The Arts >>

• Best Museum
  Museum of Art/Fort Lauderdale
  Less than a decade ago, the prospects for the Museum of Art/Fort Lauderdale were grim. There was talk of a third-party takeover, or of even closing the place down altogether. Then came, in short succession, "Saint Peter and the Vatican: The Legacy of the Popes," "Diana: A Celebration," and, most... More >>
• Best Hip Hop Group (4 Comments)
  Major League
  While Broward County isn't known for its hip-hop, there are some quality acts here making a sound that transcends the current divisions in rap music. At one end you've got folks who think street-hop is the only rap worth mentioning; if it's not gritty and at least somewhat hood, they won't give... More >>
• Best Electronic Artist
  Ean Sugarman
  South Florida is a notoriously tough electronic market to break into because some of the world's greatest electronic artists call the area home. Standing out takes an assload of talent. How do you circumvent this? By being unique, not just as a DJ but as a producer, and learning to make a name... More >>
• Best Album
  Sorry, Vampire John Ralston
  There could have easily been a drop-off after his amazing 2005 solo debut, Needle Bed, but Lake Worth native John Ralston never succumbed to a sophomore slump. Instead, Ralston got to work immediately on what would become Sorry, Vampire, pairing up with ex-Wilco keyboardist/engineer Jay Bennett... More >>
• Best Reggae Sound System
  Black Chiney
  Few reggae sound systems around the country gig as often as our own Black Chiney. While perched here in South Florida, the five members of Black Chiney work nearly every corner of the globe, from Europe to Asia to the Caribbean and beyond, keeping up a schedule as rich as the topnotch reggae... More >>
• Best Music Festival
  Langerado Music Festival
  It's hard to think of any other local festival more worthy of this honor than Langerado. Sure, this year it took place in the middle of the Everglades, so it technically wasn't in Broward or Palm Beach County, but Langerado is undeniably a homebrewed festival. The organizers live in Broward... More >>
• Best Band To Break Up In The Last 12 Months
  Way of The Groove
  Way of The Groove was an amazing, mind-melting jazz-fusion combo. Sometimes their guitars sounded like hordes of evil alien insects; sometimes their drums sounded like a tribe of angry Africans. Always, their horns and keys were tasteful and smart, and their bass came at you with too many... More >>
• Best Country Band
  Shadow Creek at Texas Rose Saloon
  It might seem like all the cowboys have gotten the hell out of Dodge, but there are still a few country music holdouts in South Florida, like country cover band Shadow Creek, which gigs from Okeechobee down to Homestead. They have a loyal following of line dancers, too. A surefire way to catch... More >>
• Best Tribute Artist
  Hot Rod
  South Florida has its bevy of tribute artists, but to be the best you can't just sound like the real deal. You can't just look like the fella either. You have to have that special something the artist doesn't have. In the case of Hot Rod, our own local Rod Stewart tributist, that special... More >>
• Best Theater For Drama
  Palm Beach Dramaworks
  Palm Beach Dramaworks is a tiny company in a tiny space that, thanks to its Palm Beach subscription base, has production values to rival most theaters three times its size. And for serious drama, intimacy matters. Watching The Voice of the Prairie at PBD, you get the sense that you're in a... More >>
• Best Actor
  Todd Allen Durkin Thom PaineThe Mosaic Theatre Project at the American Heritage Center For the Arts
  Todd Allen Durkin is one crazy motherfucker, or at least he plays one on stage. He'll play anything but sane, a quirk that has rarely served him as well as it did in Will Eno's Thom Paine. Thom Paine is a one-man show in which the protagonist makes no sense whatsoever: he begins stories without... More >>
• Best Art Gallery
  Habatat Galleries
  Location may not be everything, but if you're an art gallery, you could do a lot worse than to be located at Gallery Center, Boca Raton's high-end mini-mall of seven individual galleries housed under one roof. On the down side, your competition is right next door. On the up side, anyone who... More >>
• Best Actress (2 Comments)
  Pilar Uribe 9 Parts of Desire The Mosaic Theatre Project at The American Heritage Center For the Arts
  If New Times has talked too much about Pilar Uribe's year-old performance in Heather Raffo's 9 Parts of Desire, that's only because we haven't yet found anything better to talk about. The past year has seen the woman take on a more diverse and challenging array of roles than anybody in the... More >>
• Best Supporting Actor
  Terrell Hardcastle DoubtCaldwell Theatre
  As Father Brendan Flynn in John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning Doubt, Terrell Hardcastle had what looked like the time of his life screwing mercilessly with the heads of his audience. Doubt is a play about, well, "doubt" — specifically, the doubt of a nun considering what to do... More >>
• Best Supporting Actress
  Pat BowieDoubtCaldwell Theatre
  Doubt had the two trickiest supporting roles of the theater season, and in retrospect it's hard to imagine Pat Bowie's part going to anyone else. Bowie played Mrs. Muller, a black mother in the 1960s Bronx, whose young son may or may not have been molested by a parish priest. Bowie's sole scene... More >>
• Best Play
  John Patrick Shanley's DoubtCaldwell Theatre
  South Florida should be very proud. In any other year, Thom Paine, The Clean House, 9 Parts of Desire, or The Fourth Wall would have all been shoe-ins for Best Play. Alas, this was a year of staggering theater, and no show was quite so staggering as Doubt, probably the best play John Patrick... More >>
• Best New Play
  Juan C. Sanchez's Red TideThe Promethean Theatre at the Mailman Hollywood Theatre Nova Southeastern University
  Near as we can tell, South Florida's got only two playwrights who live up to New Times' standards of both talent and weirdness. One is Marco Ramirez, who mostly sticks to Miami, and whose only full-length offering this year was a pulpy play about a werewolf (but look out next year, when he'll... More >>
• Best Musical
  Aaron Posner and James Sugg's A Murder, A Mystery, A MarriageFlorida Stage at Plaza Del Mar Shopping Center
  Who cares if Mark Twain's long-missing short story really needed a musical adaptation? The more pressing question is this: did music this good actually need to be wrapped around any story at all? No. Though the Twain-inspired yarn was fun and funny, it was mostly just fluff; when you've got a... More >>
• Best Set Design
  Tim BennettThe Clean HouseCaldwell Theatre
  The Clean House was a play about the importance of getting filthy, and no play in the last year or two has enjoyed a set that so perfectly captured its theme. Beginning as the oppressively clean domicile of a couple of doctors, by the end the stage is an irreparable mess — or so it would... More >>
• Best Director
  J. Barry LewisThe Fourth WallPalm Beach Dramaworks
  This paper wasn't very nice to The Fourth Wall. Essentially, we called it a beautiful, exciting failure. We were right, too. But The Fourth Wall was only a failure because its ambitions were so large, and raised our hopes to delirious, irrational heights. Now that we have some perspective, while... More >>
• Best Ensemble Cast
  The Fourth WallPalm Beach Dramaworks
  The Fourth Wall was a show with a special shine. Though dealing in very heavy material, actors Peter Thomasson, Angie Radosh, Patti Gardener, and Gregg Weiner honed in on the wittiest, craziest, and funniest lines and moods in A.R. Gurney's script and made them dance. The show could easily have... More >>
• Best Venue to See Stand-Up
  Improv Paradise Live
  Let's face it, South Florida does not have a great stand-up scene. It's not that people here don't want to laugh — have you seen the Dolphins recently? (Bu-dum-bum!) But seriously, folks... even comic aficionados are hard-pressed to name a great, nationally-known comedian who cut his or... More >>
• Best Solo Exhibition
  "Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction"
  Georgia O'Keeffe is one of those artists we think we know oh so well and hence often take for granted. Gigantic close-ups of flowers? Check! Bleached-out cattle skulls? Check! And it was just such assumed familiarity that made the Norton's "Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction" such a... More >>
• Best Exhibition Title
  "Craig Kucia: many sundays were spent talking of rockets"Art and Culture Center of Hollywood
  Butterflies, cookies, tree stumps, and other diverse things cryptically appear amid tropical foliage in Craig Kucia's oil paintings, exhibited in a solo show at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood last year. The Miami-based artist gave up none of his secrets in his all-lowercase titles for... More >>
• Best Group Exhibition
  "Life as a Legend: Marilyn Monroe"Boca Raton Museum of Art
  Nearly half a century has elapsed since the meteoric career of Marilyn Monroe, and a case can be made that we still don't really know the creature who started out life as Norma Jeane Mortenson Baker and ended it 36 years later as a drug-overdose statistic. That premise was beautifully realized... More >>
• Best Visual Artist
  Francie Bishop Good
  With an artist whose community connections are as far-ranging as those of Francie Bishop Good, the instructive question to ask is not "What is she involved with?" but rather "What is she not involved with?" Good, who holds a master's in art from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, is... More >>
• Best Artist to Leave South Florida in the Past 12 Months (2 Comments)
  Enrique Martinez Celaya
  At first it seemed too good to be true — an artist the caliber of Enrique Martínez Celaya setting up shop in South Florida. Then settle he did, and not in Miami or South Beach or even Palm Beach, either, but in Delray Beach, of all places. The Cuban-born exile bought a residence and... More >>
• Best Movie Theater (1 Comment)
  Cinema Paradiso
  It doesn't get any better than this: A big theater that hasn't succumbed to the dreaded multiplex sickness. Paradiso started out as a church, not a movie palace, and a warren of little-box theaters was never in the cards. Instead, they offer lots of plush velvet seats, one big screen, and movies... More >>
• Best Live Band
  Jacob Jeffries Band
  Seemingly coming out of nowhere, in the past 12 months the Jacob Jeffries Band has made a huge mark on the local music scene. Fronted by honey-voiced, 19-year-old singer/songwriter/pianist Jacob Groten, this quartet has some of the best-composed tunes in the area — and outsiders are... More >>
• Best Rock Band (4 Comments)
  Big Bang Radio
  Coming straight out of Palm Beach County, this quintet kicks ass like no other straight-ahead rock group in Florida. They can be loud and fast when they want to, but lead singer Mike Sanchez always remains easy to understand, making their live shows a treat. This is the same group that made it... More >>
• Personal Best
  Santiago Rubino
  You can see Santiago Rubino's work on the hot, muggy streets of Miami or in an air-conditioned gallery. A native of Argentina, self-taught, he honed his craft under threat of arrest. He depicts melancholy waifs in attitudes stately and prim, their clothing often of the Renaissance era. Others... More >>