The drama in this week's episode of Gallery Girls swirls around the well-known mega-fair Art Basel Miami Beach, a must for all aspiring gallerinas and socialites. The End of Century ladies try to export their downtown cool aesthetic to the land of bikinis, bronzer, and perpetual springbreak. Amy tries to help them. Liz tries to win over her withholding collector father, Marty Margulies. Maggie, Kerri, and Angela come along for the ride.
We first catch up with Liz, who is dining with her mother at Sushi Samba in the Village in NYC. In a scene that is both very real and very derivative of episode 3's lobster-boiling vignette, Liz complains about her inattentive and emotionally distant father to her somewhat blasé mother over seafood. This time, however, Liz’s daddy issues are Basel-centric: “Every time I go to Miami, my dad ignores me. You know how many times my dad picks me up from the airport? Zero.”
“My dad supports me because I’m his child. Other than that, there’s not any sort of affection or love. My mom always tells me my dad loves me in a different way. I don’t really know what that means.” Woah. Shit just got heavy.
Amy Bites the Dust, Eli Throws a Party
Over at yee old Coplan Hurowitz Art Advisory, boss lady Sharon calls Amy
Meanwhile, Rymag (that’s a power couple portmanteau of Maggie and Ryan) is getting gussied up for Eli’s annual pre-Basel swankfest at his apartment, which, as everyone in the New York art world knows, is THE pre-Miami meetup. The guests at Eli’s shindig include Eli’s dad, Eli’s brother, a Chinese art collector named Mark, and the entire Gallery Girls cast. Angela chats up Eli about her photography show. “One thing I learned from my show is as an emerging artist, you need to self-promote.” Eli tells her she’s got the potential to be a very successful photographer, but even Angela smells a rat. “I’m not sure I believe in Eli’s flattery, but I love hearing good things about myself.” Don’t we all?
Claudia and Chantal show up, which, as per usual, sends Liz into a minor rage. (Liz getting irrationally angry when Claudia and Chantal show up at things is starting to become a big Gallery Girls trope.) “Sorry I got distracted by Dumb and Dumber.” She’s upset both by their presence, and by the fact that they didn’t even say hi. “I mean come on, there’s rude and then there’s rude.” Speaking of rude, Liz then interrupts the girls' convo to invite Angela (and only Angela) to her dad Marty’s breakfast in Miami. “I definitely think I can connect with Angela on another level,” she says. “We both like photography and she just seems like a cool girl.” Claudia and Chantal kibbutz about their shared insult in a corner. “She’s just laden with insecurities,” says Claudia. “Liz is just a bitch,” says Chantal.
Amy's Sexual Secret, Chantal and Claudia’s Fallout
Meanwhile, Amy reflects on her stint working for Sharon. “It was a learning experience for me, because I leaned that I’m done interning.” She vows to get out there, make something of herself, and prove Sharon wrong.
Step one on her networking list is going with Claudia, Angela, and recurring guest-star Jane Holzer to the Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, Connecticut. In the car, Amy reveals that she went out with Eli two years ago. She claims they never slept together, but admits that they made out once. Claudia is incredulous: “My hunch is they hooked up. They went home together, had really dirty sex and he didn’t call her the next day.” Amy offers to help the EOC girls put on a pop-up exhibition in Miami. Angela immediately jumps on the Basel bandwagon, suggesting that she can show her photos in the space. Claudia is intrigued and slightly terrified at the prospect of working with Amy.
Allison Brant (Brant Foundation Director and Peter Brant scion) takes the group on a tour David Altmejd’s sweeping show of werewolf taxidermy and clawed wall installations, and hall of mirrors, the latter of which Angela calls “a narcissist's dream” (which she would know!) “Claudia and Angela are my favorite girls,” Amy decides. “We bonded though our appreciation for art.” Amy makes a second overture towards the pop-up gallery. Claudia agrees: “I’m totally going to take you up on that, and you’re totally going to regret it.”
Claudia returns to EOC to find Chantal researching Michelin-starred restaurants in Miami. She then proposes they set up a pop-up store in Miami, an idea Chantal greets with hostility, and — for some reason — tears. “You can do it. I don’t want any part in it,” she says curtly. She tells Claudia she lacks focus, doesn’t know what it takes to open a store, and “should get off the Adderall or something.”
Kerri goes to the Allegria Hotel in Long Beach for some family time. “Whenever I get stressed out, I just need to go home and relax. It helps me breathe.” Nothing says “home” like a four star waterfront resort hotel. Kerri and her relatives clink mimosas to toast her not-so-new-anymore West Village apartment. Caroline, Kerri’s 10-year-old cousin looks beleaguered. We are so sick of Kerri’s whole apartment narrative.
The Girls Descend on Miami, Marty Gives Liz the Cold Shoulder
Following a montage of the girls stuffing things into suitcases and a dollop of Chantalian sass ("Claudia surprised me about her idea to do a pop-up in Miami, not in a good way"), the girls land in Miami. Team Brooklyn sticks out like three sore, Opening Ceremony-clad thumbs in the 305. “You can definitely tell we’re not any part of the local flavor,” says Claudia, increasingly the most refreshingly self-aware character on the show. The tension between Chantal and Claudia seems to have blown over a little. Chantal is still militantly dead-set on chillaxing and not working on her trip to Miami: “I don’t want it to be a business trip with Claudia’s last-minute pop-up.”
Meanwhile, Sharon and her favorite (and as of now only) intern Kerri scope out the scene in Basel. “This is like the biggest art convention in the world.” She’s not in Long Beach anymore! The dynamic duo marvel at a piece by Romanian woodcut artist twins Gert and Uwe Tobias.
Back at the hotel, Angela has a problem. She only has like six outfits, but must go to 1,700 parties. #gallerygirlproblems. Claudia advises that if she dresses the same, everyone will remember her. “You need one LAMD,” Angela says. A LAMD is, Angela explains, is a “look at me device…Usually it’s my big hats, or pink pants, or nipples.”
We meet Amy on her home-turf at an event at men’s luxury boutique Duncan Quinn. “I’m excited to be back in Miami. I’m a Miami girl!”
Liz resolves to be nice to Amy because, after all, she’s not a horrible person. “I’ve got some kind of heart buried deep down inside there.” Former colleagues Amy and Kerri give each other a firm hug, trying to stamp out the lingering awkwardness between them. Chantal is still miffed about the pop-up store. “I’m just going to put on a brave face, and blame Claudia when it all fails.” Claudia and Angela are on the lookout for future ex-husbands when they spot Eli. “Welcome to Miami,” he says, inadvertently quoting Will Smith and giving off the erroneous air that he runs the whole town. The EOC girls begin to talk about their pop-up store. “We actually recruited Amy,” Angela says. “Do you know Amy?” The mention of his ex-paramour’s name makes Eli pretend to see someone important and sprint to the other side of the room.
The next day, Liz pays a visit to her childhood hairstylist, Michael Carroll. “Do you remember when you were a little girl, and you said you were never going to be blonde?” he reminisces. He suggests she get her “vayjayjay” waxed. She agrees. This is Miami, after all. In the back room, a sassy beautician says, “Whatever name you feel like you need to call me right now, you go for it mama. Cause there ain’t shit I can do about the pain.” In Miami even bikini waxes are a barrel of laughs.
Meanwhile, Amy plays host to Angela, Chantal, and Claudia at her parent’s house in Carol Gables. Unlike her off-puttingly upper-crusty Upper East Side townhouse, her Miami home is fun and bright and filled with child’s artwork. Even those picky EOC girls are impressed. The foursome strikes up an unlikely friendship, smoking cigars by the pool. Things are going smoothly until Chantal belittles Amy’s taste in coffee. “This is like, Folgers.” “What’s wrong with you?” says Claudia. “I can’t take you anywhere.” “Yeah, I need to learn manners.”
Amy takes them on a tour of possible pop-up venues (though, since ABMB is ongoing during the filming, one wonders what exactly their timetable is on this project). First, they visit artist Rosario Bond’s studio, which is filled to the brim with folksy junk assemblages. The EOC crew is not exactly impressed: “The whole thing looks like Pink threw up in it,” says Claudia. The next option, the rather swishy Cafeina Lounge, is a little more to their liking but panic sets in they consider logistics like lighting and installation.
We catch up with Liz, where else?, but at the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse. “I definitely got my interest in art from my dad. There’s no world without art in it, for me.” The family drama between Liz and her absent father takes place under Ernesto Nesto’s testicular hanging installation, symbolizing a looming paternal presence. She wants to Marty to go to dinner with her and her boyfriend Bobby, but he says he has to attend the Whitney dinner instead. We've all been there, Liz.
Elsewhere in the Margulies Collection, Maggie admires all the neon artwork. Apparently, her dad helped create the chemical reaction that makes neon lights possible. (Wait... what?) Ryan, the show's token "ordinary guy" and art world outsider, asks Liz how long her dad has been collecting. “Since before it was cool to like art. He bought Lichtensteins and whatevers for like $10,000.”
Guess what? Liz is not pleased when Claudia, Chantal, and Angela enter. “I didn’t even invite them, and they come here and don’t say hello.” (Tip on pleasing Liz: say hello!) Liz laughs at Claudia’s oversized floppy hat. “They’re trying to be Miami, and they don’t know what people wear here.” Claudia, for one, is totally uncomfortable: “I feel like I’m on the wrong turf. Its like the Bloods and the Crips and I’ve crossed over into the wrong land. I’m going to get shanked.” Unfortunately, due to deceptive editing in the promo, the Claudia/Liz showdown we’ve been waiting for is deferred. Claudia does in fact say the much-anticipated phase, “Your dad can create a collection but you can't even dress yourself.” Alas, Liz is regrettably out of earshot. The stage is set, but we’re going to have to wait until next week for a proper face-off.
Next week on Gallery Girls: Spencer’s erotic dream fulfilled?, pop-up debacles, and Amy faces eviction.