Joey Lico’s Miami Art Week: The Cultivist, The Bass, and More

As Executive Director of The Cultivist, Joey Lico steers one of the art world’s most trusted memberships for immersive access, cultural engagement, and beautifully built experiences. Last week, for Miami Art Week 2025, her vision expanded in cinematic scale through the organization’s partnership with Capital One and artist Alex Prager on “Mirage Factory”—a surreal, meticulously crafted world that reimagined Los Angeles’s dream machinery through staged sets, artificial groves, uncanny nostalgia, and Prager’s signature tension between the real and the imagined. 

Extending across The Shelborne By Proper with programming, storytelling, and curated moments for Capital One Venture X cardholders, the activation became one of the week’s gravitational centers, offering both respite and revelation amid Miami’s intensity. 

Below, Lico shares with Whitewall her personal “Best of Miami” highlights, including a musical performance by Leon Bridges, a BMW lunch, and an artwork by Zé Tepedino.

Best Event

Alex Prager’s “Mirage Factory” with Capital One and The Cultivist—the gravitational center of the week: cinematic, meticulously built, and the only installation people returned to again and again. A world that held under Miami pressure.

Best Show

Sarah Crowner at The Bass. Our breakfast with Valentino and Sarah opened the week with clarity and intention. The show held its own while everything else in Miami vibrated around it — a reminder of why museum exhibitions anchor the week.

Best Moment

The Dave Beran dinner inside Alex Prager’s Mirage Factory. Alex shaped the environment, and the evening carried her unmistakable sense of scale. Sharing a table with Nate Lewis, Franklin and Jessica Sirmans, and Tavares Strachan, all people I admire greatly, while one of L.A.’s best chefs cooked at full force, created its own harmony. And then Diana Ross performed! A rare convergence of art, talent, and history.

Best Surprise

Leon Bridges at The Shelborne’s Sound Sessions. I still don’t know how they pulled that off — he’s effortlessly cool and one of the voices of our moment. The perfect, unexpected release with our Capital One collaborators.

Best Vibe

The Cultivist’s annual artist lunch with BMW at the 1 Hotel. It’s the moment every year when the noise drops away and the people shaping culture gather at one long table. Kennedy Yanko at the center this year, but truly a decade-long community of artists growing together.

Best Discovery

Zé Tepedino. His sculptural work at Casa Triângulo at ABMB stood apart — grounded, exacting, and deeply attuned to material and place. In a week built on immediacy, his approach invited a more considered way of looking.