Image Conscious | The ingenuity of Man Ray, a key figure in the surrealist and dadaist movements, comes to fresh light this fall in an exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art that focuses on his photograms—or Rayographs, as he called them. Opening September 14, “Man Ray: When Objects Dream” is the first show to highlight Ray’s use of this rudimentary technique—placing objects on photosensitive paper—and the ways he brought out its rich possibilities, experimenting with unexpected materials and multiple exposures. The first Rayograph dates to 1921, when the Philadelphia-born Ray had just arrived in Paris. He would spend the next 18 years in the city, part of the vibrant Montparnasse scene. One of his collaborators there was fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, and her namesake fashion house is among the sponsors of the Met exhibition. The label’s creative director Daniel Roseberry feels a connection with Ray, who was also an American making his way in Paris. “Man Ray’s imagery feels at once specific to its time and eternal,” Roseberry says. “It’s something I think about often in my own work: how can we capture people’s imagination by showing them something new, something revelatory, while also reminding them of where we’ve come from?”
Crafting a New Biennial Along the Ancient Silk Road | According to the origin story of plov, the national dish of Uzbekistan, it was created to cure a lovesick prince who wanted to marry a craftsman’s daughter. The first Bukhara Biennial, titled “Recipes for Broken Hearts,” takes its name from this tale. Artistic director Diana Campbell is pulling together many of the story’s threads—namely, craft and food—for the event, which opens September 5. Many biennial artists are working with Uzbek craftspeople to create pieces expressly for the show. “In 2025, the craftsman’s daughter should have a name,” Campbell says. “They should all be invited to the table.” For example, Tavares Strachan is working with an artisan to weave Langston Hughes poems into a carpet, while Laila Gohar is building a rock-crystal house from a local grape-juice sugar. “If you’re traveling to Uzbekistan to see contemporary art,” says Campbell, “it’s important that you’re not seeing anything you can find anywhere else in the world.”
Select All | With outposts in Paris and New York, the Amelie du Chalard Gallery has become a resource for top interior designers over its 10-year history. One such talent, Kelly Behun, will inaugurate a guest curation series at the Manhattan showroom this fall, outfitting the space with her own picks from the gallery’s 80 artists.
Mellow Yellow | Artist Ed Ruscha and chef Ruthie Rogers, of London’s beloved River Café, were meandering through a grove behind Ruscha’s Los Angeles studio last year when the surrounding lemon trees gave them the idea for the cookbook they’d always wanted to do together. The result is “Squeeze Me: Lemon Recipes & Art” (Rizzoli), a series of sweet and savory concoctions—from lemon fennel seed biscuits to sea bass carpaccio with lemon and tomato—accompanied by new works Ruscha created with his classic Boy Scout Utility Modern font. LoveFrom, Jony Ive’s studio, contributed the overall design and the aphoristic texts. “A lemon is not just fruit,” reads one, “it is a mood.”
Gym Class | The latest from Technogym’s collection of sleek exercise equipment is the Reform, a Pilates reformer that comes in three colorways (Sandstone, shown, Diamond Black and Pearl Grey), features nautical-strength ropes and vegan leather, and helpfully stores upright to save space.
In Conclusion | The countdown is on for the final few weeks before the five-year closure of Paris’ Centre Pompidou. Celine is even sponsoring free access on the last day, September 22. Wolfgang Tillmans’ aptly titled show, “Nothing Could Have Prepared Us – Everything Could Have Prepared Us,” is the appropriate swansong before renovations begin. The German artist has taken over the museum’s vacated 64,500-square-foot Public Information Library, filling it with nearly four decades’ worth of his photographic work, which ranges from the political to the poetic and often mixes the two.
On The Rocks | The National Art Center, Tokyo, is the brilliant setting for “Bulgari Kaleidos: Colors, Cultures and Crafts,” opening September 17. Displaying nearly 350 pieces from the Italian jeweler’s archives and private collections, the exhibition will examine Bulgari’s use of colorful gemstones across three themes: scientific aspects, cultural symbolism and light’s function in perception.
Contemporary artists Lara Favaretto, Mariko Mori and Akiko Nakayama were each tapped to contribute new works. Favaretto has repurposed car wash brushes as kinetic sculptures, while Mori has built one of her “Onogoro Stone” pieces, inspired by Japanese mythology. Nakayama’s installation mixes together water, sound and pigments to form fluid, real-time projections. In designing the exhibition as a whole, Japanese firm SANAA and Italian studio Formafantasma referenced both Roman mosaics and gingko leaves.
The show traces Bulgari’s evolution from traditional designs to its postwar embrace of vibrant gems such as amethyst and turquoise. Among the key pieces on display are a convertible 1969 sautoir necklace set with a rainbow of precious stones and a 1961 emerald necklace worn by Italian movie stars Gina Lollobrigida and Monica Vitti.
Poetic License | In the late 1970s, photographer David Wojnarowicz took a series of photographs of friends wearing a mask of Arthur Rimbaud’s face. The black-and-white pictures seem to show the 19th-century French poet resurrected in the crumbling New York City of the late 20th century, eating in a deli, loitering under overpasses, riding the subway, doing drugs. This fall, “Arthur Rimbaud in New York” is the subject of an exhibition of the same name opening at Manhattan’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. It will also be explored in a forthcoming book from Skira, edited by the show’s curator, Antonio Sergio Bessa.
In the Bag | To celebrate the opening of the House of Dior New York, the fashion label is rolling out a range of pieces exclusive to the Manhattan flagship, from T-shirts to trays and bags, many in a chic newsprint-style pattern.
Dior Book Tote, $3,600; available at the House of Dior New York.
High Energy | Joel Mesler has seen the art world from many sides, as an artist, dealer and collector. Now he’s added creator of museum merch to that list.
For his new show at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York, titled “Joel Mesler: Miles of Smiles,” he’s set up his “Smile Shop” in the museum lobby, with playful offerings of his own design, from charm necklaces to fruit bowls to brightly painted chairs.
It’s all very much in keeping with his exhibition’s premise, an office-slash-studio space, outfitted with his own works and those of artist friends, where Mesler may or may not be in attendance during opening hours.
Heirlooms Apparent | Opening September 12, “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” sees the Crawley family struggling to preserve the titular Yorkshire estate. As they face death, divorce and debt, jewelry plays a role in underlining their challenges.
The show’s longtime costume designer Anna Robbins turned to London estate jeweler Bentley & Skinner to assemble a collection of pieces that were both historically accurate for the 1930s and reflective of the story arc. She first considered what might be passed down from the family matriarch, the recently deceased Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham. In one scene, for example, her granddaughter Lady Mary wears one of Violet’s brooches. “We were also really clear that [Violet’s] garnet ring would become part of Mary’s everyday jewelry,” says Robbins.
To give sartorial symbolism to the scandalousness of Mary’s divorce, Robbins paired a red-silk dress cut on the bias with a diamond Art Deco brooch fastened at the base of a low back. “There was something about entering into the 1930s that galvanized us,” Robbins says of the bold looks seen on both Mary and her sister, Lady Edith. “There was a new sense of creativity.”
The wealth of tiaras in the film may seem to run counter to the Depression-era setting, but the Victorian- and Edwardian-era pieces reflect the realities of an aristocratic family past its financial prime. “These are heirloom pieces. What’s on display is what they’ve got to lose,” says Robbins of the tiaras. “They would probably sell their jewelry before they sold the estate.” —Shannon Adducci
The Scenic Route | One day during the pandemic, Frédéric Biousse and Guillaume Foucher got in the car and set out from Paris for a strategic road trip around Brittany. The co-founders of boutique hotel group Fontenille Collection were on a mission to find the next location for their growing brand. “We did a complete tour, north, west and south,” says Biousse of their coastal drive.
They came across an old, family-owned hotel in the town of Perros-Guirec, with panoramic Atlantic views. Biousse texted the owners, who initially weren’t interested in selling—until a few months later, when they had a change of heart. “They liked the fact that we loved the property,” says Biousse. “They knew that we would upgrade it, but we would keep the feel. We would keep the family history, the heritage. It happens a lot like this.”
Les Bassans, which opened in June, is the 12th Fontenille Collection property, and the ninth in France. “We always select buildings that are historically anchored in the region,” says Biousse, who has a background in fashion and co-founded the investment firm Experienced Capital. Foucher serves as the collection’s artistic director, overseeing an internal design team that handles all the renovations. He has a PhD in art history and worked in the Louvre’s sculpture department before becoming an art advisor and gallerist. “This is why you always find a unique sensitivity in terms of architecture, design, arts,” says Biousse. “Each of the hotels has its own personality, but globally, when you go from one to another, there’s this throughline that unites them.”
The first property in the collection was Domaine de Fontenille, an estate in the Luberon that opened in 2015. Additions since include Domaine de Primard, Catherine Deneuve’s former home near Giverny; several island hideaways (on Menorca and Île d’Yeu); and a Tuscan vineyard. As Fontenille has grown, it has attracted investment from LVMH and France’s Caisse des Dépôts, a state investment agency, and at least four more hotels are in the pipeline, in Aix-en-Provence, Burgundy, Chamonix and Florence.
Perfect Perch | Maison S. is a six-room guesthouse in the picturesque hillside town of Chenjiapu, in China’s Zhejiang province. Created by collector and investor Catherine Chen, the hotel has a museum of local artifacts, from Song dynasty pottery and antiquarian books to age-old deeds and other paperwork that illuminate village life.
A New Indoor-Outdoor Space Offers an Innovative Approach to Alexander Calder’s Art | One of Philadelphia’s most famous sons, Alexander Calder, will soon have a new institution dedicated to his work. Opening September 21 on the city’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Calder Gardens features the unmistakable floral wizardry of Dutch landscape artist Piet Oudolf, renowned for his work on New York’s High Line. Adjoining the grounds is a roughly 18,000-square-foot structure by Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, meant to provide a sense of seclusion from the surrounding city. Through these spaces will rotate a trove of works held by the Calder Foundation, led by the artist’s grandson, Alexander S.C. Rower. The kinetic, dynamic nature of Calder’s sculptures is reflected in the programming, which is set to include concerts, performances, talks and mindfulness activities.
Royal Treatment | Inspired by Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, the Silver Corridor at New York’s Waldorf Astoria had lost its regal bearing over the years, tarnished by smoke and grime. As part of the hotel’s SOM-led renovation, the 19th-century Edward Simmons murals have been expertly restored to their former glory, while the mirrors and chandeliers have regained their original shine.
