At Art Basel Miami Beach, as at any art-world gathering, Thelma Golden was a star.

Ms. Golden – the deputy director of the Studio Museum in Harlem (also known as the first African-American curator at the Whitney, where she worked for more than 10 years) – got all the perks. She carried the coveted VIP card and attended the most exclusive parties. Admirers greeted her at every turn.

“She is one of the great personalities in the art world. She has charisma. She’s tiny, but as soon as she walks into a room, everyone notices her. And her smile. It’s sunshine,” said the director of Art Basel Miami Beach, Samuel Keller.

Ms. Golden, 39, is the kind of person Mr. Keller wants at his fair. “It’s not just a place to buy and sell; it’s a place for networking, for ideas, for research,” he said.

Ms. Golden concurred: “I’m about relationships, not objects. I’m here because there’s a whole vast country of colleagues, internationally, and also from the South and Southwest, that I don’t see often.”

In her four days in Florida, she packed in walk-throughs of the fair, visits to private collections, an intimate luncheon for friends, and a few parties each night.

There’s hardly time for her to catch her breath – tonight she’s back in New York to introduce a program at the museum featuring Lyle Ashton Harris and Anna Deavere Smith, before flying to California for an opening. And that’s on the heels of two trips to London and another to Los Angeles.

“I, Thelma, travel a ton. I travel so much it’s down to a real science. I have whole wardrobes committed to travel. It’s always ready to go…. As much as I will make 15 costume changes it all has to fit in one bag.”

Still, New York is home. Ms. Golden lives a block away from the Brooklyn Museum and grew up in Queens. This jet-setter even has a car – a red Volkswagen Jetta.

At 8:45 a.m. Friday, the second day of the fair, Ms. Golden had already done an hour of yoga in her room at the Loews Miami Beach and was embarking on a jaunt to three private collections. Settling into the backseat of a navy-blue Mercedes, she reflected on what she hoped to accomplish at the fair.

“It’s not about buying; my museum has too structured an acquisitions process for me to buy here,” she said.

However, the potential to connect is great: “I will see a lot of artists here and inevitably many of them will tell me something and I’ll go back and say we need to think about or work on that. Or I hear what they’re getting ready to do.”

“And I’ll see other curators here – we’ll talk not so much about what’s happening here, but about what’s happening at their institutions -what they’re doing what we’re doing.”

For example, Ms. Golden is consult ing on an exhibition of the artist Glenn Ligon at the Power Plant in Toronto. It happened that all the players – Mr. Ligon, the curators and director at the Power Plant, and Mr. Ligon’s dealer – were in Miami Beach.

Ms. Golden also ran into the dealer of a British artist she’s working with. “She has one of the works of the type I’m going to show, and we had a very technical conversation on how to frame them.”

“A lot of dealers want to show me things. Jack Tilton sent me jpegs of Jeff Sonhouse, but to see the painting, that’s pretty amazing,” Ms. Golden said.

As the car approached the Spanish style villa of Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz in Key Biscayne, she turned her thoughts to its owners.

“A couple of years ago, the installation that Rosa de la Cruz did was better than any exhibition I’d seen that year. She’s done some things that put me to shame,” Ms. Golden said.

When we arrived and Mrs. de la Cruz spotted Ms. Golden at her door, she hurried right over. “Thelma I see you; I have to say hello,” Mrs. de la Cruz said, opening her arms for an embrace.

As Ms. Golden walked around the house, taking particular note of a drawing by Paul P., she ran into the chairman of the American Center Foundation, Frederick Henry. He showed her a list of curators his foundation is considering for grants (Ms. Golden is a past recipient; the grants support emerging curators). She scanned the list and pointed to her recommendations). She also invited him to her lunch.

The next stop was the home of Dennis and Debra Scholl, where Ms. Golden chatted with another curator at the Studio Museum, Christine Kim; a class mate from Smith, Wendy Cromwell; a former Whitney colleague who now heads the Kitchen, Debra Singer; and several artists.

“Curators matter. Thelma matters a lot,” said Mr. Scholl. “She looks with her eyes and not her ears. She is not afraid to champion works that the rest of the art world are ignoring or are uncertain about. This alone allows her to create, at times, the zeitgeist, in certain areas.”

On the stairs, she found French dealer Ann Delacroix. “I have to go to Paris. I want to see the Isaac Julien show at the Pompidou,” Ms. Golden said. Ms. Delacroix responded, “And I have a fantastic catalog I’m going to send you.”

The last stop before the lunch was the Rubell family warehouse. All three Rubells, Mera and Donald, and their son Jason embraced her.

“Look at your dress, it’s so Miami,” Jason told Ms. Golden, who was wearing a bright Cynthia Rowley baby doll dress and silver Sigerson Morrison sandals.

Ms. Golden met the Rubells while at the Whitney – they hosted the official party for the 1993 Whitney Biennial, Ms. Golden’s first as a curator. And they’ve admired her eye ever since. “She’s doing the most important work. The Studio Museum in Harlem has the most important potential,” said Mrs. Rubell, a native New Yorker herself.

In turn, Ms. Golden believes private collectors serve an important function and sees a blurring between the roles of collector and curator. “There’s a lot of hybridity, who does what and how and where it all stands,” she said.

At the Rubell warehouse, she pointed to a Charles Ray sculpture composed of eight cast-fiberglass nude males, all of which resemble the artist. “This work would be really tough for an institutional setting. It’s amazing what the collectors can do, to put it in the proper space.”

Ms. Golden admired an installation of three Elizabeth Peyton works (“It’s a model of how to hang”) and a sink by Robert Gober. “He has many sinks, but this sink is my favorite piece in the world. He’s what an artist should be,” she said.

On the warehouse’s second floor, Ms. Golden saw the director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Paul Schimmel. Both praised the reconfiguration of the space. “This is a museum. It’s no longer funky at the edges. It’s totally professional. And the work is treated in a generous way,” he said.

“And this is coming from a man whose space is the envy of everyone in the art world,” Ms. Golden said, noting the relatively small size of the Studio Museum, not to mention its 8-foot ceilings.

Next stop: Lunch.

Gary Simmons and Mr. Ligon are the “featured artists” at the lunch she hosted with the actor David Alan Grier, who offered the patio of his room at the Delano for the occasion.

“Gary and Glenn are the first artists I ever seriously worked with,” Ms. Golden said. “I had exhibits for both of them at Philip Morris, and they were both in the Whitney biennial I curated in 1993,” she said.

Mr. Grier first learned of Ms. Golden after seeing her pivotal “Black Male” show at the Whitney. The two met through Mr. Ligon. “Her intelligence and evaluation and criticism are great and challenging. She’s a stage mother to these artists, as if they were little girls in ‘Annie,'” he said.

Over grilled chicken, fresh greens, and white wine, the group kicked back and enjoyed the ocean view.

Some present – Mr. Simmons, Malik Gaines, Alexandro Segade, and Ellen Ross- just launched Yard magazine, an art magazine by artists.

Mr. Simmons recalled a trip he took with Ms. Golden for an installation at Jason Rubell’s gallery.

“There was a hurricane,” she said.

“And I needed flowers for the piece and we couldn’t get flowers here because of the hurricane so we had to truck them down from Georgia,” he said.

After lunch, the group headed over to the fair. Ms. Golden was in efficiency mode even as people stopped her to chat every five feet.

“Let’s walk faster; we can walk and talk faster,” she said.

She spent time looking at a Chris Ofili painting, a Yinka Shonibare sculpture, and drawings by Kara Walker.

At Mr. Ligon’s gallery, Ms. Golden struck up a conversation with a fair goer. They arrived on the subject of yoga.

Ms. Golden broke into a road warrior pose.

“It’s all about balance,” she said.