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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Gone are the days of the Miami cliché: that is, when Miami was thought of as a beach town. Indeed, this is a city—a thriving metropolis—that also happens to be bordered by inviting blue waves of the Atlantic Ocean. But the city is increasingly defining itself by its move inward, and at the center of it all is the flourishing Arts & Entertainment District, bordered roughly between downtown’s Biscayne Boulevard and Miami Avenue, with cultural institutions like the National YoungArts Foundation at its uppermost stretch and the American Airlines Arena at its lower end. At the quasi-epicenter of it all stands the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, one of the world’s leading performing arts organizations and venues that attracts both local and world-class companies. According to Kim Stone, general manager of American Airlines Arena and a board member of the Downtown Development Authority who first moved to Miami in 1990, there was no “downtown” back then—if you wanted entertainment, you went to South Beach. Now, she affirms, downtown exists in abundance, attracting residents, businesses, talent, and nightlife. “Arts, culture, and entertainment are the soul of Miami now,” Stone affirms. “And it’s a diverse soul.” This page, clockwise from top left: A nighttime view of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County; Andrea Allmon, winner in dance at YoungArts Miami 2016; the Jewel Box, on the campus of the National YoungArts Foundation’s national headquarters in Miami; the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami’s Museum Park is a planetarium, aquarium, and science museum in one; Harry Connick, Jr., performed at the Arsht Center’s 7th Annual Gala; hanging gardens at the Perez Art Museum Miami. Opposite page: Sarah Arison, a trustee of the National YoungArts Foundation, with the artist Tony Tasset’s Deer (fiberglass, epoxy, and paint) in Miami’s Collins Park during Art Basel 2015.