematic sculptors” Jennifer and Kevin McCoy that Wilson and Brown bought in Miami. Video art is one of the market’s hottest sectors right now, and the McCoys are known for an interesting twist on the genre. Their works are a hybrid of video and sculpture using cameras and miniature replicas of film sets to generate live, projected footage. High Seas films and projects a five-foot-long illuminated model of the Titanic along with its viewers.