When Jamaica-born attorney Karla Ferguson-Soimaud returned to her adopted hometown of Miami in 2006 after three years in Paris, she felt the city’s cultural offerings failed to accurately reflect its diversity. 

With that in mind, she opened the Yeelen Gallery, which in 2011 moved to its current 12,000-plus-square-foot space in Little Haiti (where her artist husband, Jerome Soimaud, had been painting the locals for years). Its mission: to “promote the African diaspora,” i.e., showcase the ties of local arts (from visual to culinary) to the continent. To shop “the best selection of Alaïa outside of France,” Ferguson-Soimaud frequents Miami standby The Webster; for statement pumps by Paul Andrew and Gianvito Rossi, it’s shoe boutique Capretto. Her respite from the often overwhelming Art Basel scene? A visit to the sculpture-filled Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, plus a hearty helping of Haitian griot (a spicy fried-pork dish) at 30-year-old standby Chez Le Bebe.