It’s the week before Art Basel, and the rain is pouring in Miami. There’s an electric charge in the air. Even under a flat grey sky, South Beach thrums with anticipation for what is about to come: the collectors, satellite fairs, dinners, brand takeovers and parties that will soon transform the city into one of the busiest cultural events of the year.

The Shelborne by Proper is a perfect sanctuary from the chaos. The hotel is an Art Deco dreamscape – all sweeping curves and opulent, glossy marble. Opened in 1941 and later given a 1950s glow-up by Morris Lapidus, it reopened last year following a $100 million renovation, with most of its old Miami glamour intact. The white Deco façade, teamed with the cinematic interiors, makes you feel like you’ve walked into an airbrushed version of the past.

But it isn’t just about looking slick. The hotel is clearly positioning itself as a serious player in Miami’s art scene, with a collection that leans towards women artists, local voices and tactile, craft-led practices. This includes Kenny Nguyen’s hand-dyed silk works, Regina Jestrow’s quilted fabric pieces, Lauren Shapiro’s ceramic sculptures and Alina Birkner’s colour-field paintings, alongside work by Jessy Nite, Bruce Ingram and Rosa Roberts.

This febrile creative atmosphere only intensifies around Miami Art Week, when the city’s hotels increasingly function as cultural venues rather than places to sleep between fairs. Last year, the Shelborne hosted Lee Pivnik’s Wellspring as part of Miami Beach’s No Vacancy programme – an installation tracing water through Florida’s landscape and ecosystems – plus Pilar Zeta’s The Observer Effect on the beach, and programming including Todd Terje, Justine Skye and Leon Bridges’ JUMP JUDY party, to name just a few.

Miami is already a city where art, hedonism and spectacle bleed into each other. You can spend the day looking at famed work by blue-chip artists, then end up later that night on the sand, downing shots with curators, artists, actors and dealers, as well as obnoxious Silicon Valley billionaires. Miami is not a place for the fainthearted, the morally righteous, or the easily overwhelmed. The pending return of Grand Theft Auto to Vice City later this year only underlines what the city has always known about itself: it’s both a real place and an all-American fever dream.

Thankfully, at the Shelborne, the glamour is the more soothing kind. Even in overcast weather, with the sea thrashing outside and South Beach hushed in anticipation, the hotel felt like a lavish, old-Hollywood retreat. Watching the sun set through the slatted blinds made me feel like I’d walked onto the American Gigolo film set, or some kind of vaporwave film noir. The art programme gives the Shelborne some cultural weight, but the pleasure is even simpler than that: soft-focus rooms, sea views, old-school luxury, and a sense of being close to the chaos of Miami, without ever being consumed by it.