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I’ve always thought of summer as an invitation to daydream. After a frenetic first half of the year, these three months offer an excuse to pause, a time to be outside and together. CULTURED’s second annual Art & Food issue is a celebration of these moments.
Of course, there’s never really much time for rest. At CULTURED, we are constantly immersed—reevaluating, debating, and pushing the boundaries of what an independent magazine can do. It’s all-consuming work.
At the heart of that grind is the creative appetite— the relentless urge to make art and celebrate artists. No one understands this hunger better than our issue’s cover stars. After a whirlwind year, Andrew Scott spent much of the spring in New York, performing his award-studded, sold-out, one-man adaptation of Uncle Vanya on a small West Village stage eight times a week. “On the last day, the crew came dressed as me, and each played one of the characters,” Scott tells his close friend Josh O’Connor in his cover conversation. “I thought, Jesus, there are loads of people in this play, no wonder I’m exhausted.” Benicio del Toro, for his part, made time for a cover shoot on a hot afternoon in the French Riviera the day before The Phoenician Scheme, one of his two knock-out summer films, premiered at Cannes. “[It’s] an indie film,” Benicio tells his co-star Scarlett Johansson in the issue. “You feel like a jockey with a horse in a race—really rooting for it to make an impression.” Our third cover, featuring a 2008 painting by the one and only Lisa Yuskavage, celebrates the opening of the art-world renegade’s new show at the Morgan Library, dedicated to a drawing practice that has until now been relegated to her flat files. “The idea that there’s still something to be discovered is so fun,” she tells Co–Chief Art Critic Johanna Fateman in these pages. And our fourth cover sees cultural powerhouses Annabelle Dexter-Jones and Daniel Humm recount how the latter’s wedding proposal became its own exercise in artmaking. The work is never done.
Elsewhere in the issue, Rita Sodi and Jody Williams— partners in life and business—welcomed the photographer (and How Long Gone podcast co-host) Chris Black into New York’s Via Carota, the first restaurant they opened together just over a decade ago, for a moment of calm before the crowds streamed in. Roe Ethridge photographed standout dishes from his favorite Italian restaurants in the city, a tribute to the tireless work and perfectionism that shapes the industry. Quil Lemons assembled a group of artist peers and forebears ahead of a group show that will take over the queer summer enclave that is Provincetown—what promises to be an all-too-timely tribute to cultural resistance. Further afield, a group of formidable chefs recall a dish they encountered in a far-flung place that shaped the way they cook, while French photographer Léon Prost contributes snapshots from his own excursions around the world.
At the heart of that grind is the creative appetite— the relentless urge to make art and celebrate artists.
I hope this issue transports you somewhere—and that you share it with the people closest to you, wherever the season may take you.
Photographer
Martin Parr is as much a documentarian as he is a white-cube photographer. The prolific image-maker and former Magnum Photos president has taken his camera across his native England, Japan, Mexico, and beyond. In this issue, he traveled to a corner of London where up-and-coming artist Maya Golyshkina creates elaborate cardboard sculptures out of her flat. “It was a real pleasure to work with Maya—a great emerging talent who knew exactly what she wanted and how to achieve this,” says Parr of the collaborative shoot. “We had a lot of fun finding the right pose and positioning.”
“IT WAS A REAL PLEASURE TO WORK WITH MAYA GOLYSHKINA—A GREAT EMERGING TALENT WHO KNEW EXACTLY WHAT SHE WANTED AND HOW TO ACHIEVE THIS.”
IGNACIO MATTOS Chef
Ignacio Mattos’s restaurants—Altro Paradiso, Lodi, and the Michelin-starred Estela—are hallowed territory for foodies in the New York landscape. But the chef and founder of Mattos Hospitality moved to Manhattan only two decades ago from his native Uruguay, quickly developing a bold, uncomplicated culinary style informed by his travels. In this issue, he revisits
a standout meal in Istanbul as part of a sensory-driven portfolio lensed by photographer Léon Prost. “What a lovely opportunity to contribute to such a beautiful magazine,” says Mattos. “The subject matter, being so nostalgic, brought me back to many wonderful memories.”
“WHAT A LOVELY OPPORTUNITY TO CONTRIBUTE
TO SUCH A BEAUTIFUL MAGAZINE. THE SUBJECT MATTER, BEING SO NOSTALGIC, BROUGHT ME BACK TO MANY WONDERFUL MEMORIES.”
“Photographing Keith McNally at his apartment in SoHo was a privilege and an honor,” says Chris Black, who visited the Odeon, Balthazar, and Minetta Tavern restaurateur at home for this issue, capturing McNally in his personal kitchen. “I have been eating at his restaurants for two decades, and they have made a deep impression on me and defined how powerful a room can be,” adds Black. “The fries are pretty good, too.” McNally isn’t the only New York staple Black shot in these pages; he also got to spend an afternoon with powerhouse duo Rita Sodi and Jody Williams, the chefs behind Via Carota, Buvette, I Sodi, and more. Elsewhere, Black hosts the podcast How Long Gone with Jason Stewart and has lensed a litany of other cultural stalwarts, including Michael Shannon, Charli XCX, and Thom Browne.
“I HAVE BEEN EATING AT KEITH MCNALLY’S RESTAURANTS FOR TWO DECADES, AND THEY HAVE MADE A DEEP IMPRESSION ON ME AND DEFINED HOW POWERFUL A ROOM CAN BE. THE FRIES ARE PRETTY GOOD, TOO.”
Photographer
Shots of fish wearing Chanel, moldy fruit, seafood towers piled high—Roe Ethridge’s fascination with food spans his vibrant, experimental career. The photographer made his name in galleries, magazines, and commercial campaigns alike, bringing an irreverence to each that sets his lens apart. For this issue, he investigated the instantly recognizable iconography of Italian restaurants by visiting some of New York’s best eateries: Il Buco, Casa Tua, Marea, and Emilio’s Ballato. At every stop, he trained his eye on both the messy and perfectly plated dishes that bring customers streaming through the doors.
IN THE
ISSUE, ROE ETHRIDGE TRAINED HIS EYE ON BOTH THE MESSY AND PERFECTLY PLATED DISHES THAT BRING CUSTOMERS STREAMING THROUGH THE DOORS.
EMMA
LEIGH MACDONALD Writer
James Beard Award–winning chefs Rita Sodi and Jody Williams have built a restaurant empire in New York, as well as a life together. Fellow chef and writer Emma Leigh Macdonald has long wanted to know how; this issue gave her the opportunity to find out. “When we met for their interview, I admitted to Jody and Rita that my questions might be a bit selfish,” says Macdonald. “As someone who also hopes to
open a restaurant with my partner in life, what they’ve built through Via Carota, Bar Pisellino, and Commerce Inn is an incredible inspiration.” When she’s not writing, Macdonald is filling out her own culinary portfolio, in collaborations with Public Records, Gohar World, Rhodora, and more.
“AS SOMEONE WHO
ALSO HOPES TO OPEN A RESTAURANT WITH MY PARTNER IN LIFE, WHAT RITA SODI AND JODY WILLIAMS HAVE BUILT THROUGH VIA CAROTA, BAR PISELLINO, AND COMMERCE INN IS AN INCREDIBLE INSPIRATION.”
“It was a real pleasure to photograph Andrew Scott—not only is he an incredible actor, but also a truly collaborative artist,” says Paola Kudacki, who spent much of her shoot huddled side by side with the actor over the monitors, reviewing stills. “Working with someone who understands the craft and how to use their body in space brings a unique depth to the process. His experience and awareness created a freedom that made creative exploration possible.” The photographer has explored this collaborative back-and-forth with subjects including Beyoncé, Angelina Jolie, and Adam Driver, and for clients and publications including Calvin Klein, the Metropolitan Opera, and Vogue
“NOT ONLY IS ANDREW SCOTT AN INCREDIBLE ACTOR, BUT ALSO A TRULY COLLABORATIVE ARTIST. WORKING WITH SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS THE CRAFT AND HOW TO USE THEIR BODY IN SPACE BRINGS A UNIQUE DEPTH TO THE PROCESS. HIS EXPERIENCE AND AWARENESS CREATED A FREEDOM THAT MADE CREATIVE EXPLORATION POSSIBLE.”
ERIK PIEPENBURG Writer
Since 2004, Erik Piepenburg has been documenting LGBTQ culture for The New York Times, and more recently, with his new book, Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America’s Gay Restaurants “Gay restaurants are thriving across the country, not in the numbers that they once were, but in spirit and with an urgent sense of safety,” says the writer. In this issue, he further explores the cultural forces shrinking a once-flourishing scene—stretched from Chicago to Los Angeles. “I look at why and where gay people have been gathering at restaurants for decades, finding meaning in meals,” Piepenburg adds. “Romance, entertainment, activism, sex, and sometimes, really delicious food—that’s what you get at a gay restaurant.”
“ROMANCE, ENTERTAINMENT, ACTIVISM, SEX, AND SOMETIMES, REALLY DELICIOUS FOOD—THAT’S WHAT YOU GET AT A GAY RESTAURANT.”
MONTY JACKSON Stylist
For the actor’s cover shoot, Monty Jackson let Benicio del Toro slide his own worn T-shirts on under suit jackets and shades. The graphics could have looked out of place on the French Riviera, paired with Brioni and Bottega Veneta, but when has del Toro ever not pulled something off? “Working with Benicio was a wonderful
experience,” Jackson effuses. “He’s a true icon.” The stylist is well-versed in adding unexpected flair to an outfit: He put Benson Boone in a shimmering jumpsuit at Coachella and Justice Smith in custom polka-dotted Valentino at the Met Gala, to name a few instances.
“BENICIO DEL TORO IS A TRUE ICON.”
Chef
Sunny Lee “would rather be referred to as an ajumma or nonna before chef.” She has, after all, “spent her life chasing the memory of her most comforting meal, a feeling of coming home after a long day.” On the Lower East Side, warm and inviting fare is what she serves up at Sunn’s, a 24-seat Korean restaurant that opened last December following years of pop-ups at the chef’s Brooklyn apartment. Before striking out on her own, Lee worked in the kitchens of Eleven Madison Park, Estela, and more. For this issue, she recalls a particularly evocative meal had during a trip to Korea, cut against a saturated portfolio of imagery by photographer Léon Prost.
Photographer
Greg Williams has photographed actors for nearly 30 years; among his archive are snapshots of leading men like Paul Mescal, Robert De Niro, Colman Domingo, George Clooney, and Idris Elba. For this issue, he lensed Benicio del Toro ahead of his The Phoenician Scheme premiere at Cannes. “I first shot Benicio nearly 20 years ago,” says Williams. “He still has this seemingly effortless cool.” The photographer works with minimal crews and uses natural light whenever possible, focusing on capturing fleeting, candid moments. In 2022, he founded the magazine Hollywood Authentic to formalize this approach.
MARA VEITCH Executive Editor
JOHN VINCLER Co-Chief Art Critic and Consulting Editor
ELLA MARTIN-GACHOT Senior Editor
SOPHIA COHEN Arts Editor-at-Large
JACOBA URIST New York Arts Editor
KAREN WONG Contributing Architecture Editor
COLIN KING Design Editor-at-Large
ALEXANDRA CRONAN
KATE FOLEY Fashion Directors-at-Large
GEORGINA COHEN European Contributor
KRISTIN CORPUZ Social Media Editor
JAMESON BALDWIN Production Coordinator
CAT DAWSON
DEVAN DÍAZ
ADAM ELI
ARTHUR LUBOW
HARMONY HOLIDAY
LAURA MAY TODD
EMMA LEIGH MACDONALD
LIANA SATENSTEIN Writers-at-Large
DOMINIQUE CLAYTON
JOHN ORTVED
YASHUA SIMMONS Contributing Editors
SARAH G. HARRELSON Founder, Editor-in-Chief
JULIA HALPERIN Editor-at-Large
JOHANNA FATEMAN Co-Chief Art Critic and Commissioning Editor
ALI PEW Fashion Editor-at-Large
EMILY DOUGHERTY Beauty Editor
MINA STONE Food Editor
JASON BOLDEN Style Editor-at-Large
SOPHIE LEE Associate Digital Editor
SAM FALB Assistant Editor
TOM SEYMOUR London Correspondent
EMMELINE CLEIN Books Editor
SPECIAL PROJECTS Contributing Casting Directors
EVELINE CHAO Senior Copy Editor
ROXY SORKIN Lifestyle Columnist
SIMON RENGGLI
CHAD POWELL Art Directors
HANNAH TACHER
ISABELLA BARADAN Junior Art Director
CAROL SMITH Strategic Advisor
CARL KIESEL
Vice President, Chief Revenue Officer
LORI WARRINER
Vice President of Sales, Art + Fashion
DESMOND SMALLEY Director of Brand Partnerships
HAILEY POWERS Marketing and Sales Associate
SAMAH DADA Culinary Columnist
ETHAN ELKINS
DADA GOLDBERG Public Relations
PRIYA NAT Sales Consultant, Home + Travel
PETE JACATY & ASSOCIATES Prepress/Print Production
BERT MOO-YOUNG Senior Photo Retoucher
JOSÉ A. ALVARADO JR. SEAN DAVIDSON
SOPHIE ELGORT
ADAM FRIEDLANDER
JULIE GOLDSTONE
WILLIAM JESS LAIRD
GILLIAN LAUB
JEREMY LIEBMAN
YOSHIHIRO MAKINO
LEE MARY MANNING
BJÖRN WALLANDER
BRAD TORCHIA
Contributing Photographers
EVA BIANCHINI
KARLY QUADROS
SAVANNA CHADA
COCO KANDERS
MARK MANKARIOUS
REBECCA GOODMAN
GIULIANA BRIDA Interns
Photography by Jameson Baldwin
Alison Saar’s sculptures don’t just sit quietly in space. Working with materials like salvaged wood, ceiling tin, and shards of glass, the Los Angeles native tells stories rooted in the African diaspora and spirituality, using the figure as a vessel. The daughter of artists Betye and Richard Saar, she blends her mother’s innovative use of found objects with her father’s classical training to create pieces that feel both grounded and sacred.
Last year, the International Olympic Committee commissioned Saar to create a monumental sculpture, Salon, on the Champs-Élysées to mark the 2024 Paris Olympics. The Black female figure, holding a flame in one hand and an olive branch in the other, surrounded by six empty chairs, was both a tribute to peaceful communion and a literal invitation to gather.
This spring, Saar added another laurel to her wreath with the 2025 David C. Driskell Prize, presented by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to an artist or scholar who has made a significant contribution to the field of African American art. Named after the artist and scholar David C. Driskell and inaugurated two decades ago, it is the first national award of its kind. Before she officially receives the award in September at the Driskell Prize Gala, Saar offers us a more intimate glimpse into her creative world.
What’s the first thing you do when you enter your studio?
I open up the roll-up door and turn on some music. My playlist varies according to the nature of the work to be done. If using the chainsaw, I tend to put on loud and lively music such as a ’70s Afrobeat mix or maybe [Antônio Carlos] Jobim to get things grooving. Sometimes a podcast or, if I am alone, I will listen to audiobooks.
When do you do your best work?
I am only in the studio during the day. Working with power tools requires a certain amount of focus, but most of my ideas and creative conjuring happen between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m.
There are a lot of costs that come with being an artist. Where do you splurge and where do you save?
I splurge on tools, which in turn saves me time and money but also makes me happy. I love my tools. My favorite are a set of vintage chisels my father gave me for my birthday.
Have you ever destroyed a work to make something new?
Perhaps due to the limited size of my studio, if a work loiters too long, it’s susceptible to being cannibalized into something new.
When was the last time you felt jealous of another artist?
I have never envied another artist’s success but always envied and respected David Hammons’s ability to consistently conjure something totally unique and meaningful and to not give a damn about what the art world thinks. I wish the spirits sitting on his shoulders would come and visit me.
If you could change one thing about the art world, what would it be?
That museums and art schools would be free.
If your studio were an animal, what would it be?
A beaver, maybe?
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever done in your studio?
Spinning human hair into a yarn and crocheting it into a baby’s gown. I actually finished the piece while in a hotel and realized the housekeeper would think I was molting. After cleaning up as best I could, I left a very large tip.
Tell us about the best studio visit you’ve ever had.
I see my studio as a fairly private space and don’t have many studio visits, but I recall my mother [Betye Saar] visiting the studio once and her simply saying I was a good artist. This meant the world to me not because she is a famous and accomplished artist, or because she is also very discerning about the art she likes and doesn’t like and all too eager to be truthful, even to her own children, but because I made her proud.
A NEW COLLABORATION
AND RENEGADE
JUDY CHICAGO PAYS TRIBUTE TO THE HOUSE’S ULTIMATE MUSE: ITS FOUNDER’S SISTER.
In a puff of fragrance, hand embroidery, and tulle, artist Judy Chicago has reimagined Miss Dior in her first beauty collaboration with the house. The initiative, which follows Chicago’s striking installation for the maison’s Spring/ Summer 2020 Haute Couture show and a series of limited-edition Lady Dior purses, pays tribute not to the man whose name tends to prick ears and draw the spotlight, but to the house’s enduring muse: Catherine Dior.
The Miss Dior x Judy Chicago perfume trunk—of which only 25 will be made—is the third in a series of super-rare, artist-designed boxes created for Dior perfumes using the atelier’s unique finesse. Inspired by Chicago’s vibrant designs, Dior Perfume Creation Director Francis Kurkdjian punched up the original eau with bright citrus for an only-found-here version of Miss Dior.
The handcrafted trunk features a poly-
chromatic portrait of Catherine, floral motifs, and bright shades of pink and blue adapted from The Dinner Party—Chicago’s groundbreaking 1970s tribute to women’s overlooked role in history. Inside, red velvet contrasts with vivid florals.
Christian’s sister was a decorated member of the French Resistance and a concentration camp survivor, whose eclipsed reputation strikes a familiar chord for Chicago, who has herself fought to make space for female voices in the art world and historical record. Here, the 85-year-old artist plucks the threads that tie her and Catherine’s work together.
How did you reinterpret Catherine Dior’s legacy for a new audience?
Catherine Dior is a heroine in the long line of women whose contributions have been unacknowledged and lost to history. This situation is something that I have worked to redress since I created The Dinner Party, 1974–79. Without Catherine’s decades of work to preserve Christian’s legacy, the House of Dior would not be what it is today.
How did craft shape the visual language of this tribute?
The perfume bottle is encircled by a handembroidered bow, which conveys Catherine’s courageous attitude towards life after her imprisonment. In contrast to many Holocaust survivors who were deeply embittered by their experiences, Catherine’s motto became “Aime la vie”—“Love life.” When I was working on The Dinner Party, I realized that needlework is—like many creative activities associated with women—undervalued, something I wanted to challenge by demonstrating that thread could be like a brushstroke.
Walk us through the experience of folding your artistic practice into the story of this collection.
When I began collaborating with Dior, I wondered if it would be possible to introduce personal meaning into the world of fashion. This was the task I set for myself on all my projects with them, one that I hope I have achieved through the Catherine Dior trunk.
How would you interpret Catherine Dior’s credo of “Aime la vie” today?
It embodies an attitude towards life that I have also tried to embrace, also expressed in the motto “Choose Life,” which is a Jewish mandate (both my husband Donald and I are Jewish). Even in the darkest of times, one must choose hope, something that seems more important now at this moment in history than ever before.
By Giuliana Brida
There’s something about a beach that suspends reality: Strangers become neighbors, politics shrink beneath umbrellas, and the only performance required is presence. In Nat Ward’s latest book, Ditch: Montauk, NY 11954, the photographer turns his lens on the Hamptons hamlet’s Ditch Plains Beach—not to romanticize its surf-soaked iconography, but to expose its peculiar gravity. The project, born on a whim during a residency at the Edward F. Albee Foundation, unfolded over four summers as Ward returned again and again, panoramic camera under his arm, to capture the human drama that unfurled across towels and tide lines. CULTURED spoke with Ward about the genesis of the book, the politics of shared space, and the characters who make Ditch Plains a crucible of American contradictions.
How did this project begin?
I was a resident at the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the barn in Montauk, in 2018. I had purchased this very unique camera—a medium format panoramic camera. It’s a nerd camera that spawned a million Flickr accounts of people taking pictures of sunsets with perfectly aligned horizons. At the time, I had long hair and a big beard—I was a bit of a peacock. Between the camera attracting attention and engaging with people, I became really interested in the fact that Ditch Plains
is very much like the beaches I grew up going to on the Jersey Shore—crowded, full of potential relationships. It becomes a vibrant, diverse community in the summertime.
What kept drawing you back?
It has to do with my own reaction to the social and political moment. Man, I was stressed out. It was chaotic and fractious— and still is, although I’m managing it better now personally. In 2018, 2019... I had to break up what almost became a physical fight in a college classroom while I was being observed teaching [at FIT]. It had nothing to do with what I was saying—it was just that everybody was ready to go after everybody at the drop of a hat. Those interactions at the beach were a restoration of faith. From a data-based perspective, I had nothing in common with most of the people I met there.
Is there a particular person who comes to mind?
There was this woman who would come to the beach with her red MAGA hat every single day. She was the only person nobody talked to. So I went up to her. I know she was looking to talk politics—that’s why she wore the hat—but I didn’t want to talk about that. I wanted to know where she was from, what her family was doing. She was a grandma from Suffolk County. Hearing about what her grandkids were up to was much more
interesting than talking about social strife or the breakdown of our political system.
Did you share the images you made with your subjects?
Oh, yes. But months afterwards, because I’m slow. People were psyched. I know it’s silly, but the radical position of saying, “Let’s go out and have some fun talking with strangers,” in this moment where you can’t even talk to your uncle... I’m so moved by that idea.
“Those interactions at the beach were a restoration of faith.”
What was the most memorable discovery you made at Ditch Plains?
I found the level of honesty—the physical performance or lack thereof—generated so many discoveries for me. On the masculinity spectrum, there’s a photograph of a young man. He was stunning and he knew it. I loved that particular combination: the charisma of knowing how desirable you are and being willing to present that in public for a photographer... I mean, how do you say no to that? Other men just could not care less. I’d be like, “Can I make a picture?” and they’d say, “Yeah, whatever. Go ahead.”
By Ella Martin-Gachot
Takako Yamaguchi has lived a 12-minute drive from Santa Monica State Beach—and just 10 minutes farther from the wilder Will Rogers State Beach—since 1993, but she rarely ventures west to look out at the Pacific Ocean. That hasn’t stopped marine life from figuring heavily in her almost five-decade-long practice, especially since 2021, when the Okayama-born artist embarked on a new series of seascapes. They were featured in two recent milestones—a 2023 Ortuzar show and the 2024 Whitney Biennial— that set the stage for a reexamination of the artist’s prolific and genre-allergic practice, along with a suite of record-breaking auction sales of work from other periods.
“She really needs a museum retrospective to kind of put all these pieces together,” Mike Egan, founder of the gallery Ramiken (which dedicated a show to her hyperrealistic shirt paintings in 2021), told Artnews last year. The art world will have to wait for a comprehensive survey of Yamaguchi’s work, but the painter is getting her first solo museum show in Los Angeles, which she’s called home since 1987, this summer. Starting June 29, Yamaguchi will share 10 new seascapes in MOCA’s Grand Avenue space. Ahead of their unveiling, she sat down with CULTURED for a debrief about ambivalence, abundance, and the next paintings.
Tell me about your seascapes. You have access to the sea living in Santa Monica, but you don’t go there often. Where do they come from?
Takako Yamaguchi: I don’t go there, but I know it’s there. Without sounding disrespectful to naturalists, I don’t have the bone in me to go admire nature or that sort of thing. I really like seascapes as a genre—particularly the ones from the Interwar period of semi-abstraction. I like Marsden Hartley, for instance. I’ve looked at the Canadian Group of Seven. I like Joseph Stella and Milton Avery, even though he comes much later. But I like the way that he resists pure abstraction.
So your seascapes are not inspired by the sea but by other people’s seascapes that you filter through your own lens.
Rockwell Kent went to Greenland to really study
what icebergs look like; instead [of doing that], I go to Rockwell Kent. It’s each artist’s imagination of what they look at that’s fascinating to me. The poet Wallace Stevens has a phrase: “All of our ideas come from the natural world: trees equal umbrellas.” I do the reverse: umbrellas equal trees. I call it semi-abstraction in reverse. I’ll take from commercial culture some logos or patterns of waves—they’re very common—and use those in lieu of actual waves.
Your seascapes also bring to mind postcards for me. They’re so dense in symbolism, yet they get the message across. What’s your relationship to travel—between genres, between abstraction and figuration, between cultures and geographies?
Maybe I just don’t feel like I belong to one thing. I’m always half in, half out. Maybe it’s because I call myself an American artist, but I’m still a Japanese citizen, even though I’ve lived most of my life in the States. I still feel like the outsider. My situation [as an immigrant] isn’t unique, but it might be the position of being an artist that explains why I’m drawn to things that fall outside of the mainstream. When I graduated from UC Santa Barbara and was figuring out what I was going to paint, I felt the permission to poke around and pick and choose [subjects]. It was like this serendipity—you happened to look at this book and say, “Oh this looks great. How can I use that in my paintings?” But then I’ll make a big fuss of over-working it, as if I’m making up for my “irresponsible” choice of subject matter. It’s like when you kind of like someone and don’t make too much of a commitment, then you start having some attachment when you really, really work on it.
How have you maintained that spontaneity over the course of your career, and an ability to surprise yourself?
The degree of changing subject matter changes as you get older. I’m thinking, How many more years can I be really good and excited about painting? One thing that is fortunate is that I was so ignorant when I was younger. I did not know so many different works. There is an abundance of really interesting works not being looked at—those are always incredibly fresh to me. Or the kinds of things that I was familiar with and hated at the time now look so refreshing. Like the 1930s.
What do you think draws you to the Interwar period so much?
It’s that sort of ambivalence. Particularly with semi-abstraction, there was this timidity of not going all the way towards pure abstraction, which became the highest form of art later on. That ambivalence could have been wisdom.
“Rockwell Kent went to Greenland to really study what icebergs look like; instead [of doing that], I go to Rockwell Kent.”
Neither is enough—it’s an interesting mode to make art in. The MOCA show is part of their “Focus” series, a platform for emerging artists. You are 72. How does it feel to be having this big show right now? And what do you want next?
Any moment is, for me, an emerging time. It came a little later than for other people. I wish this was happening, maybe when I was 50? Just to be able to look forward to a little longer ahead. But I can’t wait for the next paintings. I have this series of small-scale, white-on-white paintings. It’s my attempt at geometric abstraction and brings me back to this period of flirtation with photorealism I had about 15 years ago, before I went back to the seascapes. It was a time where I was going against so-called efficiency. Everything was about wasting time, like a slow-food kind of thing. So I’m working on those, and then after that thinking of the [next] landscapes, even though I’m pretty much set with just going back to my seascape/ landscape journal. Over the years I’ve accumulated so many different motifs; I feel like I have ones I want to reuse in a different combination. It’s endless, the things that interest me—I almost don’t have enough time.
BY ERIK PIEPENBURG
The number of culturally gay restaurants has dwindled precipitously since the 1970s. What does it take for one to survive?
For Gen Xers like me who came out—and of age —in the ’90s, gay restaurants were as ubiquitous as gay bars. In the Nevermind/Clerks/Friends decade, morning through midnight, I could pick up a local gay weekly and choose from dozens of restaurants where my gays and I could eat cheaply and well—without enduring the menacing straight-boy glares we got at TGI Fridays.
To step into any restaurant filled with your people is to feel safety, camaraderie, and tribal joy. Gay restaurants have served that purpose for decades, sometimes surreptitiously: At automats in the 1930s, gay men discovered one another by holding a stare, just a beat or two longer than socially acceptable, while polishing off a burger. Later, of course, they did it openly too—at the scores of Pride flag–fronted restaurants that surfaced in post-Stonewall urban enclaves like the Castro in San Francisco or Manhattan’s West Village.
But today—as mainstream culture steadily feeds off of LGBTQ culture and the Internet makes everything from sex to dumplings easier than ever to access—gay restaurants have started to disappear. I know because I watched it happen. In recent years, my favorite spots shuttered for good.
Today—as mainstream culture steadily feeds off of LGBTQ culture and the Internet makes everything from sex to dumplings easier than ever to access—gay restaurants have started to disappear.
I’ll never again slide into the chubby avocadoand-russet-striped banquettes at the Melrose, which shuttered in 2017 after 56 years in the Chicago neighborhood Boystown, for a broccoli and cheddar omelet and a cup of tangy sweet-and-sour cabbage soup. And I’ll never get over that.
It’s hard to say how many gay restaurants have closed in the last 20-odd years; the definition of a “gay restaurant” is too slippery. (To me, more than ownership, it’s a matter of mostly gay clientele.) A Los Angeles gay and lesbian business directory from 1982 listed 51 restaurants; a 1978 edition of New York’s Gay & Lesbian Yellow Pages listed around 60. I struggle to imagine a 2025 directory with anywhere near those numbers.
It’s a sign of progress that many LGBTQ people feel comfortable at most restaurants, at least in gay-friendly territory. To eat out without fear or shame—isn’t that what we asked for? Yet with progress comes loss, and nobody feels that more acutely than the Stonewall generation and Gen X gays who, for decades,
have gathered (out of necessity as much as want) in exclusively gay restaurants. Baked into this progress is a dilemma: Where do we go when there’s no place for us to gather?
To eat out without fear or shame—isn’t that what we asked for? Yet with progress comes loss.
It’s a question I’ve spent the last four years trying to answer. My book Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights and Last Call Disco Fries at America’s Gay Restaurants, is an attempt to understand where and why queer people have gathered for meals over more than 100 years. When it comes to gay placemaking, I learned, restaurants are just as important as bars. One of the most heartening discoveries I made during my research for the book was that, even as gay neighborhoods have diffused, some gay restaurants—mostly family-owned spots that have been open for decades, with menus that rarely change—have persisted. The reason is simple: It’s not about the food, and never was.
I enjoyed the frisbee-sized, butter-soaked pancakes I ate at the counter at Orphan Andy’s, a gay diner that’s been in the Castro since 1977, that I visited as part of my book research. But what I remember more vividly is the group of five hairy leathermen in the window booth who compared paddling techniques over a shared plate of fries.
“When somebody comes in and I say ‘welcome,’ I mean it. Especially people who are different— fat women, people of all colors and races. That’s what makes us rich.”
—Miriam Selma, cofounder of Bloodroot
One of the legacy restaurants in the aforementioned LA directory was Casita del Campo, opened by Rudy del Campo in 1962 in the Silver Lake neighborhood and still in business today. The del Campo family’s Mexican establishment quickly became a hotspot for the city’s gay men, many of whom worked in Hollywood alongside Rudy, a dancer. “It was a safe place for two men to have dinner together and not be stared at, ostracized, looked down upon,” Rudy’s son Robert told me. It was also good for business: “My dad saw young gay men in the ’60s as another source of revenue to keep the restaurant going,” Robert said. “That has always been the philosophy of Casita del Campo, being inclusive.”
A different ethos—activist, sapphic—defines
Bloodroot in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a holdout from the wave of feminist and often meat-free eateries that had their heyday in the late ’60s. Where Casita del Campo could, on busy Saturday nights, feel like a testosterone-soaked leather bar, Bloodroot was a space where lesbians dedicated to organizing and consciousness-raising could affordably break bread. I asked Selma Miriam, who opened the restaurant in 1977 with her business partner, Noel Furie, and other women, what gave the spot its staying power. “When somebody comes in and I say ‘welcome,’ I mean it,” Miriam told me.
“Especially people who are different—fat women, people of all colors and races. That’s what makes us rich.” She died in February at 89.
A community center with fries: That’s the secret recipe for a legacy gay restaurant that has endured, and will continue to, even as restaurant tastes shift.
Then there’s Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse, which turns 77 this year. Located in Washington, DC’s DuPont Circle neighborhood, Annie’s started attracting gay customers in an era marked by lingering fears over the Lavender Scare, a two-decades-long purge of gay people from the federal government that started in the late 1940s. DC-area gays (policy wonks, Georgetown students, working-class Washingtonians) came to the restaurant for its namesake, Annie Katinas—a boisterous mama bear whom the gays loved for her warmth, humor, and heavy pour.
Among the Annie’s regulars I met was Steve Herman, a retired federal employee who had been eating there for more than half a century. Annie’s is the rare establishment these days where Herman and his friends can talk without shouting over music and reminisce about Mitzi Gaynor without having to explain who that is. During the AIDS crisis, it was a sanctuary. “It was important to be together with people who were going through the same awful things you were,” he said. “It was comforting to have a place like Annie’s to come to and cry.”
A community center with fries: That’s the secret recipe for a legacy gay restaurant that has endured, and will continue to, even as culinary and sexual mores shift. Where else can elderly gay couples eat reasonably priced roast beef specials with a house pinot? What’s better than talking sobriety with your 12-step group over apple pie? Where else to sob over a breakup than with tipsy friends and silver-dollar pancakes at 2 a.m.? Where else to be together?
By Sophie Lee
This year, when patrons visit the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the 135th Street New York Public Library, they will have a taste of what it felt like to walk in a century ago. In 1925, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, the doors opened onto what was then the Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints. The exhibition “100: A Century of Collections, Community, and Creativity” celebrates what transpired in the following decades.
On view through June 2026, the show features manuscript pages from Maya Angelou, writings by Malcolm X, photography by Gordon Parks, murals by Aaron Douglas, and the original 1925 visitor book—signed by one of the library’s fiercest advocates, Langston Hughes. “The Schomburg Center is a place where Black history is accessed,
documented, and made,” says director and “100” curator Joy Bivins. “This has been the case since the collection first opened to the public, and we continue to work to ensure this will be the case … The world changes, and with it, the way we express ideas.”
Amidst our frenetic present, every facet of the anniversary exhibition sheds light on often-overlooked cultural gems of the past. Programming surrounding the exhibition includes, for example, dinners prepared using recipes from the unpublished cookbook of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, the Puerto Rican–born Black scholar and bibliophile whose collection serves as the foundation of the center’s archives.
“I am always drawn to the fact that Schomburg collected broadly—his collections encompassed his understanding that Black history was global history,” says Bivins. “We
THE SCHOMBURG CENTER’S CENTENNIAL FESTIVITIES REASSERT ITS POSITION AS NEW YORK’S REPOSITORY OF EVOLVING BLACK CULTURE. A NEW SHOW GIVES ITS ENCYCLOPEDIC COLLECTION A FUTURE.
hope that patrons will think of their own place in ongoing Black history as they experience this special moment and reflect on those who came before them.”
“I am always drawn to the fact that Arturo Alfonso Schomburg collected broadly— his collections encompassed his understanding that Black history was global history.”
—Joy Bivins
Come for the historical treasures, stay for the limited-edition Schomburg Centennial library card featuring the center’s cosmogram, Rivers, by artist Houston Conwill. A century from now, the laminated token of New York life may find its own place in the archives.
SITE SANTA FE’S 12TH INTERNATIONAL PROMISES TO BE AN AMBITIOUS EXERCISE IN HOW WE MAKE MEANING— ACROSS SPACE, IDENTITY, AND CHRONOLOGY.
By Cristina Macaya
New Mexico has been a vessel for fantasy over centuries—whether linked to alien invasion, Indigenous folklore, or wayward artists like Agnes Martin and Georgia O’Keeffe. Site Santa Fe’s 12th International doesn’t just nod to that thorny web of regional mythology: The exhibition, opening June 27, aims to pull it apart and restitch it through the lens of more than 70 artists.
Curated by Cecilia Alemani (who made history with her approach to another art-world milepost, the 59th Venice Biennale), this year’s edition channels the dreamlike logic of the film that gives it its name. Released in 2022, Once Within a Time is the brainchild of Santa Fe legend and erstwhile monk Godfrey Reggio, best known for a movie he made 40
years prior: the relentlessly experimental, Philip Glass–tracked Koyaanisqatsi. A Boschian joyride through the apocalypse and back, Once Within a Time is at its core an ode to the restless yet repetitive act of storytelling. The 12th International picks up that thread and gives it both polymorphous and hyperlocal legs, using 20 figures with ties to the region as narrative springboards for over 300 new commissions, archival interventions, and contemporary selections. Among its cast of “catalysts”: Navajo code talker Chester Nez, novelist Willa Cather, and the Fire Spirit (the archenemy of Zozobra, a marionette that’s burned ahead of the Fiestas de Santa Fe year after year).
Alemani developed “Once Within a Time” with the family album in mind. Among the dozens of “relatives” invited to contribute are artists
Simone Leigh, David Horvitz, and Dominique Knowles, as well as writers and poets Tommy Orange, Lucy R. Lippard, and Estevan RaelGálvez. The other protagonist? Santa Fe itself. For the first time, the International will be fully embedded within the city’s fabric: A historic foundry, a toy store, and a dispensary are just a few of the sites that will be activated alongside the more expected cultural partners. This joyous call-and-response between location and lore will be echoed by a suite of public programming, including an August run of Autumn Chacon and Laura Ortman’s experimental opera Malinxe, a contemporary reworking of the La Llorona folk tale.
As abundant as it promises to be ambitious, the 12th International’s own story is just beginning. You have until January 2026 to find out where it transports you.
A salaried restaurant critic may make or break an eatery’s cultural cachet, but it’s the amateur reviewer who truly shapes its unofficial reputation. Every day, countless brazen diners turn to their smartphone keyboards, leaving their mark—be it heartening, scathing, or just plain baffling— in the form of Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor reviews. For the Art + Food issue, the inimitable photographer ROE ETHRIDGE visited a quartet of New York restaurants dishing out a cuisine many hold strong convictions about: Italian. The resulting images—shot at Il Buco, Casa Tua, Marea, and Emilio’s Ballato—pay homage to the drama behind the dishes, accompanied by some of the more memorable epithets culled from the customers who’ve tested them. Now all you have to do is go out and try for yourself.
Photography by Roe Ethridge
“I know what you’re thinking... is it worth the wait? Absolutely yes.
Coming from someone who waited an hour in 32-degree weather at 5:30 p.m. on a Tuesday of all things, yes, it is worth the wait.
There is a reason the line is long, and it’s not just because of the celebrities sneaking into the back room. It’s because the food is like an Italian grandma’s homemade Sunday dinner and they don’t rush you.”
—Ashley W.
“I
… I specifically want to give praise to the doorman with the cool haircut and beard.
He engaged in my foolish conversation and never made me feel like a bother.
—TiaJhane’
“3.8 stars for Il Buco is flat-out ridiculous. Shame on y’all...
I’m done sneak dissing; Kendrick inspired me. Gab G., Giacomo C., Jingshu G., Skyler N., y’all need to be held accountable for these two- and three-star reviews. We gon’ give a Starbucks five stars but Il Buco three? Y’all are lucky I can’t comment on reviews...
Anyways, my list of favorite Italian places in New York City is a living, breathing work of art. There are just so damn many of them, and some do get comfortable at the top … The crown is heavy. That being said, Il Buco has consistently been in my top five. Every time I finish eating here I’m like, ‘Why don’t I come here more???’
It is such an authentic Italian dining experience that on this trip we had to wait 45 minutes to be seated even after arriving on time for our res. I was originally slightly perturbed, but sitting at the bar and enjoying life with my girlfriend and with the staff apologizing three times and comping our drinks, how could I be mad?
Sh*t happens and they handled it so professionally. I don’t ask for much TBH...”
—Johnny N.
“Three years ago, my son and I traveled to New York from Kansas City. My son had just been accepted into culinary school, and I wanted to celebrate with him by taking him to a Michelin-star restaurant … The chef addressed my son directly, which was awesome … As we left, I said, ‘I brought him here because I wanted to show my son where the bar for excellence was.’
The chef looked at me and then my son, and said, ‘The bar can always be raised.’
I am happy to say my son graduated culinary school last night. While he crossed the stage, I remembered that night and the wise words of the chef. Now it’s Noah’s turn to raise the bar!”
—Scott Carroll (Weekend Warrior)
“Stop
everything.
If you’re coming to Upper [East Side], do whatever you have to and get a reservation. This is the reason New York stands out as an Epicurus’s center!
Exquisite care taken to every flavor and detail to balance the plate … Just do it! Do not delay. This is why we dine out!”
—Angelique Swann
September 13 - October 18, 2025
Architect Ben Dobbin and artist Sarah Meyohas may work in disparate fields, but they’re both in the business of forcing us to reconsider our surroundings— one monument or multimedia-driven mirage at a time.
Despite their differing choices of medium, artist Sarah Meyohas and architect Ben Dobbin begin their projects from the same place: imagining what a person will behold when they first approach the work.
For Dobbin, lead of the Foster + Partners San Francisco office, that vista tends to feature a looming facade encountered from the sidewalk —among them, Silicon Valley’s Apple Park and Vivaldi Towers in Amsterdam. Lately, though, he’s engaging the built environment on a more modest scale, partnering with The Dalmore, a nearly 200-year-old distillery in the Scottish Highlands. The new collaboration, introduces the third masterpiece in the Luminary Series, yielded a sculptural display for the presentation of two rare bottles of 52-year-aged whisky, one of which was auctioned at Sotheby’s last month. Dobbin’s creation is complemented by a strictly limited 20,000-bottle run of a 17-year-aged single malt sold in a bespoke case inspired by his work.
This recent turn to the sculptural brought Dobbin into a dimension with which Meyohas— whose conceptual practice dissects the impact of new technologies across film, cryptocurrency, holograms, and more—is familiar. Recently, the artist, whose work has been shown at institutions including New York’s New Museum and London’s Barbican Centre, and is held in the collection of Paris’s Centre Pompidou, veered into the architectural realm herself, to remarkable effect. She installed a meandering wall at the Desert X biennial in the Coachella Valley this past spring and served as an executive producer on last year’s Oscar-winning drama The Brutalist. These brushes with larger-than-life creations have only deepened Meyohas’s inquiries into the ways we perceive and give meaning to space—whether virtual or physical. For the issue, she joined Dobbin to compare notes on their complementary practices: the light it casts, the people who engage with it, and most importantly, how it feels to bring a heady concept to life.
Sarah Meyohas: I’m excited to talk to you. I may be an artist, but architecture is calling me in multiple ways.
Ben Dobbin: I was watching your film Cloud of Petals. What inspired you to choose the Bell Labs building as the environment for that?
Meyohas: Bell Labs still holds this mythic weight in the tech world. I created that piece because I was so inspired by the grandness of that space. I don’t often walk into office buildings that have
such a large atrium—it lifts your gaze upwards like it’s a cathedral. I’m very curious how you think about designing spaces.
Dobbin: That [taste for a] big central space and corporate messaging has evolved. Now people want impact, but also softness. They want multidisciplinary spaces where many things happen at once. I’d love to reinvent that building.
Meyohas: Are there spaces you’d love to design but haven’t found a client for?
Dobbin: There’s a perception we only do big things—and we do—but we also just finished two very intimate restaurants in Tuscany. We have to maintain the discipline of working at the human scale, and that comes down to thinking about experience. There’s a connection between making film and making architecture. Both involve experiential storyboarding: What do you see first? What’s the next revelation? And the next? What if you came by foot, or off the bus, or were the executive, or the chef? We imagine those people’s movements. Architecture is shaped through these little paths and perspectives.
“There’s a connection between making film and making architecture. Both involve experiential storyboarding: What do you first see? What’s the next revelation? And the next?” —Ben Dobbin
Meyohas: That makes so much sense. I recently did a piece for Desert X—a sinuous, serpentine wall with large reflectors that cast light onto the surface. For me, both filmmaking and artmaking begin with an obsession over light. When Desert X invited me, I asked, “What are our constraints? How big can we go?” From there, I leave room for experimentation. That’s the gift of being an artist.
Dobbin: That sounds familiar. We have more structure due to scale, but we also discover things as we go. Light, color, the way vegetation reflects or filters light—it all brings buildings alive. It’s never too late to adjust and refine. Your holograms are amazing. They have a kaleidoscopic effect—almost cubist. What links the holograms to the ribbon in the desert, to the petals in the A.I. generation? How would you describe the thread that connects them?
Meyohas: I am the thread. The link between the ribbon in the desert and the holograms is much clearer—it’s light reflecting off a surface you never actually encounter. Light is a really good material for me because it combines the spirit— something metaphysical, transcendent—with a real, scientific entity that I can play with. These media help me turn light into something extra-
ordinary. And they require physical presence. Now, I’m working on more film, more sculptures. I actually designed a bottle, too.
Dobbin: Oh? What was ironic about the Dalmore project was that, at first, we thought it might be a bottle. In the end, it turned out to be everything but the bottle, which I quite liked, because the spirit itself was left pure. It’s celebrated by all that surrounds it. What kind of bottle did you design?
“Light is a really good material for me because it combines the spirit— something metaphysical, transcendent—with a real, scientific component that I can play with.” —Sarah Meyohas
Meyohas: That’s the thing—no one called me up! So I designed a bottle for myself. It’s meant to be cast glass. The patterns on it aren’t bold —they’re very soft. I’ve been writing and thinking a lot about perfume, which was the connection. But similar to you, I’m not interested in creating a scent itself—I’m only interested in the vessel. If someone wants a bottle, I’ve got a great one.
Dobbin: Outside of your own discipline, where do you look for inspiration?
Meyohas: Right now, I look to neuroscience. I’ve been spending a lot of time in San Francisco because I became friends with a woman who has a lab at Berkeley. Neuroscience is so interesting because it’s focused on perception—the link between what we see and how we understand it —and consciousness.
Dobbin: One of the cool things about being an architect is that you’re constantly working across professions. If you work for a dentist, you have to think like a dentist. If you’re working for a tech company or an industrial design company, you start to understand what motivates them. When you work with scientists, you rub up against them. You’re always learning. Every time you’re exposed to something new, it’s a new set of fingerprints on your brain.
PICTURE AN ARTIST IN THEIR STUDIO. IT’S THE WEE HOURS, MUSIC IS PUMPING THROUGH A PORTABLE SPEAKER, THE FLOOR IS A CRIME SCENE, AND THE ARTIST IS DEEP IN A CREATIVE FLOW.
FOOD AND BEVERAGE RARELY ENTER THE PICTURE (OTHER THAN THE SYMBOLIC WINE BOTTLE OR TWO) WHEN WE ENVISION THIS SCENE. BUT ARTISTS CAN’T LIVE ON INSPIRATION ALONE. THAT’S WHY CULTURED’S FOOD EDITOR, MINA STONE, ASKED MORE THAN TWO DOZEN ARTISTS TO IDENTIFY THE FARE THEY CANNOT DO WITHOUT. SOMETIMES, NIBBLING IS THE NAME OF THE GAME; OTHER TIMES, IT’S A MATTER OF DIVERSION OR NOSTALGIA FOR HOME. IN THE PAGES THAT FOLLOW, 40 ARTISTS SHARE THE FOODS THAT FUEL THE WORK WE LOVE.
“I’m thinking about what we ate on our worst days growing up… It’s gotta be rice. It’s one of the foundations for both of my cultures: Black American and Japanese. It will fill you up. You can finesse a little gravy to make it cute, or you can go straight Japanese and pull up with the natto (fermented sticky beans)!”
AYA BROWN
“Listed in order of importance: GARLIC
BROCK ENRIGHT
“It would have to be A GOOD DINER BREAKFAST.
Eggs, bacon, hash browns, blueberry pancakes, toasted English muffin (with butter and jam), orange juice, water, and an iced espresso.”
CHASE HALL
“BLACK COFFEE. CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT!”
KATHERINA OLSCHBAUR
“I
can’t live without the
‘WELCOME TO MIAMI’ SMOOTHIE FROM PURA VIDA MIAMI IN WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN.
The passionfruit, mango, and banana mix reminds me of a warm day with family in the 305.”
NAUDLINE PIERRE
“WATER. DOES THAT COUNT?”
N. DASH
“Halloumi cheese.” LIZZI BOUGATSOS
“1. Homemade fish and chips, my go-to comfort food.
2. Homemade cashew milk, which is actually cashew cream because I use three cups instead of four cups of water.”
ADAM PENDLETON
“CHICKEN THIGHS —ALWAYS GRILLED!
And marinated all day with whatever I find.” URS FISCHER
“Celery—just the simplest, deepest flavor.” SPENCER SWEENEY
“AVOCADOS!
It’s been almost three years since I started cooking vegetarian at home, and I’m loving the challenge. Figuring out how to make tasty dishes without meat is a fun little puzzle. I’m totally hooked on all the new vegan products; they’re the highlight of my grocery trips.” MAMALI SHAFAHI
“PERUVIAN
ROSE SALANE
“Asparagus.” JOEY FRANK
“SUNFLOWER SEEDS. THEY REMIND ME OF GROWING UP IN WASHINGTON, DC.
Eating them was a daily ritual in my neighborhood and school. I’ve carried that memory into my artwork, using sunflower seeds as a symbol of home, survival, and shared experience. They speak to the resourcefulness of inner-city life, where even the smallest things hold meaning.”
EMMANUEL MASSILLON
“CABBAGE.”
CALVIN MARCUS
“Bread!” JULIA CHIANG
“I love Caesar salad! It’s got all my favorite stuff. Anchovies! Parmesan! Crunchy, garlicky croutons! Dijon mustard! Lemon! Romaine! OMG!
I always leave the peel around for a few hours afterward. Perfect air freshener.”
ROB PRUITT
“Cheese!” KAWS
It’s my ultimate favorite food, and it’s the easiest thing to reheat when you’re pressed for time in the studio.”
QUALEASHA WOOD
Not together.” ELIZABETH JAEGER
I like using ground-up kimchi seasoning to sprinkle on scrambled eggs or spaghetti.” ANICKA YI
“Family-wise, it has to be chicken nuggets— like, we wouldn’t be okay [without them].”
RUBY SKY STILER AND DANIEL GORDON
“RASPBERRIES!”
“Sunflower seeds.” KON TRUBKOVICH
“I like me a Dominican breakfast. There’s a dish
You’ll start hitting home runs like Sammy Sosa.” ARMANDO NIN
“VITELLO TONATTO. EASY.” ZAK KITNICK
“Ice cream.”
MADELINE DONAHUE
“GRITS ARE ESSENTIAL,
as is my local sourwood honey from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Also, banana pudding.”
VERNE DAWSON
“Coffee. I dream about it the night before.” SAM MOYER
It’s my go-to comfort meal any time of the year (because frozen peas are great). Otherwise, the spicy tuna hand roll from Sushi Gen in LA.”
ADAM ALESSI
“I can’t live without fruit. I like all of it, even bananas.
JENNA GRIBBON
“White rice. Rice is life!” JOSH KLINE “SHEEP’S MILK
Who doesn’t like hearty wholesome food the way grandma used to make it?” ERNESTO BURGOS
“Greek yogurt.” KIRSTEN DEIRUP
“Fish soup.” ALEX EAGLETON
HAITIAN DISH.”
EMMANUEL LOUISNORD DESIR
“Nuts.” MARIANNE VITALE
“CAPERS AND TOMATOES.”
BEN WOLF NOAM
JUL 5, 2025–MAY 31, 2026
City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago celebrates the history and future of the city’s LGBTQ+ community by bringing together work from over 30 artists and collectives working in Chicago from the 1980s to the present.
@mcachicago mcachicago.org
YOUR PROBLEMATIC FAVE FROM THE WHITE LOTUS IS ENTERING THE SEASON WITH NO FUCKS GIVEN.
“LIFE HAS BEEN SO CRAZY LATELY.”
That’s an understatement from Leslie Bibb, whose little blonde bob dominated our screens this winter in her turn as The White Lotus’s pattern-loving, not-so-low-key Republican, Kate. Never mind the seven-month shoot in Thailand that preceded the show’s premiere in February, or the relentless press tour that followed it. The actor, who’s lent her chipper stage presence to reporters, race-car driver wives, and Palm Beach socialites over a three-decade career, is not slowing down this summer (her current mantra? “Say yes”). Trips to China and France are in the books, as is settling into the lifestyle of Upstate New York, where she recently bought a house with her partner and White Lotus co-star, Sam Rockwell. In the thick of it all, CULTURED took Bibb to another estival destination, the Hamptons, for a shoot with Montauk denizen Terence Connors.
What does a Leslie Bibb summer look like? Every time I make a plan it gets thrown out the window, so I’m trying to stay in the moment and say yes—in summer and in life.
What’s the soundtrack of a Leslie Bibb summer? I watched Becoming Led Zeppelin last night, so LED ZEPPELIN!
What’s the Leslie Bibb summer uniform? I’m trying to be better with my fashion a little bit. I’m anti-flip-flop right now; I’ve turned on them. I like a great skirt, a great top, or a really good jean with a tank top.
What’s the Leslie Bibb summer beauty routine? I love a good lotion and potion. I’m fanatical about SPF, especially in the summer. You can’t fuck around with the sun—she wins every time—but I do love a sun-kissed cheek. I’m really into no makeup, too. As women, it’s like, “Cover it up! Cover it up!” I’m into real faces and seeing what everybody has.
What’s your beach read this summer?
Joan Didion’s The White Album and Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz. I started Slow Days, and I feel like Eve Babitz is looking into my soul. I’m into an artist summer—being unapologetic, left of center, and quirky. The edges of it all.
Mussels or clams? Italian food, I’m clams; French food, I’m mussels. Don’t make me pick.
Pickleball or tennis? Tennis! Pickleball, get out. Pickleball? It’s a dumb name. Play tennis, PLEASE GOD.
Jeep or convertible? Jeep all the way. There’s too much wind with the convertible.
Beach or poolside? I’m going to say something controversial: I don’t love sand. It gets on my nerves, I’m sorry. But I love the sound of the waves.
“PICKLEBALL? IT’S A DUMB NAME.
GOD.”
With global delegations touching down in Osaka for this year’s World Expo, the French maison looks to a longtime muse for the next chapter of its story.
By Sam Falb
Many Louis Vuitton acolytes may be unaware that the house’s now-iconic monogrammed canvas was originally inspired by Japanese mon emblems back in 1896. More widely publicized is current Men’s Creative Director Pharrell Williams’s longtime love affair with the East Asian country, perhaps best epitomized by his close relationship with the designer Nigo, with whom he most recently collaborated on his Fall/Winter 2025 Louis Vuitton collection.
This year, the century-spanning creative dialogue between the house and Japanese cultural emblems of all sizes is being honored at the 2025 World Expo Osaka Kansai in an LVMH-sponsored French Pavilion. Inside, an immersive narrative designed by Japanese-born OMA architect Shohei Shigematsu awaits. Rodin’s The Cathedral stands sentinel amidst an 85-strong army of wardrobe trunks, all set to an original soundscape. Composed in collaboration with the French Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music,
the score imagines the intimate vibrations of savoir faire. Meanwhile, a video work presents a “trunk sphere”—a sensory journey by artist Daito Manabe projected on the space’s walls.
Without Japan, we might never have the Louis Vuitton we know today—or tomorrow.
This cross-cultural conversation continues at the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, with “Visionary Journeys,” on view from July 15 through Sept. 17. Curated by art and fashion historian Florence Müller, the exhibition offers a turned-on-its-axis take on Louis Vuitton’s history, including original swaths of the brand’s Japanese craft-inspired monogram canvas and other archival pulls.
The season is rounded out with a final one-two punch: dual Louis Vuitton Editions publications
developed for the occasion. The first, Fashion Eye Osaka , is a psychedelic celebration of urban intrigue by photographer Jean-Vincent Simonet. The next is City Guide Osaka , featuring insights from food critic François Simon and Osaka-born artist Verdy.
As this flurry of launches unfolds, one detail comes into focus: Without Japan, we might never have the Louis Vuitton we know today—or tomorrow.
Many Louis Vuitton acolytes may be unaware that the house’s now-iconic monogrammed canvas was originally inspired by Japanese mon emblems back in 1896.
IN AN UNASSUMING PARIS ATELIER AT AN UNDISCLOSED ADDRESS, THE CRAFTSPEOPLE OF VAN CLEEF & ARPELS ARE ASSEMBLING SOME OF THE WORLD’S MOST PRECIOUS PIECES.
By Sam Falb
The French capital is full of cultural powerhouses; some are hiding in plain sight. Tucked within a nondescript building in central Paris lies a Van Cleef & Arpels atelier steeped in a multigenerational legacy of handiwork and artisanal finesse. The atmosphere within is surprisingly casual: Family photos adorn workbenches, swatches of fabric act as tabletop catchalls to scoop up wayward gems, and an easy hum of focused energy fills the space.
Every workspace and tool is tailored to a specific role, and all are passed down from mentor to mentee, embodying the continuity of Van Cleef & Arpels’s own heritage—and the time it takes to craft something truly unique.
On any given day, a few artisans will be working away on a Zip necklace, a perfect embodiment of this time-honored process. In 1938, the Duchess of Windsor suggested that Renée Puissant, the maison’s then–artistic director, embed a zipper—an emblem of
turn-of-the-century modernity—into a piece of fine jewelry. By the 1950s, after more than a decade of research, Van Cleef developed the technology to do so. The resulting design is now a house staple and has been refined and reinvented continuously in the years since—in 2005, in the form of the slender Zip Couture, the piece reached its most recent expression.
The house rarely reveals the inner workings of this storied atelier, but CULTURED was offered a rare glimpse. Here, a collection of craftspeople reflect on the experience of working in this hallowed space, and dedicating their lives to zippers, clovers, and gemstoneencrusted gold.
“AS PRECIOUS METAL CHANGES FROM SOLID TO LIQUID, WE SEE LITTLE BEADS COLLAPSE BEFORE MELTING TO FORM A GLOWING WHOLE.”
ANTHONY, SMELTER
“WHEN YOU CUT THE FACETS OF A DIAMOND, YOU FEEL A WARMTH THAT ENVELOPS YOUR HAND—THE STONE CAN ALSO LIGHT UP AND THERE IS THIS VERY PARTICULAR SOUND. ALL THESE SENSATIONS MAKE IT A SATISFYING MOMENT.”
GABRIEL, DIAMOND CUTTER
“ONE OF MY GREATEST CHALLENGES IS A THREE-ROW NECKLACE. WHEN THERE ARE SEVERAL LEVELS, YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT THE RESULT IS HARMONIOUS. SOMETIMES IT’S NOT EASY TO RESPECT THE GAPS. BUT WHEN YOU SEE THE PIECE ASSEMBLED, IT’S ALL WORTH IT.”
ANGÉLIQUE, THREADER
“BEING A QUALITY CONTROLLER IS A JOB OF PASSION. WHEN YOU SEE THE FINISHED PIECE IN THE WORKSHOPS, IT’S A MOMENT OF REAL TEAMWORK.”
—STÉPHANIE, QUALITY CONTROLLER
‘I FEEL GOOD HERE’
PATI HERTLING HAS MADE FOOD AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF THE ARTISTIC WORLDS SHE’S BUILT FOR OVER TWO DECADES. CULTURED’S FOOD EDITOR SAT HER DOWN TO UNRAVEL WHAT THEIR INTERSECTION HAS TAUGHT HER.
By Mina Stone
Pati Hertling is, more often than not, in the service of others.
In the more than 20 years since her foray into the art world, Pati has always incorporated cooking—and collaboration—into her work. The offering at the “Evas Arche und der Feminist” art salons that made her a staple in the early-aughts avant-gardes of Berlin and New York? Soup and bread. The accompaniment to gatherings big and small at the East Village nerve center Performance Space, which she has led alongside Taja Cheek and Ana Beatriz Sepúlveda since 2023? Steaks for 60, grilled salmon for team get-togethers. Sustenance for all.
The one-time restitution lawyer uses the act of breaking bread to break down the barrage of information, expectations, and opinions we walk into such events with and invites us, instead, to arrive among the artwork and our fellow guests alert. (After all, there is nothing quite like the act of chewing to ground us in the present.) We shift from bystanders into participants, strangers into neighbors, during these meals. Less fuss, more care—that’s the Pati way.
To give readers a taste of her special sauce, I sat down with Pati to pick her brain about the power of food.
CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT WHERE YOU COME FROM AND HOW YOU GREW UP?
I was born in West Berlin. I grew up in the then American-occupied sector with my twin brother [Alexander Hertling, co-founder of Balice Hertling ]. My parents still live in the same apartment where we grew up. They’re 86 now, but they’re very social. Their favorite restaurant in Berlin is the Paris Bar.
DID YOU GUYS GROW UP HAVING FAMILY DINNERS?
My parents used to host a lot of dinners when they were younger. There were lots of weekends where we would wake up to the remnants of the party and my parents still sleeping in bed. When we got older, we cleaned up for them—that made them so happy. We thought it was really fun to clean the apartment.
WHAT WAS THE VERY FIRST SALON OR ART EVENT YOU ORGANIZED, AND HOW DID YOU MAKE IT HAPPEN?
I was in East Berlin in law school, so I must have been 19 or 20 years old. I was a bit of a late bloomer, but I made all of these new friends who were not Berliners. A lot of them were from the south of Germany, which has a much more bohemian culture. They were really into food and performance art. With a bigger group of people who were from Berlin, we used to organize club nights. One of them, my friend Peter Kisur, was part of this performance art group called Honey-Suckle Company. We became super close and
started talking about how we wanted to [organize] something like a soup kitchen for artists for a better world. We called it “Evas Arche und der Feminist,” which translates to “Eve’s Arc and the Feminist Man.” Peter felt it was important to say inclusive feminism doesn’t have to be all feminine. We put together a show with multiple people, whom we asked to [contribute] artworks, and we cooked soup and made bread. That was the first of what would go on for five years. It became a real thing—anything you do repeatedly becomes a kind of institution. The constant was a show involving a visual art piece in a janky basement with some kind of live component and bread, wine, and soup.
TO NEW YORK?
I had done a year at Fordham in 2001. After finishing my studies in Germany, I felt like I wanted to get out of Berlin a bit. I was like, “I need to get out today—it’s either Paris or New York.” So I moved back to New York [in 2007]. My good friend, the artist Dirk Bell, was represented by Gavin Brown. Dirk really wanted to do [an edition of] “Evas Arche und der Feminist” at Gavin’s. We did the first one during an exhibition with Dirk and other German artists. And that continued for another five years at Gavin’s.
AND THERE WAS ALWAYS SOUP AND BREAD?
Yeah, we tried to theme it a bit so the soup would somehow be in the mood of the show.
AND THIS WHOLE TIME YOU’RE ALSO WORKING AS A LAWYER?
“THE CONSTANT WAS A SHOW INVOLVING A VISUAL ART PIECE IN A JANKY BASEMENT WITH SOME KIND OF LIVE COMPONENT AND BREAD, WINE, AND SOUP.” —PATI HERTLING
Yes, I was an art restitution attorney; we represented families who were persecuted during the Holocaust. I think that’s why people let me do things—I never asked for anything because I didn’t really need to make money from it. I was like, “I have this idea, and you don’t have to pay me for it. I just want to do it.”
FOOD IS A FORM OF RESTITUTION AS WELL, AND IT’S CENTRAL TO WHAT YOU DO NOW AS THE DIRECTOR OF PERFORMANCE SPACE. TELL ME ABOUT HOW YOU GOT THERE.
I was ready to make a step out of the law world and work in the arts as more than a hobby or side gig. I didn’t believe I could actually get a job in the arts because I never went to art school. But I joined Performance Space in 2018 as its deputy director—some artists endorsed me, and I knew Jenny [Schlenzka, who was then executive artistic director]. We had worked with you on Bread and Roses: [A Dinner-Symposium on Women and the Arts] at MoMA PS1.
WHICH WAS ALL ABOUT FOOD… IT’S NOT EASY TO COOK SOUP FOR 50 PEOPLE; IT TAKES PRACTICE, ORGANIZATION, AND INTENTION. WHEN A FRIEND OF MINE TOLD ME THAT YOU COOK AT MOST OF THE PERFORMANCE SPACE OPENINGS, I WAS LIKE, “PATI’S NO JOKE.”
I love it. But I don’t do it because I want everybody to say, “Oh, my God, Pati’s such a good cook.” It’s the act of cooking and holding an event where you serve food and you eat together. It’s also about the way it’s presented —there’s something homemade to it. We’ll use mismatched plates and mismatched glass cups rather than just going to the deli and getting 100 plastic cups; those little gestures go a long way. I want someone to experience being cared for.
“WE’LL USE MISMATCHED PLATES AND MISMATCHED GLASS CUPS RATHER THAN JUST GOING TO THE DELI AND GETTING 100 PLASTIC CUPS; THOSE LITTLE GESTURES GO A LONG WAY.” —PATI HERTLING
And I feel certain social borders break down [during these events]. At Performance Space, the staff and crew are not just serving people, but being served. As an arts administrator who has a responsibility for a physical space, I think about how the space needs to be something that has a feeling and an identity where people can come and say, “I feel good here.” And I think that you do that through food and drink. If you don’t do that, it doesn’t make the room alive.
By Emily Dougherty
You don’t have to be a tetrachromat to recognize a shade created by Gregoris Pyrpylis. As the creative director of Hermès Beauty, the Greece-born, Paris-based makeup artist works in microtones and glimmers, concocting jamais vu versions of a classic brick-red lip or smoked-out gray shadow. For his latest collection—17 sheer, silk-inspired lipsticks—he plays with the idea of color, suspending pigments in a texture as airy as organza, laced with a barely-there shimmer— just enough to catch the light and flatter absolutely everyone. “That was my goal!” Pyrpylis says. “You can close your eyes, pick any color, and it will still look beautiful.”
How much silk did you surround yourself with when designing this lipstick collection?
You know when you wear a silk scarf around your neck, and it creates this radiance on the skin? I’ve always thought that lipstick has this same power. Even before Hermès, I wore silk scarves—the small ones that fit in a suit pocket. They bring such beautiful light to the face. When I’m tired, I wear one. I wanted the lipstick to feel like that. In the ’90s, my mom would pick me up from school wearing a long silk scarf. She would hold my hand as we walked, and the scarf would float in front of my face. I would look at the world through it. For the lipstick, I borrowed this transparency from chiffon, shine from silk lamé, the caressing feel of tulle. It’s a melting pot of my favorite elements.
CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF HERMÈS BEAUTY GREGORIS PYRPYLIS HAS A TREASURE TROVE OF MEMORIES THAT INFLUENCE HIS RELATIONSHIP TO COLOR AND TEXTURE. FOR HIS LATEST LIPSTICK COLLECTION, ROUGE DE HERMÈS SILKY LIPSTICK SHINE, HE PLUCKED OUT A FEW OF HIS MOST INTIMATE.
The memory of sunlight shining on the Aegean sea inspired the soft shimmer of some of these shades. Can you tell us more about how memory influences your work?
I grew up in a place where beauty comes through light, through the transition of the seasons. Everything transforms while keeping its essence. I fall in love with the sparkles on the sea in summer, and I also find beauty in the winter sea, when it’s rougher and the blue is a different hue. It’s about having open eyes, an open mind, and observing. I think that’s where I fit in with the house of Hermès. We don’t try to transform with makeup—we try to express and celebrate what’s already there.
You mentioned that you think Rothko would have made a great makeup artist. Are there other artists who influence your use of color?
Rothko’s colors are so singular. When you stand in front of one of his paintings, you get a vibration from the color. It’s almost spiritual. Josef Albers was also a great influence— he taught me how a specific color can interact with a specific complexion. Helen Frankenthaler’s eye for the transparency and evolution of color inspires me too. For this particular collection, there’s a beautiful painting by Matisse, L’Atelier Rouge. I’ve always loved this specific shade of red. Yesterday I was at MoMA, and there it was.
Was there a particular moment growing up when you decided to become a makeup artist?
I remember it exactly. One day at university, my best friend wanted to go out. She had a small makeup bag—three or four products— and I did her makeup. She had a kind of caramel terra-cotta lipstick, and I used it for her lips, cheeks, and eyes, and added a bit of mascara. It was natural, but she looked in the mirror and felt in sync with herself. I’ve seen that moment with other women—models, actresses, even my mom. She’s always minimal with makeup, but the moment she applies it, there’s a transformation. The inner self and the outer self snap into alignment.
Your Crystal. A Higher Form of Consciousness.
By Emmeline Clein
Summer in New York is a moment when tensions rise to the surface. Who can afford to flee the claustrophobic streets? Who is working the outdoor tables, and who is loudly complaining that there aren’t enough of them?
Parties are the perfect petri dish for these muggy anxieties and the sometimes regrettable ways we cope with them, so it’s no surprise that legions of reveling scribes, from Edith Wharton to Tama Janowitz, have turned to them for inspiration over the years.
This summer, another author joins the city’s nightlife literature pantheon: Rob Franklin. A professor, poet, critic, and co-founder of Art for Black Lives, his first novel, Great Black Hope, follows Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, as he is thrust into intimate contact with the racism and classism of both New York’s criminal justice system and its media ecosystem.
Mere weeks after the death of his best friend, the child of a renowned soul singer, on the night of her 25th birthday celebrations, Smith is arrested for cocaine possession in the Hamptons. The book follows his spiraling journey through New York’s nightclubs, courtrooms, and basement recovery meetings.
Spryly satirical, intellectually incisive, yet still gracefully mournful, it is a series of beguilingly melancholic party reports, a lyrically rendered bildungsroman, and a wrenching elegy for a lost friend. With Smith’s story, Franklin finds that boisterous nightclubs might also be mausoleums. I sat down with the author to talk about party-girl interiority, the godfather of all New York summer novels, and the social scaffolding behind it all.
We’re here to talk about a Venn diagram integral to New York literary history, which is summer in the city, parties, and parties occurring during summer in the city. Of course, yours is much more than a summer party book, but I want to ask for some of your favorite books in that Venn diagram.
You can’t have this conversation without mentioning Gatsby. I feel like there’s a Great Gatsby bell curve wherein semi-literary people think it’s basic to name-check Gatsby because we all had to read it in high school, but people who have written a novel recognize how rare it is for that perfect a novel to exist. There are so many mesmerizing sentences.
There are recent additions to the canon: I love My Year of Rest and Relaxation and The Guest, which both take a darker tone in looking at spaces of wealth, privilege, and indulgence. I also like a more earnest party-girl book, something like Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz.
You have a great line about becoming a “nightlife zoologist” while loitering in the smoking section. How did you approach rendering class analysis via party scene?
Nightlife in New York collapses so many different scenes and types of people who—in a different kind of city, say London—often would not come into contact. There’s often sexual or romantic tension there. There’s the opportunity for actual conflict. Parties are spaces where you’re seeing laid bare the mechanisms that uphold glamour. Looking behind that curtain at the labor upholding the illusion is very interesting to me.
There’s a tradition of party-boy books by men like Martin Amis, Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, etc., about white guys who are often literally violent, or just very badly
behaved, getting away with everything. In this book, we have a party boy who’s committed a minor infraction dealing with the justice system. Were you aiming for homage-meets-subversion?
So many of the party boy texts are about heedless consumption without consequence. Smith is not that kind of character. His passport to these rooms is revocable, and he’s perpetually aware of that. Smith understands that being wealthy and white has become unfashionable, at least without the veneer of multiculturalism, so he is aware of what role he’s expected to play and is meticulous about playing it. We see that when he steps out of line, as a Black gay man, there are ruinous consequences immediately.
Time moves very differently during summer and at parties. It’s both more languid and more manic. I love the line when Smith wonders whether he has an addiction, and realizes instead he’s afflicted by “an unspecified malady, a desire for the night,” which feels like a craving for a type of time. How did you approach temporality in the book?
The sections that take place in summer in New York are more maximalist on a craft level—bodily sensory detail, like how someone’s breath feels when it hits your face as they’re talking to you closely at a party. I think of Goodbye to All That, and [Joan] Didion standing on a street corner eating a peach. It’s this moment of peace and indulgence. I wanted to embed moments like that throughout the novel.
The way you write about Instagram allows you to perform such subtle yet precise skewerings of your characters’ class positions and class awareness in that late 2010s era. Can you talk about fictionalizing social media?
It’s hard for me to picture writing something set in the modern day without including some degree of digital space. In Great Black Hope, we have headlines appearing on Google alerts and references to people’s Instagram presences. There are new frontiers of hyper-modern snobbery.
The book starts with one party scene and ends with another: Smith’s memory of the last time he saw the friend he’s been grieving. Could you talk about the narrator’s changing conception of the New York party scene?
Something that unites those scenes is Smith watching someone he has a great deal of affection for across a room. It can make you fall in love with your friends again to see the way they can delight a stranger. Smith is a character with a tendency to turn towards cynicism. Those are moments when, despite the nearness of tragedy, there’s so much humanity. I wanted that sense of wary hope to end the book.
By Julia Halperin
She made her name with paintings of coitus. Her latest subject matter, the focus of four exhibitions on two continents this season, is no less wild.
Nicole Wittenberg began making waves in downtown New York art circles more than a decade ago with lyrical paintings of amateur porn.
“I had a lot of fun putting in different search terms—hitchhikers! Sunset! Blue Velvet!” she recalls of trawling the Internet for source material. The artist, in her 30s at the time, would pause the videos over and over until she found a still that sparked her imagination. Sometimes, it would be an erect penis; other times, a shadow on the wall would do the trick.
“Art is exciting when you do something you’re not supposed to do.”
To Wittenberg, these libidinal morsels felt less risky to depict than the natural world, which has since eclipsed porn as the primary focus of her practice. After steeping herself in critical theory and identity politics in art school, landscapes “felt like [they were] something I wasn’t supposed to do,” she says on a recent afternoon in her airy Chinatown studio as Roy, her bright blue miniature parrot, rustles in the other room. “Art is exciting when you do something you’re not supposed to do.”
That ecological promiscuity underpins no fewer than four exhibitions on two continents by the artist this season. In April, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art opened Wittenberg’s first solo museum survey featuring paintings and studies she created in Maine, where she has spent nearly every summer since 2012. Two and a half hours away, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland is presenting her largest canvases to date through September 14. In Paris, smaller-scale flower paintings will fill the modernist temple that is Le Corbusier’s Maison La Roche through July 19. Two weeks before that show closes, Phaidon will publish her first monograph, featuring essays by painter David Salle, OMAA curator Devon Zimmerman, and art historian Suzanne Hudson. And to round it all off, Acquavella will hand over its New York outpost to the artist this October for her first solo show with the gallery since 2022.
It was a trip to Maine—her first—that inspired Wittenberg’s foray into the landscape genre. She was
drawn to the lush wildness of the state’s outdoors, which reminded her of growing up against the backdrop of Northern California’s unmanicured nature. After a decade of urban life in New York, “there was an attraction to being in the opposite condition,” she recalls. Before long, she found herself painting the way Claude Monet or Pierre-Auguste Renoir did, but also the way she had as a child: en plein air.
It took the artist a number of years to realize these efforts were as worthy of investment as her more theory-laden work. A breakthrough came on a trip to Greece in 2017. At the suggestion of a friend, British portraitist Chantal Joffe, Wittenberg brought along pastels and created dozens of impressionistic images of the light-dappled water. (As any painter worth their salt will tell you, water is one of the more vexing subjects to capture effectively.) They were fast, experimental, and, above all, fun. “For all those reasons, I didn’t take them seriously,” she says.
But she couldn’t deny the pull they had on her. Wittenberg’s next challenge, which took several more years, was to figure out how to translate the sensation and spontaneity of her pastel studies of water and, later, flowers and landscapes into oil paint on canvas. “I was really laboring over these paintings—and they looked like dirty old dish rags,” she remembers. “I had to realize I wasn’t replicating the image, I was replicating the feeling.”
By mastering the transparency of oil paint and accelerating her execution, she eventually managed to capture in oil the moment the light passed through a flower petal or the blur of a hydrangea bush in the breeze. To achieve this improvisational sensation, she uses a combination of brooms dipped in paint, which introduce the element of chance, and more conventional brushes. “ I like an out-of-control process—it fits my nature,” Wittenberg says.
These days, she sees little difference between the porn paintings, which she still makes, and the flower works. Both are about sifting through a series of moments to capture the utter thrill of being in contact, and in communion, with another living thing.
To mark its 250th anniversary, Breguet continues to honor—and transcend—its own rich legacy with a new iteration of the Tradition timepiece.
“If Marie-Antoinette were alive today, she’d be wearing one on each wrist.”
By Charles Curkin
In 1783, Marie-Antoinette commissioned Abraham-Louis Breguet to create the most complicated watch in the world. According to the historical records of the company he founded, the French queen—known as quite a magpie—already owned multiple timepieces by the watchmaker. She wouldn’t live to see Breguet’s latest feat, however: It took more than forty years to fulfill her order, and she was executed in 1793.
Over two centuries later, Breguet still creates timepieces with an unapologetic sense of extravagance, albeit with more efficient
delivery. The new 38mm Tradition Seconde Rétrograde 7035, released in honor of the house’s sestercentennial, continues that legacy in brilliant fashion. The devilishly limited edition (250 pieces for 250 years) revisits the architecture of the iconic Tradition collection—a horological homage to the “souscription” pocket watches Monsieur Breguet conceived in 1796. Like its ancestor, the 7035 puts its inner workings on full display: gears, barrel, and escapement are visible across the dial, now rendered in arresting new hues.
For the first time, a Tradition piece is made of Breguet Gold, a proprietary alloy with a soft, warm luster. The dial—offset at 12 o’clock and
executed in the brand’s signature grand feu enamel—glows in translucent Breguet Blue, another bold in-house shade. Below it, a retrograde seconds hand arcs between 10 and 11 o’clock. The 7035 builds on a design language that has defined Breguet’s modern era—openworked, ornate, and technically ambitious. The Tradition Quantième Rétrograde 7597, introduced in 2020, laid the groundwork with its own dramatic dial and retrograde date complication. Together, the two models marry heritage and innovation in distinctly regal packaging.
If Marie-Antoinette were alive today, she’d be wearing one on each wrist.
In less than two decades, fashion industry veteran Marco Baldassari has garnered significant sartorial buzz for Eleventy, his tribute to effortless Milanese style. As the brand rings in the opening of its new locations in Toronto and at South Coast Plaza, the Italian visionary meditates on what’s to come.
By Sam Falb
“More than launching a brand, I aspired to create a lifestyle,” says Eleventy Co-Founder and Creative Director Marco Baldassari, “one that embodies the ‘made in Italy’ spirit of thoughtful design and timelessness.”
The journey for the Milanese mainstay began in 2007, when Baldassari crystallized a new approach to sartorial refinement—one the industry-vetted entrepreneur termed “smart luxury”—rooted in simplicity, authenticity, and a mindful approach to materials and production. Rather than chasing trends, Eleventy would offer pieces that balanced elegance with purpose, favoring enduring quality over excess and dilution.
“It all started in a living room,” Baldassari recalls. “No office, no resources—just me, my
passion, and an unwavering sense of purpose.” Nearly two decades later, the brand’s ranks have swelled to a team of 200, with pristine storefronts everywhere from Dubai to New York and Rome.
“Milanese style is the essence of city chic—effortlessly refined, quietly sophisticated, and never overstated. That ethos is deeply embedded in Eleventy’s DNA.”
—Marco Baldassari
The keys to that expansion? There’s the sleek, close cut of the brand’s tailoring, for one thing—a signal of its intentionally contemporary take on legacy craftsmanship that feels distinctly Milanese. “Eleventy’s
philosophy is … rooted in quality and excellence,” Baldassari explains. “I believed the modern wardrobe could be both elevated and effortless, combining the structure of formalwear with the ease of casual silhouettes.”
The brand name itself hints at that spirit of thoughtful, elevated evolution. “‘Eleventy’ isn’t a word—it’s a mindset,” Baldassari muses. “It’s about striving to become the best version of yourself. Refinement not just in appearance, but in life.”
To say that the Milan-born label has found its niche in an increasingly saturated market would be an understatement. The brand’s approach is decidedly hands-on, transcending the constraints of the retail and e-commerce landscape to build multidimensional relationships with an ever-growing roster of dedicated clientele hungry for that unique blend
of understated poise characteristic of Milan’s sartorial traditions. (Those client relationships have helped to shape the brand’s decisions around careful and intentional growth—this year, Eleventy opened new spaces in Toronto and Orange County’s South Coast Plaza.)
“From the beginning, it was my goal to build a global presence—carefully curated in markets that resonate with our values and our clients—while always paying homage to my beloved city, Milano.”
—Marco
Baldassari
The brand’s devoted buyers know what they’re getting: tailoring that never feels stiff, and
comfort that feels cultivated, considered, and deeply personal. “When you wear the clothes, you feel good,” says Baldassari. “Not just because of how they look, but because of how they make you feel. It’s about being comfortable in your own skin and empowered in the life you lead.”
That credo takes the form of handmade, compulsively wearable pieces that emphasize the quality of their materials, from the drape of a linen trouser to an elegant ripple of silk. This standard is maintained by a network of 94 family-run partner operations across Italy, with an all-hands-on-deck mentality for safeguarding local craftsmanship. “[That’s] our soul—it is woven into every detail of our designs,” Baldassari says of this meticulous production process. (Picking a palette at Eleventy, he notes, is a years-long process and “never accidental.”)
For the co-founder, this exacting precision isn’t just a design philosophy, it’s a business imperative. In an era of endless drops and disposable trends, the brand’s success lies in its rejection of quick growth in favor of deep roots. “In a world that often feels fast and transactional, Eleventy offers something more enduring,” Baldassari says. “It’s a warm, authentic experience grounded in respect, friendship, and sincere hospitality.”
“Eleventy is not just about what you wear, it’s about who you are today and who you are becoming tomorrow.”
—Marco Baldassari
THIS SPRING, THE ARTIST PHILLIP K. SMITH III TOOK OVER ONE OF THE SONORAN DESERT’S BEST-KNOWN ARCHITECTURAL WONDERS. THE RESULTING WORK PAID TRIBUTE TO THE REGION’S ENDURING POWER TO MESMERIZE.
By Mara Veitch
It’s hard to imagine that at one point, the William F. Cody house stood alone in the Sonoran Desert, a futuristic mirage in an ancient expanse.
When Cody completed the project in 1952, the structure seemed to emerge from the landscape itself, a pristine temple surrounded by creosote and sand. Today, the late Desert Modern architect’s family home is tucked among the low-slung ranch houses and tidy driveways of a tightly packed Palm Springs neighborhood.
The residence—a quiet triumph of steel, glass, adobe, and wood—still embodies this bygone sense of sumptuous isolation. As the sun dips, the glass panels that segment its interiors and cactus-filled courtyards melt away, creating the impression of moving through open air. “It was so bold of him,” says artist Phillip K. Smith lll, who unveiled 0/90/120, a site-specific installation of 11 light panels, in the historic structure this spring. “He said, ‘I’ve got raw land, no neighbors. I have a vision. I can do whatever I want.’ I have a lot of respect for the intensity of that decision.” (Cody would go on to design many of the iconic country clubs and residential developments that transformed the region into a dense retreat for Hollywood veterans and well-heeled bon vivants, but that came later.)
“How can I take a massive phenomenon and compress it? Can I crystallize its purest elements in the form of a singular object?”
—Phillip K. Smith lll
Like Cody, Smith’s practice is dedicated to encapsulating the desert’s magnitude. The artist spent his adolescence immersed in it— hiking into the Dos Palmas Preserve and cavorting with friends along the edge of the Salton Sea—before decamping east to study architecture at RISD. Eleven years later, when
Smith made his prodigal return home, the mountains he’d seen a thousand times became an electrifying study in texture, light, and shadow. He began making work that recontextualized the region’s eerily anachronistic natural forms—like Lucid Stead, 2013, a 70-year-old shack near Joshua Tree embedded with mirrors and light panels to create an oasis-like ripple in the landscape, or Reflection Field, a quintet of works that reigned over Coachella during the festival’s 2014 edition. “You have this clean horizon line—sky and land. Within that vista are these beacons—out of nowhere, a single tree, a boulder, a dune.”
“There’s a reason people have traveled to the middle of the desert for millennia. It’s a place for people to discover themselves, to reorder and dismantle the hierarchies in their lives.”
—Phillip K. Smith lll
It’s no surprise, then, that Smith’s first major artistic intervention into domestic space is focused on drawing the outdoors in. The Cody house was a captivating interlocutor for the now 52-year-old, whose 11 floor-to-cieling reflective and lit “volumes” stood like sentinels throughout its rooms and halls. Reflective during the day, 0/90/120 came alive between 3 and 7 p.m., when the intertwined phenomena at the heart of Smith’s practice were at their most hypnotic. “The rapid change in light that happens at sunset emphasizes how much the world is constantly transforming around us,” he says. The work’s title notes the angles of the volumes in relation to each other—each composition creating vertiginous rabbit holes of color that transformed the boundaries of the space as the sun made its descent.
The inquiries most pressing to Smith—“How can I take a massive phenomenon and compress it? Can I crystallize its purest elements in the form of a singular object?”—echo those of his predecessors, the Light and
Space artists who conducted similarly prismatic undertakings from their perches along the coast. “They were watching the sun shine through rolling fog over Venice Beach and attempting to capture it. I can’t make anything more beautiful than the desert sky, so I’m going to present it to you instead—in a way that warps your perception of space.”
The Cody house residency of 0/90/120 came to an end last month, but its effect on Smith was profound; he’s already at work on several new projects in response to the experience. The artist is quick to emphasize that this is part of the process, too: “There’s a reason people have traveled to the middle of the desert for millennia,” he muses. “It’s a place to reorder and dismantle the hierarchies in our lives.”
“I can’t make anything more beautiful than the desert sky, so I’m going to present it to you instead—in a way that warps your perception of space.”
—Phillip K. Smith lll
SWISS BRAND AKRIS TOUCHES DOWN IN CHICAGO’S GOLD COAST DISTRICT WITH A FLAWLESSLY DESIGNED FLAGSHIP.
By Stephanie Wong
In a city steeped in architectural heritage, Akris’s new Chicago flagship is both reverent and quietly subversive. Synonymous with its grand mansions and landmark facades, the Gold Coast neighborhood where the Swiss label has settled is one of Chicago’s most storied settings—fitting for a brand that has married legacy and innovation for more than a century. Designed in collaboration with David Chipperfield Architects, the 3,500square-foot space reimagines a classic red-brick building by encasing it in a modern glass-and-metal skin. The result is a compelling dialogue across time—one that honors the building’s origins while embracing its future.
For Creative Director Albert Kriemler, the gesture is symbolic. “Architecture, like fashion, is not static—it evolves,” he tells
CULTURED. “As a sign of respect, it was important for us to preserve the historic facade while also introducing something new.”
The conversation between old and new continues once patrons step inside. White-painted maple panels create a gallery-like envelope, while nearly invisible cables suspend delicate aluminum rails, giving garments the illusion of hovering in midair. Sunlight filters through both the updated facade and preserved openings, illuminating subtle yet luxurious textures: Pietra di Vicenza Grigia stone is underfoot, while ivory horsehair fabric and beige cashmere blanket the fitting rooms.
The boutique unfolds over two airy levels, beginning with accessories and handbags before flowing seamlessly into the ready-to-wear collections. The staircase— crafted from the same Vicenza stone as the
floor—acts as a sculptural centerpiece, guiding visitors upward into a serene yet tactile atmosphere.
Founded in 1922 in St. Gallen, Switzerland, Akris began as an apron atelier and has since grown into a global fashion house celebrated for architectural silhouettes, technical mastery, and an unwavering devotion to fabric. Under the direction of Kriemler, the founder’s grandson, the brand has also become known for its collaborations with artists and architects—other creative minds who share his belief that design should be intelligent and intuitive.
Now, with a foothold in Chicago, Akris adds a bold new chapter to this legacy. The Oak Street flagship blurs the line between showroom and modernist sanctuary. In true Akris fashion, it doesn’t demand attention—it earns it, gracefully.
courtesy
Plenty of people buy art. Fewer collect it. The latter pursuit is distinguished by the joy of the hunt, a commitment to supporting artists’ practices over time, and a willingness to live with something that might prompt confusion or even discomfort. Buyers stop when the walls are full. Collectors are never satisfied.
The 11 individuals on CULTURED’s eighth annual Young Collectors list embody exactly this kind of single-minded obsession. Some were raised by storied patrons; others found a passion for art on their own, often leaving their families perplexed. All share an interest in spreading the gospel, leaving the art world a little more curious than they found it.
Photography by Frank Frances
The real estate investor once flirted with the idea of becoming a flipper—and then resolved to buy art for keeps. His collection represents a who’s who of up-and-coming painters, as do the exhibitions he supports, including a showing of LaKela Brown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
EVERY COLLECTOR HAS MADE A ROOKIE MISTAKE OR TWO. WHAT WAS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE? I was at a dinner in France with some clients and friends, and everyone at the table had bought [work by] this artist who was getting tons of buzz. The gallerist was also there, and I felt pressured to buy a piece even though I didn’t love it. I was afraid to miss out and bought for speculation. It felt terrible, made me sick to my stomach. I have never done that again.
WHO DO YOU CREDIT WITH TEACHING YOU HOW TO NAVIGATE THE ART WORLD? I am mostly self-taught, but I was originally guided by Kim Hastreiter of Paper magazine and Marsea Goldberg of New Image Art. They taught me to buy only what I love.
TELL US ABOUT THE JOURNEY TO A PARTICULARLY HARD-WON ACQUISITION.
I pursued an artist named Alejandro Piñeiro Bello for two years. I called, texted, emailed, and DMed his dealer, Katia Rosenthal of KDR. I showed up at the gallery and all their events until I finally got the opportunity to buy an incredible painting from a museum show. Alejandro has since become a dear friend of mine, and I own multiple works.
“I felt pressured to buy a piece even though I didn’t love it. I was afraid to miss out and bought for speculation. It felt terrible, made me sick to my stomach. I have never done that again.”
WHAT AREA OF COLLECTING ARE YOU EXCITED TO DIG DEEPER INTO? My collection is mostly made up of paintings, but it includes many styles of painting. The artists are from all over the world. Lately, I find myself drawn to older landscapes. Excellent landscape works move me in a way I cannot describe.
NAME THREE ARTISTS YOU ARE PARTICULARLY EXCITED ABOUT RIGHT NOW. Cynthia Talmadge, Tianyue Zhong, and Dennis Miranda Zamorano.
IF YOU COULD SIT DOWN FOR LUNCH WITH ONE ARTIST, LIVING OR DEAD, WHO WOULD IT BE? WHY? David Hockney. I love and respect him and his work so much.
DO YOU SEE COLLECTING AS AN EXTENSION OF SKILLS YOU’VE HONED IN YOUR DAY JOB, OR AN ESCAPE FROM THEM? Collecting uses all the practical and soft skills I have honed in my real estate career. It’s about gaining access, building relationships, being tenacious, and, ultimately, negotiating a sale.
Photography by Seth Caplan
As a nightlife entrepreneur, Neidich deals with debauchery for a living. As a collector (who also serves on the board of Creative Time), he’s looking to balance the scales with tranquility, order, and uplift.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST WORK OF ART YOU EVER BOUGHT? The first pieces I bought were from the Robert Longo “Men in the Cities” series and a Tracey Emin neon, Trust Yourself The Tracey piece spoke to me—so much of her neon messaging is quite provocative, and this one’s wholesome. My world at that time was built around nightlife, so this comforting message offered a nice counterpoint.
DID YOUR FAMILY COLLECT ANYTHING WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP? My mom, Brooke Garber Neidich, collected voraciously when we were young—mostly classic mid-century artists like Richard Tuttle, Donald Judd, and Ed Ruscha. She was also an early collector of contemporary artists like Kara Walker and Wade Guyton, some of whom are household names today.
EVERY COLLECTOR HAS MADE A ROOKIE MISTAKE OR TWO. WHAT WAS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE? Buying art at charity auctions. But if it’s for charity, it’s not really a mistake.
WHO DO YOU CREDIT WITH TEACHING YOU HOW TO NAVIGATE THE ART WORLD? My mother. No question.
TELL US ABOUT THE JOURNEY TO A PARTICULARLY HARD-WON ACQUISITION. When I was in college, Matthew Marks had an exhibition of Victor Moscoso and Lee Conklin rock ’n’ roll posters from the ’60s and ’70s. My mom asked me which one she should get, and my response was, “All of them!” She was cool about it, so it wasn’t much of a fight, but it was a huge victory for me at the time. They have been in my life ever since.
WHAT WORK IN YOUR HOME HAVE YOU SPENT THE MOST TIME STARING AT?
Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line, a set of John Baldessari prints, sits above a McIntosh stereo and a beautiful vintage sideboard between two huge, vintage speakers in my house. It’s all very classic California midcentury—maybe not the most heavy-hitting art, but it’s one of my favorite design vignettes in the house.
“My rookie mistake was buying art at charity auctions. But if it’s for charity, it’s not really a mistake.”
The Siberia-born aerospace entrepreneur founded the Lyra Art Foundation to support artists making boundary-pushing work. As a collector, she also seeks out creatives who experiment relentlessly.
WHICH WORK IN YOUR COLLECTION PROVOKES THE MOST CONVERSATION FROM VISITORS? Yoko Ono’s Painting to Hammer a Nail In (Bronze Age). The original work is an example of her groundbreaking participatory art. It is important to me to support overlooked voices and to recognize artists who are forging new paths, both historically and in the present day.
NAME THREE ARTISTS YOU ARE PARTICULARLY EXCITED ABOUT RIGHT NOW.
I recently learned about the incredible work of Sylvia Sleigh and acquired a beautiful example, Felicity Rainnie Reclining, 1972. Jenny Saville is an artist I have long admired, and I look forward to [seeing] her important exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Finally, Dominique Fung—I am excited she is receiving the attention she deserves, especially leading up to her ICA San Francisco show with Heidi Lau opening in January 2026.
WHAT WORK IN YOUR HOME HAVE YOU SPENT THE MOST TIME STARING AT? Sarah Lucas’s Bunny Gets Snookered #8 , 1997. It is a very provocative, sexy work. I like its joking, tongue-in-cheek humor, and the way the work’s meaning is not completely clear or resolved. It raises more questions than answers.
IF YOU COULD SIT DOWN FOR LUNCH WITH ONE ARTIST, LIVING OR DEAD, WHO WOULD IT BE? WHY? Agnes Denes is a true visionary and an important, underrecognized voice of our time. Her ideas about nature, mankind, and the evolution of civilizations presaged so many things we are grappling with as a society. She tackles diverse subjects, including philosophy, psychology, science, and math, to explore humanity’s past, present, and future. We would have so much to talk about.
DO YOU SEE COLLECTING AS AN EXTENSION OF SKILLS YOU’VE HONED IN YOUR DAY JOB, OR AN ESCAPE FROM THEM?
Collecting is an extension of my skills as an entrepreneur, investor, pilot, and aircraft builder. I love seeing the possibilities of something in its early stages and helping it grow and develop to its greatest potential. Through my foundation, I hope to bring innovative and unexpected partnerships to life to offer something truly new and ambitious, fostering creativity in all forms and promoting women’s voices in business, art, and culture.
“Collecting is an extension of my skills as an entrepreneur, investor, pilot, and aircraft builder. I love seeing the possibilities of something in its early stages and helping grow and develop it to its greatest potential.”
The London-based collector and curator, who serves on Tate’s photography acquisitions committee, caught the collecting bug from her father, who began on her behalf while she was still a child. Now, the 24-year-old has taken the helm, assembling ambitious holdings of Middle Eastern contemporary art.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST WORK OF ART YOU EVER BOUGHT? A Sterling Ruby ashtray. I have always admired how fluidly he moves between disciplines: painting, fashion, ceramics, and soft sculpture. There is a curiosity to his practice that resonates with me.
“The people I have met and the experiences I have had as a collector have instilled in me a sense of responsibility and the importance of custodianship … At any given time, we are organizing around 70 loans for exhibitions, ensuring that these voices are seen, studied, and celebrated.”
DID YOUR FAMILY COLLECT ANYTHING WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP? When I was 7 years old, we took a family trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s known as the “Land of Enchantment”; my father jokingly calls it the “Land of Entrapment”—a sign of how deeply immersed he became in the region’s art and culture. That visit marked the beginning of his collecting journey and his reverence for Southwest historical and Native American art. Over the years, his interests have expanded to include Western contemporary works, Indian modernists and miniatures, and iconic black-and-white photography. Growing up alongside my father’s evolving collection, I witnessed how passion can shape a meaningful and deeply personal archive. I’ve recently begun taking a more active role in collecting, bringing new dimensions to the collection through textiles, artists from the Middle East, fashion photography, and couture. The people I have met and the experiences I have had as a
collector have instilled in me a sense of responsibility and the importance of custodianship, not only to preserve the legacy of artists and designers but to actively platform their work. At any given time, we are organizing around 70 loans for exhibitions, ensuring that these voices are seen, studied, and celebrated.
WHAT AREA OF COLLECTING ARE YOU EXCITED TO DIG DEEPER INTO? I’m increasingly drawn to the intersection of couture and sculpture, where garments are contextualized less as clothing and more as moving installations. Designers like Iris van Herpen and Daniel Roseberry are at the forefront of that shift.
NAME THREE ARTISTS YOU ARE PARTICULARLY EXCITED ABOUT RIGHT NOW. I have always been drawn to Mandy El-Sayegh’s practice—particularly the intricate, labor-intensive process behind her layers of paint and screenprinting. Alia Ahmad’s paintings draw from the landscapes and cultural memory of Riyadh, blending motifs from Bedouin weaving, Arabic calligraphy, and digital aesthetics to explore themes of belonging and transformation. I also deeply admire how Nour Jaouda combines sculpture, installation, and found materials to explore the complexities of identity and displacement.
The Hawaii-born finance executive, who serves as co-chair of FCA Friends at the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and on the Officer’s Committee of the MoMA Contemporary Arts Council, favors provocative, hard-to-live-with art that makes curators drool and interior decorators throw up their hands.
DESCRIBE YOUR ART COLLECTION IN THREE WORDS. Conceptual. Challenging. Playful.
WHO DO YOU CREDIT WITH TEACHING YOU HOW TO NAVIGATE THE ART WORLD? [The art advisor] Thea Westreich. She encouraged me to dig into the meaning of artworks rather than base my decisions on appearance. She also passionately believed that great art is not always the popular choice. She introduced me to many gallerists and artists, taught me art-world dos and don’ts, and helped me develop my own taste. I still work with Modica Carr, who took over her firm when she retired.
TELL US ABOUT THE JOURNEY TO A PARTICULARLY HARD-WON ACQUISITION. I have been interested in the work of Jana Euler since 2013. She doesn’t make much work and tends to have just one or two shows a year. Her work can be challenging—several recent reviews have termed them “ugly painting.” Her work is often acquired by institutions, which makes the works available to private collectors even more limited. I waited a long time to find a work I was excited about. Finally, in 2020, Jana had a show at Artists Space in New York. The stars aligned, and one of the works I liked became available after an institution passed. I’d been—gently—pestering her galleries for weeks: before the show, at the opening dinner, and for days after the preview. I’m so grateful they decided to offer it to me.
DO YOU SEE COLLECTING AS AN EXTENSION OF SKILLS YOU’VE HONED IN YOUR DAY JOB, OR AN ESCAPE FROM THEM?
Weirdly, it’s a bit of both. I have been in investment banking and finance since college. I’m very thorough in my “due diligence” and try to be analytical in deciding which works to acquire. That said, I do find myself acquiring pieces just because I can’t stop thinking about them. From a social perspective, the art world is very much an escape. Most of my free time is spent with art-world people. No matter how tired my job may leave me, I find being around the diversity and creativity of artists, gallerists, and curators stimulating. No art dinner is ever boring.
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“No matter how tired my job may leave me, I find being around the diversity and creativity of artists, gallerists, and curators stimulating. No art dinner is ever boring.”
“I do find myself acquiring pieces just because I can’t stop thinking about them.” —Paul Leong
As the founder of the social media brand Friday Heaters, the former musician creates artist interviews and exhibition tours for the TikTok generation. He collects work by young artists— and serves on the board of directors for nonprofit Los Angeles Nomadic Division—with the same verve, curiosity, and enthusiasm he brings to his videos.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST WORK OF ART YOU EVER BOUGHT? Technically, a photograph— some might call it a “poster”—of a skateboarder at my elementary school book fair. That may have been more about my love for skateboarding than the photograph, though.
DESCRIBE YOUR ART COLLECTION IN THREE WORDS. Challenging: I’ve often been drawn to the creative fringes. I toured in indie bands throughout my 20s and 30s, making music that wasn’t always easy to follow. There’s a bit of that spirit in my approach to collecting art, too. Spirited: I love attaching my own stories and memories to the work in my collection. Art collectors surround ourselves with all this raw stuff that humans create. I want to believe there’s some power and life force that lives on in those creations. Cozy: There are aspects of my collection that reflect a feeling of comfort. I have become friends with many of the artists I’ve collected, so seeing their work around my home gives me a sense of togetherness and community.
WHICH WORK IN YOUR COLLECTION PROVOKES THE MOST CONVERSATION FROM VISITORS? I have to go with the fluorescent glass vitrine by Max Hooper Schneider. Max’s work universally inspires conversation from people, whether they love or despise it. I happen to be a massive fan of his, and it’s been fun to share his art with those in my life who have no connection to the art world. He is a wonderful gateway.
WHAT WORK IN YOUR HOME HAVE YOU SPENT THE MOST TIME STARING AT? A painting by Rosha Yaghmai from her “Afterimage” series, painted on several layers of organza and cotton. The final surface has this hallucinatory shimmer, a reflective sparkle that changes in the light as you move around it. My eyes have never dulled to it.
DO YOU SEE COLLECTING AS AN EXTENSION OF SKILLS YOU’VE HONED IN YOUR DAY JOB, OR AN ESCAPE FROM THEM? My collecting has definitely been influenced by my work on Friday Heaters. There’s no question that interviewing incredible artists, gallerists, and curators has developed my eye, giving me a wealth of knowledge to use when collecting art.
“Art collectors surround ourselves with all this raw stuff that humans create. I want to believe there’s some power and life force that lives on in those creations.”
by Mackenzie Breeden
The husband-and-wife pair have art and culture in their blood: She is the daughter of arts patron Nathalie de Gunzburg, and he is the son of architect David Chipperfield. As a couple, they’ve worked to support institutions they believe in (the Dia Art Foundation, Serpentine Galleries, Turner Contemporary) and carve out their own tastes beyond their lineages.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST WORK OF ART YOU EVER BOUGHT? Laura de Gunzburg: A surrealist drawing I discovered at a Paris flea market as a teenager. It felt like discovering a hidden secret.
Gabriel Chipperfield: A work from the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. It wasn’t a particularly known artist, but that’s what’s so great about the Summer Exhibition!
DESCRIBE YOUR ART COLLECTION IN THREE WORDS. Curious, personal, evolving. Mostly artists of our generation, many of whom we have some connection to.
“Good art needs time and contemplation.”
EVERY COLLECTOR HAS MADE A ROOKIE MISTAKE OR TWO. WHAT WAS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE? De Gunzburg: Rushing into a purchase without really researching the artist’s practice. It taught me to be much more considerate.
Chipperfield: Underestimating how important rarity and scarcity are, as well as consistency over the lifespan and career of an artist.
WHO DO YOU CREDIT WITH TEACHING YOU HOW TO NAVIGATE THE ART WORLD?
De Gunzburg: Friends and mentors during my time working at Sotheby’s [as an art services manager]. You are exposed to so much, but mainly you learn through conversation. Every day is an informal education.
Chipperfield: Artists. Listening carefully to them always gives you the clearest path through the noise.
WHAT ART-WORLD TREND WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE COME TO AN END? The fetishization of speed, whether it’s quick sales, quick fame, or quick flipping. Good art needs time and contemplation.
WHAT AREA OF COLLECTING ARE YOU EXCITED TO DIG DEEPER INTO? De Gunzburg: For me, probably the dialogue between sculpture and architecture across the mid- to late 20th century.
Chipperfield: I like to discover and continue to follow artists from my generation who are evolving.
WHAT WORK IN YOUR HOME HAVE YOU SPENT THE MOST TIME STARING AT?
A Jean Arp piece. It’s so deceptively simple that it reveals new dimensions the longer you sit with it.
DO YOU HAVE ANY ART IN YOUR BATHROOM? IF SO, WHAT? A playful little painting by Mary Stephenson. We like having something intimate there.
IF YOU COULD SNAP YOUR FINGERS AND INSTANTLY OWN THE ART COLLECTION OF ANYONE ELSE, WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY? De Gunzburg: The Menil Collection for its breadth, intimacy, and profound respect for artists.
Chipperfield: Ellsworth Kelly and Jack Shear’s collection—quiet but deeply rigorous.
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The granddaughter of the founders of Italian fashion house Missoni grew up around “intense and all-consuming” collectors. Her own collection favors female painters whose work explores the cultural history of the body.
DID YOUR FAMILY COLLECT ANYTHING WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP? I come from a family of collectors, but my mom and grandma are the craziest—for them, the process is very intense and all-consuming. My grandmother collected mushrooms, but also mermaids and art in general from across regions and eras. My mom has a huge collection of 1950s Bambis. My grandfather, who is more minimalist in his approach to life, bought art when he felt there was a dialogue between the artist and his own creative endeavors.
WHAT AREA OF COLLECTING ARE YOU EXCITED TO DIG DEEPER INTO? I recently realized I’m very interested in pieces that explore the female body, both visually and conceptually—what the body represents, how it is perceived, and how women use it or are used because of it. I would love to focus my collection on that subject.
WHAT WORK IN YOUR HOME HAVE YOU SPENT THE MOST TIME STARING AT?
A Caroline Walker painting with three women in it.
WHO DO YOU CREDIT WITH TEACHING YOU HOW TO NAVIGATE THE ART WORLD? I was very lucky to know Mariuccia Casadio growing up. She wrote about art for Vogue Italia and is very knowledgeable. Starting in my late teens, I started visiting art fairs and biennials all over the world with her. Her insights really stepped up my game.
NAME THREE ARTISTS YOU ARE PARTICULARLY EXCITED ABOUT RIGHT NOW. Corita Kent, Katherine Bradford, and Isabella Ducrot.
“I’m very interested in pieces that explore the female body, both visually and conceptually … I would love to focus my collection on that subject.”
Co-Founder
The lawyer and fine art insurance broker didn’t grow up going to museums but has built a career around caring for contemporary art and artists—serving as a member of the Bronx Museum of the Arts’s board of trustees and as a patron of Project for Empty Space. She has a soft spot for sculptors who work with unconventional materials and family archives— even though she still has a hard time explaining her interests to her own mom.
EVERY COLLECTOR HAS MADE A ROOKIE MISTAKE OR TWO. WHAT WAS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE? When I joined the Bronx Museum as its youngest trustee, I was eager to make an impact and quickly reinstated the acquisitions committee, which I now chair. One of my earliest proposed donations was a work by Gozié Ojini from my dear friend, gallerist Silke Lindner. I was so focused on the artist and the gesture that I did not consider the scale of the work I had selected. After visiting Gozié’s studio in New Haven, I discovered a larger sculpture that felt better suited for an institutional collection. Silke and Gozié graciously worked with me to switch the pieces. Now, I remember to consider context and scale when approaching works for institutional donation.
WHAT ART-WORLD TREND WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE COME TO AN END?
Exclusivity—particularly the kind that assumes young, self-made collectors don’t belong. I don’t come from money, I didn’t grow up around art, and I’m younger than most people sitting at the table. That often means dealers are underestimating me. But the truth is, us young collectors are often the ones showing up at MFA open studios and building real relationships with artists.
There have been times at an art fair booth or gallery viewing where I knew more about the artist’s practice than the gallery director selling the work. That’s partly because I spend a lot of time researching artists, but also because I could never live with a piece without knowing its story. I’ve noticed a lot of the works I collect tie into familial archives and personal histories.
DID YOUR FAMILY COLLECT ANYTHING WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP? Not at all. I was raised by a single mom and neither of my parents finished high school. To this day, my mother doesn’t fully understand what collecting art means to me. Growing up with that distance from the traditional art world shaped my perspective, and I am deeply committed to making art more accessible. That’s what led me to form the Falls Foundation—a nonprofit private lending collection focused on contemporary works by underrepresented voices across the Americas, with a special focus on women sculp-
tors. Building a lending collection rooted in emerging voices is my way of increasing that accessibility by helping democratize ownership, visibility, and cultural power.
“I don’t come from money, I didn’t grow up around art, and I’m younger than most people sitting at the table. That often means dealers are underestimating me.”
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The consultant, who serves on the advisory board of RxArt, a nonprofit that invites artists to create work for pediatric hospitals, has built a collection that reflects her personal journey as a woman and a mother.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST WORK OF ART YOU EVER BOUGHT? One of the first works of art I ever bought was Tracey Emin’s Be Brave. I was instantly drawn to Emin, a feminist icon who uses art to push boundaries around taboos, relationships, vulnerability, and authentic emotional expression. This mantra has evolved with me—from my time as a single twentysomething in New York to now, as a married woman with two children. Having children has taught me a lot about bravery, so this artwork is more resonant than ever.
EVERY COLLECTOR HAS MADE A ROOKIE MISTAKE OR TWO. WHAT WAS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE? I eagerly bid on what I thought was a Keith Haring at an art charity auction, only to realize after winning that it was actually attributed as “after Keith Haring.” Lesson learned: Always read the fine print. Still, it’s a playful animation inspired by Haring’s work on Sesame Street, and I was glad to support a good cause. After that, watching Sesame Street with my children took on a new meaning. In the wise words of Grover, “Mistakes are how we learn, yes, yes, yes.”
“One of the first works of art I ever bought was Tracey Emin’s Be Brave ... This mantra has evolved with me—from my time as a single twentysomething in New York to now, as a married woman with two children.”
WHICH WORK IN YOUR COLLECTION PROVOKES THE MOST CONVERSATION FROM VISITORS? Probably the Camille Henrot watercolor of three dogs humping each other in my powder room. It’s a guaranteed conversation starter at a dinner party and always gets a laugh, especially when I ask guests what they would title this ménage-à-paw. (Top answer: “The Trickle-Down Effect.”)
NAME THREE ARTISTS YOU ARE PARTICULARLY EXCITED ABOUT RIGHT NOW. Mickalene Thomas, Hilary Pecis, and Shara Hughes—all of whom have major upcoming projects with RxArt, for which I serve on the advisory committee. Having navigated the challenges of having a child in emergency rooms and the pediatric intensive care unit, [my husband] Judah and I can attest that anything that helps ease the fear, anxiety, helplessness, and pain of that experience is a profound blessing that is difficult to express.
DO YOU HAVE ANY ART IN YOUR BATHROOM? IF SO, WHAT? I have a sweet handkerchief by Louise Bourgeois. The embroidered fabric has a domestic, nostalgic quality to it—a soft offering that contrasts with her monumental bronze spiders. Yet both speak to the meaning of motherhood—challenging ideas of what we consider signs of strength and fragility. There’s a lot packed into this little cloth and its delicate L.B. stitch.
Photography by Daphne Youree
ANDREW SCOTT SPENT THE LAST YEAR IN A WHIRLWIND—SHOOTING DRAMAS AND BLOCKBUSTERS ACROSS THE GLOBE, AND STARRING IN THE ONE-MAN ADAPTATION OF UNCLE VANYA THAT SWEPT NEW YORK AND LONDON. TO UNWIND FROM IT ALL, HE CALLED UP JOSH O’CONNOR, HIS FRIEND AND CO-STAR ON THE UPCOMING KNIVES OUT, FOR A SCANDALOUS CHAT.
Photography by PAOLA KUDACKI
Styling by ANATOLLI SMITH
For two straight months this past spring, Andrew Scott spent his evenings in the Lucille Lortel Theater, performing all eight characters in a one-man interpretation of Uncle Vanya Sam Yates’s adamantly off-Broadway adaptation of the Chekhov play, which made its way to the barely 300-seat New York venue after a sold-out, award-studded London run, saw Scott oscillate effortlessly among its lovelorn, disgruntled, and debonair characters, performing two-person coital scenes solo and melting in and out of tears—without breaking a sweat. “On the last day, the crew came to the theater dressed as me, and each played one of the characters,” Scott recalls. “I thought, Jesus, there are loads of people in this play, no wonder I’m exhausted.”
It was a fitting move for the Irish actor, who has spent the last decade leaving his tender yet eviscerating mark on everything from TV dramedies to heartbreaking indies. Following his star-making role as a maddeningly irresistible man of the cloth in Fleabag, Scott appeared opposite Paul Mescal in 2023’s eviscerating All of Us Strangers and 2024’s moody Patricia Highsmith adaptation, Ripley. All of this happened between the Laurence Olivier Award–winning actor’s turns on the stage—a feat which Josh O’Connor, who first witnessed Scott’s magnetism at the Royal Court in London while still a theater student, has always admired. “You’ve managed to balance film and theater, but I find it really hard,” O’Connor, known for roles in films like God’s Own Country, La Chimera, and last year’s thirst-trap Challengers, tells Scott. “If you keep avoiding it, it becomes a monster in your mind.”
The pair, who developed a close friendship over the years, share a penchant for independent films about the monsters in our minds that never fail to whip festival audiences into a frenzy. Last year, they departed from those roots to shoot the destined-to-be blockbuster Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. The project offered a brief comic respite for both actors—Scott was grieving the loss of his mother while simultaneously shooting Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon (out later this year); O’Connor had recently wrapped his forthcoming drama The History of Sound and was preparing to shoot Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind
Early glimpses of the latest Knives Out reveal O’Connor putting his own spin on one of Scott’s most infamous roles: a hot priest. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but Scott and O’Connor don’t waste time on that. Instead, their relationship is defined by a whole lot of teasing—so much so that when the pair sat down for Scott’s CULTURED cover feature, they had to promise to behave themselves.
JOSH O’CONNOR: Andrew, before we start, I want to set some ground rules. Half of our friendship is putting each other down. And that doesn’t work in print.
ANDREW SCOTT: It’ll seem really dark and
abusive, so we’re going to be good. How did we meet?
O’CONNOR: Well, I’ve known your work for ages, because you’ve been around so long. I think I first saw you onstage at the Globe, performing with William [Shakespeare].
“DID YOU SWOON DURING MY PERFORMANCE, LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO DURING MY CLOSE-UPS ONSCREEN?” —ANDREW
SCOTT: Wow, you’re starting like that. Bill was lovely to work with.
O’CONNOR: He’s good, isn’t he? No, but I first saw you in Birdland at the Royal Court. I was in my final year of drama school. That performance was really formative for me.
SCOTT: Did you swoon during my performance, like you always do during my close-ups onscreen?
O’CONNOR: I prefer you at a distance. But you started in the theater, right?
SCOTT: It’s weird to think that I started in the theater, because I feel like I’m never going to leave. I’m hoping to finish in the theater.
O’CONNOR: That’s one of the things I look up to you for—you’ve committed to doing a piece of theater every year or so.
SCOTT: I suppose I’m just scared of not doing it—I love it so much. This is a cliché, but it’s completely the actor’s medium, you know? It engages so many parts of your brain. Like Vanya —obviously I performed it, but [Sam Yates] and I developed it together, from the way it looked to the way it was marketed.
O’CONNOR: Did you come to Sam, or did he come to you?
SCOTT: Originally, it was going to be a more straight-up version of Uncle Vanya, and they wanted me to play Vanya. A few of us did a reading of the script and divvied up the parts between us, like three each. But we misallocated them, so I ended up acting with myself a lot. It was kind of funny and ridiculous. Eventually, they were like, Why doesn’t Andrew just do the whole thing? I was very resistant to it, if I’m honest. I thought, It’s going to be so cringe. Everyone will say, “Oh, fuck off, Andrew.” But it became very interesting, because so much of the play is about how people carry themselves. Some characters are very attractive but think they’re not; others think they’re unattractive but have a different type of confidence. Embodying all those ways of being was interesting.
O’CONNOR: I saw it live in London. What I
found so crazy about it was that it felt less like a piece of theater and more like the kind of storytelling you hear in pubs—the purest form of storytelling.
SCOTT: We wanted it to be no-frills—no costume changes, very little tech support—so that you have to use your imagination. It’s as lo-fi as possible, but you have this masterpiece of a play to back it up. If the source material didn’t have that soul and strength, I don’t think we could have been as inventive. On the last day, the crew came dressed as me, and each played one of the characters. I thought, Jesus, there are loads of people in this play, no wonder I’m exhausted
O’CONNOR: You finished a few days ago. How are you feeling?
“DOING A PLAY MAKES ME FEEL MUCH MORE CONFIDENT AS A PERFORMER. I FIND IT SO INCREDIBLY MOVING, THE IDEA THAT PEOPLE WILLFULLY ENTER A DARK ROOM TO LISTEN TO A STORY THAT WILL MAKE THEM LAUGH AND CRY, AND THEN GET UP AND GO BACK TO THEIR LIVES AT THE END.” —ANDREW SCOTT
SCOTT: Last night I had that feeling— It’s 7 o’clock, I’m sitting here eating a pizza! So exciting. When is the theater beckoning for you, my darling? We need you back on the stage, Josh O.
O’CONNOR: I don’t know. I’m inspired by how you’ve managed to balance film and theater, but I find it really hard. It’s always being kicked down the road. If you keep avoiding it, it becomes a monster in your mind. But it really is our bread and butter—the foundation of what we do.
SCOTT: Doing a play makes me feel much more confident as a performer. I find it so incredibly moving that people willfully enter a dark room to listen to a story that will make them laugh and cry, and then get up and go back to their lives at the end. I know it’s the same with cinemas, but to be able to talk directly to the audience—it’s just amazing. Are you having fun shooting at the moment?
O’CONNOR: It’s been fun. It’s similar to Knives Out [releasing later this year], which you and I obviously shot together last summer—
SCOTT: Oh, you were in that?
O’CONNOR: Yeah.
SCOTT: No, that’s Josh Brolin. He’s a wonderful, very handsome, very talented actor.
O’CONNOR: He’s in it, and also me. I was in it loads. Don’t you remember?
SCOTT: We didn’t have any scenes together, did we?
O’CONNOR: Yeah. We had loads
[Both laugh]
O’CONNOR: How did you find Knives Out ? It was the first time I’d ever done that kind of movie. What I’m doing right now is in a similar vein—big studio operation. It’s quite a different thing.
SCOTT: I think we have this in common— we’ve done independent films for so long, which is a completely different atmosphere. Knives Out was so fun. This is not PR speak —we had the best time.
O’CONNOR: A funny thing happens to me after a project—I come away from it and go, I actually haven’t a clue what we did. But what I remember most was being surrounded by some of the greatest actors working today and having so much fun.
SCOTT: As you know, my mum died a month before we started filming. I was in a vulnerable place. But everyone was kind and supportive—I’ll never forget how touched I was when you gave me that beautiful sonnet. Between scenes, everybody would sit around in the green room, telling stories or playing board games together. I kept falling asleep there, in the middle of everyone. It’s a weird thing, grief—just completely exhausting. I was also doing another film at the same time ’cause I’m very, very popular.
“A FUNNY THING HAPPENS TO ME AFTER A PROJECT—I COME AWAY FROM IT AND GO, I ACTUALLY HAVEN’T A CLUE WHAT WE DID.” —JOSH O’CONNOR
O’CONNOR: I forgot that you were doing a Richard Linklater film at the same time!
SCOTT: Josh, that’s because you don’t listen to me. You’re always talking.
O’CONNOR: Well, the truth is—and you can put this in the article—I don’t care.
SCOTT: I’m glad you finally came clean. Why don’t you just say it in a full sentence? You don’t care about other people.
[Both laugh]
O’CONNOR: This is exactly what I was worried about before we started. Now the headline will be, “Josh O’Connor doesn’t give a shit
about anyone but himself.” What’s happening with the Linklater film? I don’t think we talked about that too much.
SCOTT: Blue Moon! I think it’s coming out in October-y time? I’m not sure, to be honest. It all takes place during one evening, on the opening night of Oklahoma! Rick Linklater is a complete joy, Ethan [Hawke] is beautiful, Margaret Qualley too. Did you go straight on to something else after Knives Out ?
“THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS WORRIED ABOUT BEFORE WE STARTED. NOW THE HEADLINE WILL BE, ‘JOSH O’CONNOR DOESN’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ANYONE BUT HIMSELF.’”
O’CONNOR: Yeah, I had a couple of weeks off, and then I went to Ohio to do this Kelly Reichardt movie [The Mastermind]. It played at Cannes.
SCOTT: Wasn’t your film with Paul [Mescal, The History of Sound] in Cannes too? Oh my God, that is so embarrassing for you.
O’CONNOR: So embarrassing for… really? I mean, it’s pretty cool. Is it embarrassing?
SCOTT: I don’t know, Josh. The last thing I want to do is be discouraging in any way. But having two films at Cannes, I’m not sure. And you’re sure you haven’t been cut out of Kelly’s movie?
O’CONNOR: Oh my God.
[Both laugh]
SCOTT: I’m sorry. I can’t wait to see them both.
O’CONNOR: Paul’s wonderful in History of Sound. It’s quite rare to get to support a friend in a movie, like Paul did with you [in All of Us Strangers]. He’s been a friend for a long time.
SCOTT: I’m so excited to see you guys together onscreen. Two people I love.
O’CONNOR: He’s not a brilliant actor, but he’s...
SCOTT: No, but you can carry him through it.
O’CONNOR: Right. And what I like about Paul is that he’s enthusiastic. Again, these jokes will not land.
SCOTT: This interview is going to ruin my career.
O’CONNOR: And now, are you finally going to get a holiday?
SCOTT: Yes. Remember last year when we were obsessed with talking about holidays?
O’CONNOR: It was honestly all we talked about.
SCOTT: Last year, I worked very, very hard. I did fucking loads of things. This year I thought, I can’t do that. Life is short and God knows I’m more aware of that than ever. So, I made a vow that I’m not going to work this summer—I’m just going to do little things. For example, I’m looking forward to our movie coming out and seeing the gang.
O’CONNOR: Me too. I remember Daniel [Craig] saying that Knives Out is a proper family atmosphere—kind of like doing a play. I was kind of dreading it, to be honest. I like being on my own.
SCOTT: Yeah, because you have a very particular energy...
O’CONNOR: Well, no. I think what we’ve discovered is that I’m brilliant with people.
SCOTT: I suppose that’s probably why we have that separate WhatsApp group. Sometimes, it becomes too much.
O’CONNOR: What? Did you say a separate WhatsApp group?
SCOTT: We only really post in it… not like every day. Well, we post in it every day, but we still have the main one.
O’CONNOR: The main one’s gone quiet.
SCOTT: Oh yeah, that one’s sort of dead. The other one is really going good.
O’CONNOR: And the only difference between the one that’s dead and the other one is that I’m not in it…
SCOTT: Glenn [Close] invited the whole chat for a lovely barbecue. Oh my God, you would have loved it. Had I thought of it, I absolutely would have invited you.
O’CONNOR: You should have put it in the… main group.
SCOTT: Is there anything you’d like to promote?
O’CONNOR: No. Absolutely not. I’m so excited for you, finishing the play and taking some time off this summer. You’re the best actor, and you’re my great friend.
SCOTT: I love you so much. And yeah—just keep trying. The thing about acting is, if you just keep trying, eventually you’ll crack it.
O’CONNOR: That reminds me, will you send me a copy of your latest book draft? You said you were working on a book, How to Act by Andrew Scott. You’re self-publishing, right?
SCOTT: Somebody put us to death.
JOSH O’CONNOR: It’s similar to Knives Out, which you and I obviously shot together last summer—
ANDREW SCOTT: Oh, you were in that?
O’CONNOR: Yeah.
SCOTT: No, that’s Josh Brolin. He’s a wonderful, very handsome, very talented actor.
O’CONNOR: He’s in it, and also me. I was in it loads. Don’t you remember?
SCOTT: We didn’t have any scenes together, did we?
O’CONNOR: Yeah. We had loads.
by GREG WILLIAMS
Benicio del Toro hates interviews. But for CULTURED, he sat down with his The Phoenician Scheme castmate, SCARLETT JOHANSSON, for a frank conversation about the modern-day movie-making machine.
Over the past three decades, Wes Anderson has cultivated a highly eclectic and faithful stable of actors. When the director calls, a motley crew comes running—spanning ages, career phases, and box office favorabilities. It’s like summer camp, but for really successful adults.
One recent addition to the menagerie is Academy Award winner Benicio del Toro, who first entered the fray in 2021’s The French Dispatch before returning to star in last month’s The Phoenician Scheme as Zsa-zsa Korda—“international businessman, maverick in the fields of armaments and aviation, among the richest men in Europe.” After surviving his sixth airplane crash, the tycoon (written with del Toro in mind and inspired by Anderson’s own fatherin-law) attempts to prime the sole heir to his vast fortune: one of his 10 offspring, who happens to be a nun. It’s Succession meets The Graduate at James Bond velocity.
Del Toro’s capers in Anderson’s dulcet universe are a balmy parenthetical to an otherwise dark and high-octane filmography. The 58-year-old Puerto Rican actor has wielded his signature scowl and gravelly baritone to play all manner of drug lords, cops, robbers, addicts, and mercenaries over a nearly 40-year career. In the process, he’s crafted a villain archetype all his own—merciless and textured, with an undeniable gravitas. (He’ll lend the same heft to another Anderson’s new project—Paul Thomas, this time—playing the leader of a band of ex-revolutionaries on a rescue mission in September’s One Battle After Another.)
Among The Phoenician Scheme ’s many cameos is Scarlett Johansson, now an Anderson fixture herself. While also promoting Jurassic World Rebirth and her directorial debut, Eleanor the Great—about a 94-year-old (June Squibb) befriending a 19-year-old student after a tragic loss—the actor called up her co-star before this year’s Cannes Film Festival for a candid post-mortem.
Here, del Toro and Johansson hash out their feelings around the modern-day movie-making machine—from on-set angst and press-tour hiccups to confronting themselves on the big screen.
Benicio del Toro: Scarlett, thanks for doing this. You’re so busy— Jurassic World Rebirth, The Phoenician Scheme, your film Eleanor the Great
Scarlett Johansson: It sounds like a lot, but existential angst is still my main brain occupier. You can steal that term if you want—“brain occupier.”
Del Toro: Maybe it’s a self-defense mechanism that kicks in when you’re busy.
Johansson: The busier I get, the more I ask myself, Is this what I want to be doing? What happens next? It’s hard to stay present. When we’re acting, we’re in the moment. But once a project is out and everyone starts analyzing it, I find it harder to stay grounded.
Del Toro: I haven’t done press like this in a while
—interviews are tough for me. I don’t analyze my work as much as journalists do. They find meanings in it that I never thought of— I just learn my lines. Sometimes they ask a question and after I answer, there’s this long pause. It makes me feel like I have to keep talking until I say something brilliant, and then I sound stupid.
“During interviews, silence feels like failure, so you fill it. If we did that while acting, it’d be overacting. But I overact in interviews every time. I can’t show restraint.”
Toro
Johansson: I had an interview recently where I couldn’t stop talking. Mid-sentence, I thought, What am I even saying? This is going to be printed verbatim.
Del Toro: I know exactly what you mean. You think, Why can’t I just shut up?
Johansson: Then I read interviews with someone like Tom Ford—so concise, so classy. But now that I know you feel the same, I feel better.
Del Toro: It’s a tricky thing. Good work sells itself eventually, but you still have to promote it. During interviews, silence feels like failure, so you fill it. If we did that while acting, it’d be overacting. But I overact in interviews every time. I can’t show restraint.
Johansson: I bet that’s why we keep rambling— it’s a form of people-pleasing. We don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable. Did you see [The Phoenician Scheme] yet?
Del Toro: Yes, I did.
Johansson: So you can watch your own films?
Del Toro: I have a hard time, but I did sit through it. When I watch a movie I’m in and can get pulled in despite my own faults, I take that as a sign it’s a good movie. I stop obsessing over how I look or what I could’ve done differently. The Phoenician Scheme pulled me in—that’s Wes’s magic. Even peeking through my fingers, I was able to relax and take it in. I can’t wait to watch it again.
Johansson: Did you watch the animatic, too? I found it really helpful. Wes’s scripts can be so dense, so even those primitive storyboards help give some context when you’re shooting. They’re not overly specific—they don’t box you into a performance—but they give a feel for the world he’s building. Seeing the final film after that process… It’s incredible what comes out of those sketches.
Del Toro: When you joined, we were already deep into it. That whole shoot was so isolated —it felt like we were still in a Covid bubble, even though we weren’t. Every night, I’d go back to my room and just stare at the ceiling, feeling like I was still underwater. I didn’t go out to dinners like I did on The French Dispatch, where my role was smaller. I had to prep each night for what was coming up—scenes that weren’t even fully locked yet. Wes and I had done a lot of work ahead of time, too, as he was finishing the script—right up until about a week before shooting. He’s always tweaking. When we got started, I told Wes that I couldn’t make it to dinner every night, and he understood.
Johansson: When we did Asteroid City, new actors were showing up every few days. There was so much excitement, like, “Willem Dafoe’s here!” Everyone was waiting to see what each person would bring to it. By the time I arrived, Wes was just relieved it was all happening. It felt like an accomplishment just to finish each day. Did you feel that sense of accomplishment?
Del Toro: Well first, you were fantastic in Asteroid City, and you’re just as great in The Phoenician Scheme. With The Phoenician Scheme, I only felt a sense of accomplishment about two weeks from wrapping. It was hard. On The French Dispatch, I had more room to breathe and enjoy the crew. But this one required total focus. I had to stay in the moment, scene by scene. We were deep in it, very serious. And then you showed up and brought this amazing energy. Everyone lit up. Wes was laughing more, I was laughing more—it was like this burst of levity we didn’t even know we needed. You would go right up to Wes, in your way, and just ask, “Hey, why do I have to do this?”—he couldn’t help but laugh.
Johansson: I could tell you guys were deep in something. Even in my first scene, I felt it.
“I think people will like the movie, but who knows what people go see these days.”
—Scarlett Johansson
Del Toro: You arrived right when we needed a jolt of fun. That’s the thing about cameos— when they’re done right, they don’t just add to the film, they change the energy on set. It was a good reminder: Hey, this should be fun . I hope people connect with it.
Johansson: I think people will like the movie, but who knows what people go see these days. Everyone’s habits have changed. You just hope they consider this a “big screen” movie—it’s so cinematic. But lots of people love watching at home with their giant TVs and pizza. Which I love too, to be honest. Do you still go to the movies?
Del Toro: Yes, I like going to the movies.
Johansson: Why do you go?
Del Toro: The sound system. The image quality. It’s just better than at home. And I love the shared experience. When you’re not sure something is funny, but someone else laughs, and that gives you permission to laugh too. It creates a kind of temporary community. The last movie I saw in theaters was a Beatles documentary, Beatles ’64 . I was grooving in my seat to the music, but no one else was.
Johansson: I saw Barbie in Paris—not the right place to see it. I loved it—so weird, so subversive, so Greta and Noah. But no one else in the audience was reacting. Maybe it was the subtitles, or just the cultural difference. Some movies really need to be seen in your home country, you know?
Del Toro: Yeah, different countries react differently. In Cannes, you’ll see how that plays out with your film.
Johansson: I’m kind of nervous. I hope it plays. It’s such a specific film.
Del Toro: They’ll get it—just maybe in a different way. I’ve also been on a Cannes jury. You get
to just watch movies and talk about them. I was [president of the] the Un Certain Regard section [in 2018], which is where your film is. That category is incredible. Honestly, 98 percent of the films that get picked for Cannes are good—even if they’re not to your taste. You feel like a jockey with a horse in a race—really rooting for your film to make an impression.
Johansson: Yeah, especially with an indie film. There’s so much content out there. You really have to be willing to push it up the mountain, because no one else will.
Del Toro: Honestly, The Phoenician Scheme is an indie. The way Wes works feels very indie, too—he storyboards so meticulously. I basically knew every shot he was going to use, because he sticks so closely to those boards. It’s either on there or it’s not happening. No point trying to convince him to do a close-up—he knows exactly what he wants.
Johansson: Sometimes you’re watching a Wes movie and you wish he’d cut in for a close-up or pull out—but he never does. He locks in on his vision.
Del Toro: How were you as a director?
Johansson: Honestly, I loved it. My favorite part was the collaboration—working with really talented people and helping them bring the best version of their vision to life. It’s fun. You’re surrounded by artists who surprise you and elevate things.
Del Toro: Did you ever shut down ideas?
Johansson: I’m not a big “shut it down” person. I like trying things. Most actors like to try things, right?
Del Toro: I agree. But sometimes, it’s time that forces your hand. You hit a point where you have to say, “This is how we’re doing it,” because you’re running out of time.
Johansson: You start the day with all these soaring ideas. Then it gets close to lunch, and suddenly all that experimental stuff is the first to go. Like, “We’re losing light in four hours— what do we have to get?”
Del Toro: That’s what makes it exciting.
“When I watch a movie I’m in and can get pulled in despite my own faults, I take that as a sign it’s a good movie.”
By Johanna Fateman
“I will pull out of a show if it’s not right. I’m a 63-year-old honey badger: I don’t give a shit.”
When I catch Lisa Yuskavage by phone a month before the opening of her show at the Morgan Library, she’s having a pinch-me moment. It’s a little hard for me to believe it’s happening myself: Through January, the illustrious New York institution, renowned for its old master drawing collection, will host dozens of the 63-year-old artist’s works on paper, spanning more than three decades. It’s a perfect—maybe perfectly perverse—context for the figurative painter, famous and infamous for her virtuosic rendering of a queasily beautiful, selfconsciously vulgar, and often funny world of desire and desolation. With absinthe or Kool-Aid skies, cadmium sunlight, pastel poly-satin, neon in deep shadow, and girls, girls, girls, Yuskavage tells the story of the nude in Western art like a dream excavation of haunted smut and the interior lives of model-muses— what better foil to her art than the holdings of Pierpont Morgan? (And what better way to cement her place in this centuries-long conversation?) We talked for nearly two hours about her journey from ’90s bad-feminist underdog to the honey-badger hotshot she is today; about the trove of drawings she inadvertently kept hidden all the while; and about PieFace, 2008, the remarkable image that adorns this magazine’s cover.
I’m looking at the other shows at the Morgan that yours will overlap with. There’s “Jane Austen at 250” and later, “Renoir Drawings.” You live in New York; you know how special this is. What’s it like?
Whatever you’re thinking, that’s what it’s like. I’m pinching myself. Not just because of the Morgan, but because being seen—realizing, Wow, they really get me —is one of the greatest gifts. I’ll try to tell the story of how this came about, which will maybe answer your question. I’ve been a little overly humble about my drawings, apparently. I didn’t know what I had. Anyway, the summer before last, my amazing registrar, who has been helping digitally archive my work, asked me what was in my flat files. I said, “They’re a mess, I don’t know. I make things and put them in there.” She said, “I’ll take a look and report back.” It turned out there were hundreds of drawings dating back over 30 years. She borrowed maybe 10 or 12 long folding tables and spread the drawings everywhere, in piles…
“I’ve been a little overly humble about my drawings, apparently. I didn’t know what I had.” —Lisa Yuskavage
Wait, these are things no one has seen before? You’re saying they’ve never been shown?
Yes. The show is more than that, but generally, that’s right. The work was never photographed. It’s 30 years of experimentation. The first thing in the show is a watercolor that I made in the
very early ’90s. It’s called Love Scene, and it’s a cropped view of a woman licking a woman’s nipple, cribbed from some porn magazine’s ad for a 1-800 number. It’s a delightful image, I think. It opens up a world of polymorphous delight that watercolor expresses perfectly.
Anyway, the curator Claire Gilman, who’s a drawing expert, got a call from someone at the gallery saying that she might want to come over to see what was laid out on the tables. I asked her later about her visit, and she said she was excited—and shocked. She didn’t know I made works on paper, and here was an insane amount of stuff. In the art world now, it sometimes feels like everybody’s eking out the last of the toothpaste from the tube. So, the idea that there’s something still to be discovered is fun. But as gratifying as having a show at the Morgan is—and it is so gratifying—at the same time, it was crucial that they never censored me. I will pull out of a show if it’s not right. I’m a 63-year-old honey badger: I don’t give a shit. Luckily, no one at the museum clipped my wings. Claire, when she was presenting my work to her colleagues at the Morgan, showed them one of the drawings called All’s I Got Are Big Boobs. And everyone just fell on the floor laughing. No one had a problem. That lingo is Philly speak. My mom would always say, “All’s I got are [fill-in-the-blank].” That may be the crudest title in the show.
I was reading the wall text for the exhibition. For years, the story of Lisa Yuskavage has begun with the early reception of your work, the way it was scrutinized politically as objectifying, antifeminist; how people found it disturbing—not in a good way. That’s not here this time. Why? New audience? New era?
I think you know how it was. I was a hot potato for a while—nobody wanted to touch what I was doing. But it’s refreshing not to lead with that part of my story. In the opening of The Dick Van Dyke Show, he trips over the ottoman. Every time. It’s like, people don’t need to watch me trip over the ottoman forever. I’m proud of myself for not letting all that turn me into a bitter asshole. You have to remain joyful and believe it’s going to happen for you someday. And then in the meantime, ideally, you go back to your studio and make even more ferocious cuckoo-for-CocoaPuffs work that maybe you couldn’t make if you were in the limelight. Whenever I was upset about not being accepted in the art world, my husband would say to me, “Lis, at least you’re not Muzak.”
Can we talk about PieFace? That’s one of the issue’s covers.
It’s a long story, how I got into the “Pieface” paintings. I was asked to make an art-porn film in 2003. I was living in Rome at the time and watching commedia erotica all’Italiana films on TV. I wanted to have a static shot, like Warhol, with a woman in the foreground, touching herself, trying to distract you from all kinds of zany, slapstick stuff happening behind her. It was going to end with a pie in the face. But the producers said that the point of porn is to allow
someone to climax—how can they if you end with a pratfall? I said, “Look, you asked Lisa Yuskavage to make a film! What did you expect?” I did not end up making it, but that research became the basis of my “Pieface” series of works. I found that marrying slapstick with painting was obviously more interesting. My work hopefully suggests a range of readings or emotions, from being titillated or freaked out to feeling joy, sadness, and so on. You laugh, and then you’re mad, and… ideally, there’s no one place to land. And that’s what I bring. To everything, actually.
“I was a hot potato for a while—nobody wanted to touch what I was doing. But it’s refreshing not to lead with that part of my story.”
—Lisa Yuskavage
After only a few weeks of dating, Daniel Humm knew he wanted to marry Annabelle Dexter-Jones. The proposal took longer to realize.
Photography by Jeremy Liebman
On Feb. 6, Annabelle DexterJones sat down for a portrait with the legendary Francesco Clemente—a birthday gift from her partner and the painter’s close friend, Daniel Humm. She didn’t know she’d walk out engaged.
The year-long whirlwind that has consumed the Michelinstarred chef and actor began at a wedding—their mutual friend Vito Schnabel’s—in the spring of 2024. They’ve been joined at the hip ever since. “I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to get married again,” Humm says, “but when I met Annabelle, I knew immediately that I did.”
Many people treat wedding proposals as an art. Few involve art in them. But the pair’s lives are built on a deep reverence for beauty and those who cultivate it. British-born Dexter-Jones mines her upbringing at the epicenter of New York’s creative scene for rich, understated performances onscreen, while Humm’s culinary career has been bolstered by formative encounters with painting. Eleven Madison Park, the treasured New York eatery he’s transformed over two decades, is punctuated with works by
artist friends including Rita Ackermann and Rashid Johnson. Last year, he opened a cocktail bar in collaboration with Francesco Clemente just upstairs from EMP. (DexterJones has known the Italian painter since she was a teenager.)
It’s no surprise, then, that when Humm asked Clemente to help him propose, the artist was overcome. “He got so emotional,” the Swiss chef recalls. “He said, ‘This is like the greatest thing anyone has ever asked me to do.’”
Humm gifted Dexter-Jones a sitting. His plan? Unveil the completed portrait—incidentally, Clemente’s first nude—to his unsuspecting partner on the spot, revealing the engagement ring painted on her hand and an identical one tucked in his pocket. (Less than a month into their courtship, the chef asked his good friend, visionary jeweler Joel Arthur Rosenthal of JAR, to design it.)
For CULTURED, the couple recall the moment—which will culminate in a low-key wedding “somewhere in New York” later this month—that they can’t stop smiling about.
DANIEL HUMM: This started months ago for me. I’ve been friends with Joel for many years; he’s like a painter with precious stones. A few weeks after I met Annabelle, I told Joel, “Now I know why we’re friends. You have to make the ring!” The next month, we had lunch with Joel in Paris, and one of the women at the atelier measured Annabelle’s fingers. She was like, “We should have your sizes for our records.” Months later, I was with Francesco having dinner, and I said, “You can say no, but would you help me propose?” Immediately, he said yes. It took him a long time to schedule the portrait sitting—I kept reminding them, because I knew it would be the day that I’d propose. I wanted to make sure I had the chance to speak to Annabelle’s parents before it happened—Annabelle’s dad [Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones] has Parkinson’s, so I needed to find the right moment. That was really important to me. All of a sudden, they scheduled [the sitting]. I dropped Annabelle off at the studio and went to her parents’ house, hoping that it would be a good day. Annabelle’s dad was in great shape, happy. I stayed there for six hours; we had a beautiful conversation, and when I told him, he was very emotional. Annabelle’s love for others is one of the things that made me fall in love with her, so to see that love flow the other way was so beautiful.
Later, I checked my phone and saw 10 text messages from Francesco: “Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?” While I walked to his studio, I realized I had no dinner reservation, no flowers. Then I got there, and the two of them were sitting in a circle.
ANNABELLE DEXTER-JONES: The whole thing was a shock. I knew that we wanted to get married, but I did not expect this. My birthday present was a hand-drawn certificate for a portrait from Francesco. Daniel was insistent on it happening in December, but my hair color wasn’t right, so we decided to do it on Feb. 1. The actual process was just sitting still, which I really like to do. He doesn’t talk while he’s working, so the energy is a bit spiritual. I was feeling pretty blissed-out, but Francesco was nervous. He kept looking from his phone to my hand, which was on my bare chest. I thought perhaps there was some sort of lump that I wasn’t aware of.
Once we finished, Francesco said, “Let’s smoke a cigarette in these chairs and wait for Daniel to arrive.” The buzzer goes off, and he says, “Daniel’s here.” I’m like, “Indeed.” Daniel seemed a little tense, too. I didn’t have expectations of the painting—for me, it was really about this gift from Daniel, this time with Francesco. So when the assistants brought it over, I already felt joy. Sometimes I see myself onscreen, and it’s very uncomfortable. But Francesco got my eyes, which are two different sizes, exactly right. I really saw myself in it. I was wearing a ring that day that my mom designed—gold, with an opal inside. The painting looked like an artistic interpretation of it.
HUMM: The three of us were sitting there in front of the painting. In my head, I was like, Okay, Francesco, go now. He went off to wash his hands, and I was shaking. I said, “What do you think of the ring?” She looks at her hand and goes, “It’s close enough.” I said, “It’s yours.” She responded, “I know.”
DEXTER-JONES: I did not get it until I realized Daniel had something behind his back. I figured it wasn’t a knife, so it was probably the other thing. I just screamed and embraced him and cried, and it drowned out everything he said. The next thing I remember, I was like, “Wait, did you ask me? I couldn’t hear you!”
HUMM: When we left, it was cold outside, very windy. I realized it was perfect that I had no plan. We walked through [Silver Towers], where that Picasso sculpture is, visited Annabelle’s parents, and went to our favorite restaurant, Omen Azen. They had a corner table for us, even though we had no reservation. We were in pure bliss.
DEXTER-JONES: I still am.
THIS SUMMER, ON THE NORTHERNMOST TIP OF CAPE COD, QUIL LEMONS ASSEMBLES A GROUP OF QUEER ARTISTS FOR “AMERICAN FAGGOT PARTY”—AN EXHIBITION OF WORKS BY THE LIKES OF OCEAN VUONG, RYAN MCGINLEY, AND THE PHOTOGRAPHER HIMSELF.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY QUIL LEMONS STYLING BY SCOTT SHAPIRO
Provincetown has hosted legions of queer fêtes since it became a holiday destination for the community in the 1890s. Few have been given a title quite so frank as the one Quil Lemons is throwing this season.
“American Faggot Party” is not a party, per se —it’s a sprawling exhibition in a former schoolhouse, currently the satellite space for local arts nonprofit Twenty Summers, which awarded Lemons a pivotal residency last year. The project, on view from June 27, features works by the photographer and a host of peers and elders (Ryan McGinley, Ocean Vuong, and the late Felix Gonzalez-Torres, to name a few).
The polyphonous exhibition reimagines James Montgomery Flagg’s iconic wartime poster (“I Want YOU for U.S. Army”) as a call to arms for a new generation: “I want YOU for the American Faggot Party.” In a political climate where erasure is the modus operandi, Lemons sees the message as equal parts “yearning and warning”—a love letter to the community, and a caution to those who threaten it. “I had this sinking intuition after the Jan. 6 insurrection that the tides of American fascism could rise again,” Lemons explains. “This show became my response.”
The work on view reminds viewers that American culture is forever indebted to queer culture. The image-maker and his battalion of artists have no intention of letting a society in the midst of historic turmoil forget that.
To kick off what promises to be another wet hot American summer, Lemons assembled a group of the show’s contributing artists for a photo shoot—and CULTURED picked their brains about the reckoning they’re staging together in Provincetown. — SAM FALB
HOW DID YOU APPROACH YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO THE SHOW? My silk prints are a rallying cry in the most intimate register—not shouted, but whispered between bodies. They celebrate queerness not as spectacle, but as something lush, tactile, and defiantly tender.
HOW DO YOU HOPE AUDIENCES WILL REACT TO THE SHOW? I hope they feel seen, or at least interrupted—that something stirs. Whether it’s arousal, discomfort, nostalgia, or delight, I want the work to evoke something bodily.
HOW DO YOU RELATE TO THE IDEA OF ENDURANCE? My artistic journey started as a bright-eyed child who wanted to create beautiful things for a living. Photography completely changed my life. I’ve worked extremely hard to develop a visual language to communicate the ideas in my head, and have carved a path for myself in the industry. The pursuit of artistic greatness is neverending, and that pursuit becomes increasingly difficult when you inhabit multiple marginalized identities. As a Black, gay artist, I am in a constant uphill battle against a culture that was not intended to support people like me. My existence—and participation in this show—is a testament to endurance and creativity.
HOW DID YOU APPROACH YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO THE SHOW? My work has always been a form of protest and communion—a rallying cry for the outcasts who don’t conform. It’s a mirror and a megaphone. For this exhibition, I contributed early self-portraits taken in a photo booth in San Francisco in the late ’90s, shortly after I fled Russia. It was a formative time for me. I was discovering my sexuality and creativity at the same time through performative selfies in fetish gear.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE IMPACT OF THIS WORK? My work holds space for queer bodies and stories that are often silenced or overlooked. It also demands attention: seducing, provoking, disrupting. Art should do both: shelter you and push you out of your comfort zone.
CO-FOUNDERS OF THE NIGHTLIFE COLLECTIVE PAPI JUICE
HOW DO YOU HOPE AUDIENCES WILL REACT TO THE SHOW?
MOHAMMED FAYAZ: Queer people will always be here. Whether pushed into the underground or celebrated on the brightest of stages, we’ve learned to adapt from the timeless wisdoms of our predecessors. This country is always figuring out what to do with us, and while they’re distracted, we’re over here having the best time we can with what we got.
OSCAR NÑ: I hope that audiences will feel defiant.
ADAM RHODES: I hope that the themes of this show resonate with viewers’ experiences across the spectrum of queerness. And that people dance their asses off.
PAINTER
HOW DO YOU RELATE TO THE IDEA OF ENDURANCE? My work reflects my life, which engenders creativity, which then engenders more life. More life, always.
WHAT’S ONE PROVINCETOWN MEMORY THAT STAYS WITH YOU? Hiking across the breakwater late at night, into the sunrise. We saw a UFO and had many epiphanies.
ARTIST
HOW DO YOU RELATE TO THE IDEA OF ENDURANCE? My work oscillates between protection and provocation. It creates space for interiority and reflection.
DESCRIBE THE PROVINCETOWN SCENE IN THREE WORDS. Sexy, healing, and generative. Exclusive at times. Democratic always.
PHOTOGRAPHER
HOW DO YOU RELATE TO THE IDEA OF ENDURANCE? As queer people, our community is always oppressed—especially now. I come back to the mantra, “No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.” It’s nice to shout this phrase with your comrades before a battle.
HOW DO YOU HOPE AUDIENCES WILL REACT TO THE SHOW? Faggots are fantastic!
HOW DO YOU RELATE TO THE IDEA OF ENDURANCE? Making a living as an artist is a challenge, but what else is there for me?
HOW DO YOU HOPE AUDIENCES WILL REACT TO THE SHOW? I hope they will laugh with glee.
BY EMMA LEIGH MACDONALD PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS BLACK
PARTNERS IN LIFE AND BUSINESS, RITA SODI AND JODY WILLIAMS ARE THE TENDER HEART OF A RESTAURANT EMPIRE KNOWN FOR SOME OF THE TOUGHEST RESERVATIONS IN TOWN.
“We live in the neighborhood, so when we think about starting something new, we think about what we’re missing here.” —Jody Williams
“The other day, a regular came by I Sodi, who’d been eating there since he was a little kid, and he was with his fiancée. I have to say I felt proud.”
—Rita Sodi
When I meet Rita Sodi and Jody Williams at a quiet corner table at Bar Pisellino, they have one thing on their minds: scallops, enormous ones. So big, in fact, that they’re torn on whether to include one or two in the dish they’ll feature on the menu at Via Carota tonight. Listening to the couple debate the issue answers my most pressing question—how they built New York’s most warmhearted restaurant empire in just over 15 years and managed to maintain a loving relationship in the process —in a matter of minutes.
The empire in question comprises five eateries, a wine shop, and a provisions shop —Buvette, I Sodi, Via Carota, Bar Pisellino, Commerce Inn, Officina del Bere, and Officina 1397—all clustered in the West Village and offering a homespun but no less exacting alternative to the high-throttle spirit of downtown New York hospitality. “We live in the neighborhood, so when we think about starting something new, we think about what we’re missing here,” Williams explains, citing Bar Pisellino, the duo’s morning-till-late Italian aperitivo bar, as an example. “It was the kind of place that we wished was around the corner. It’s been a personal journey more than a business plan.” (Industry rumor has it that the next step in this journey will bring them out of the neighbor hood for the first time—and into a new partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The pair says they know nothing of this.)
For an industry that demands everything of you, this approach makes sense. If you’re going to spend all your time in the kitchen, why not do it near your house and with your other half? For Williams, “working with the person whose success matters to you most is great. It’s hard sometimes. We disagree, but with the person you love, you’re always going to take the time to see their perspective. There’s no ego involved.”
Case in point: “We used to joke, if we want to see each other more—we should open a restaurant,” Williams quips. That one-liner became Via Carota, which opened its doors in 2014. At the time, each had been manning their own ships—Williams’s Buvette, the supremely convivial all-day French café-bistro, and Sodi’s namesake I Sodi, the Tuscan restaurant inspired by the farm she grew up on—for three and six years, respectively. They were working long days, cooking long nights, and even taking out the trash and locking up themselves. (Williams had been making the rounds in New York restaurant kitchens since her mid-20s; Sodi opened I Sodi after 25 years in fashion, ending at Calvin Klein.) Carota marked their first on-the-books collaboration and a leap of faith, doubling their commitment as they continued to run their original operations. (Commerce Inn and Bar Pisellino followed soon after.)
It may be cliché, but it’s true: The restaurant community feels a deep responsibility to its local patrons. In New York, where places to gather are few and far between, restaurants serve as a treasured form of public space. While the motivations for a restaurateur may not be quite so pure, for Williams and Sodi, the conversation inevitably circles back to a desire to contribute a consistent good to their bustling (and rapidly changing) neighborhood: ensuring its denizens are well-fed. “The other day, a regular came by I Sodi, who’d been eating there since he was a little kid,” Sodi recalls. “And he was with his fiancée. I have to say I felt proud.” The prestige, whether in the form of James Beard awards or ever-full reservation books, is more of a side dish.
Presently, Williams and Sodi turn their attention back to the menu, a sign that our conversation is winding down. Their next dilemma? When tomatoes will be ready this season. Sodi insists they’ll have to be extra patient: “It’s going to be late this year— maybe July.” Williams weighs her partner’s verdict. Whatever they decide, we, the loyal customers, are the beneficiaries of their deliberations.
In an exclusive conversation and shoot for CULTURED, Martin Parr pays a visit to the fashion world’s latest darling— 24-year-old Russian artist Maya Golyshkina.
by
Martin Parr
Martin Parr and Maya Golyshkina both picked up photography before the age of 16. Perhaps that’s why a sense of childlike wonder has survived in both of their practices, regardless of their considerable age gap. Parr’s flashdrenched and adrenaline-spiking lens has left us with decades of images that capture both the humor and tragic banality of the human condition. At 73, his work as an architect of contemporary photography is far from finished; recent projects have taken him everywhere from Glastonbury to Kyoto. For this issue, he made a new friend, visiting Golyshkina—a 24-year-old creative juggernaut from Moscow who has already made her name with collaborations of the highest brow (Balenciaga, Margiela, Prada, to name a few)—in her London home. The artist gave Parr a tour of her latest wearable creations, crafted from the most malleable of everyday materials: cardboard. After getting a glimpse inside each other’s minds during their collaborative shoot that day, the shutterbugs reunited for a far-reaching discussion of the medium that has kept them captivated.
How do you both incorporate play or spontaneity into your work?
Maya Golyshkina: I embrace the unexpected by allowing my materials and surroundings to guide me, whether it’s a roll of toilet paper, cardboard, or just my room. The elements usually dictate the direction of the piece, and foster an environment where playfulness thrives for me.
Martin Parr: I feel my approach is pretty intuitive because I’ve done photography for a long time. You see something in front of you, you know when it’s gonna work, and you know when you need to change it to make it work. I keep saying what an easy, nice job this [shoot] was.
Golyshkina: I’d been working on these pieces for around two weeks, actually, so it wasn’t that easy for me. [Laughs] But the shoot itself was fast. Usually, I play it by ear, so I don’t have any ideas or results in my head right away. I really like playing around, and I think that’s how we elevate our work.
Do you have a non-traditional material or a tool in your practices that stands out as an unexpected success?
Parr: Gosh, I’ve done some pretty wacky projects over the years. I did a project on bored couples, which a lot of people like. I did a project that looked at Japanese commuters from above on the train. That got quite a big following and was a bit surprising.
Golyshkina: Using household objects was very unusual, maybe, for some people, but I didn’t find it that unique. Martin, you haven’t seen this, but I also do crying videos: self-portraits where I use different objects as my tears. They went quite viral. I would place eggs on my eyes and then crack them and pretend I’m crying.
How has social media affected how you work?
Parr: It’s a pretty important connection we have. I think [the Martin Parr Foundation is] up to like 77,000 now, so we’re on a good course. We won’t be satisfied until we get to a million.
Golyshkina: I’ll help you! For me, the Internet is the main connection for my practice. It has completely changed my life, because it brought me to London. I’m Gen Z, and I grew up with my phone. I was just posting [my self-portraits] randomly to my Instagram page, which is how I became quite viral and then brands and people would reach out to me … Imagine being from Russia [where] there is no art or fashion industry, and no one appreciates your work. My phone was the biggest tool in my art career: It helped me show my work to an audience worldwide.
When you are experiencing a creative block, do you have a reliable solution, somewhere you look?
Parr: I don’t have blocks, it’s as simple as that, because there’s so much crazy stuff out in the world. I like to be photographing; I can never do enough.
Golyshkina: I think this is the main point of being an artist, because if I had restrictions or blocks, I would rather go and work at McDonald’s or something and do a normal job. But I decided to be an artist.
In that case, if you are trying to keep up with the rate of what you see and what you want to photograph, what does that look like to you?
Parr: In some shape or form, I’m usually working every day. I may have a bit of quiet time on
weekends, occasionally, but during the week, I’m always down here. I’m obsessed. My work, my life, it’s all one thing, really. If you weren’t obsessed, you wouldn’t be a good artist.
Golyshkina: Yeah, I agree. This is actually how I live: doing experiments, calling, meeting people, doing interviews. I’m obsessed with what I do, and I can’t imagine my life without it.
When you’re shooting a subject, how do you envision capturing someone’s personality in a photo?
Parr: You have to stop people from smiling too much, because that always makes everything look quite the same. So that’s the first thing to do. In the case of Maya, it’s much simpler because it’s just a question of her putting her face through the hole, and she, of course, didn’t smile, because we’re taking this very seriously. She knows that not smiling is funnier.
Golyshkina: I always want to look so natural or even ugly and unusual, because I don’t want to think about something fake when I work. I don’t want to restrict myself or think, Oh, I need to pose now.
Maya, what was it like having someone else step into that photographer role, since you’re usually doing a lot of self-portraits?
Golyshkina: It’s quite unusual, to be honest, because I usually control the process. But if the photographer is as good as Martin, I trust and feel like my work and my style can be elevated. Then it’s more like Martin’s world now than just mine. It’s not just my lens—it’s something in between.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY LÉON PROST
IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES, SEVEN CHEFS RECALL A MEAL, ENCOUNTERED IN A FAR-FLUNG PLACE, THAT LIVES ON IN THEIR MINDS. THESE CULINARY MEMORIES ARE ACCOMPANIED BY SNAPSHOTS FROM FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHER AND FREQUENT CULTURED CO-CONSPIRATOR LÉON PROST’S OWN SUMMER TRAVELS.
Just over a century ago, a diminutive French cake became shorthand for the deep ties between food and memory. Marcel Proust’s madeleine effect distilled a powerful—and universal—phenomenon: the ability of a single taste to bring us back to a moment lost to time. Because our senses are never more alert than when we’re on the move, we asked seven of our favorite chefs to recall a dish they ate abroad that continues to transport them to this day.
CHEF AND FOUNDER OF MATTOS HOSPITALITY
“We try to visit my mother-in-law, Nevin, in Istanbul at least once a year. One night, we went into the city center to meet a friend of Laila [Gohar], my partner. On the walk home, we stopped at a casual chain restaurant serving stuffed mussels, Midye Dolması. It’s not the most picturesque setting—they cook the mussels in large batches, and they sit at room temperature—but they were possibly the best mussels I’ve ever had. If it’s not busy and the guy is feeling nice, he’ll open them for you. Otherwise, you remove half the shell and use it as a spoon for the rice, mussels, and spices. They are the most comforting and singular little jewels.”
CHEF AND OWNER OF SUNN’S
“In February 2017, I went to South Korea for the first time as an adult, hoping to connect with my Koreanness. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have visited when the warmest it gets is 28°F. I wandered around Seoul, fixated on finding ways to keep warm. One morning, I ventured into Gwangjang Sijang, a large open market full of ajummas squatting on plastic stools, peeling chestnuts and garlic, rolling kimbap. I dropped into a food stall for breakfast—a tray of dried mountain greens, mushrooms, and dried sweet potato stems, all marinated into various banchan. It felt like biting into the wildest of charcuteries. Now in the winter, I find myself craving doenjangbraised greens, cooked to oblivion with garlic and chili.”
CHEF AND FOUNDER OF DADA EATS
“I was in Copenhagen, sitting at a spot called Seks. The chef told me I couldn’t leave until I tasted a new dish, which featured a secret ingredient that confounded every guest who tried it. I smiled at my mom across the table, who was visiting for one of my pop-ups. Challenge accepted. The chef placed a plate of ceviche on the table, dotted with juicy
tomatoes, citrus, and herbs. I popped a big spoonful of the fish dish into my mouth and was delighted by a burst of sweetness, tang, and spice. It wasn’t fish, it was lychee. I knew the flavor immediately, like the voice of a dear, old friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. They’re my mom’s favorite—I remember peeling them with her growing up, just like she did as a child in India with her mom.”
PASTRY CHEF AND CO-OWNER OF QUARTER SHEETS
“Before my partner Aaron [Lindell] and I decided to move back to Los Angeles after 12 years in the Bay Area, we went to Portugal for a month. We spent a week in a little apartment on the bluffs on the westernmost tip of Europe. On the last turn of the path— right before the ocean came into view—was a small shack built into the cliffside, where an army of teenagers (and one sun-baked patriarch) prepared cork oak–grilled sardines, whole chickens, and french fries. That’s it. The chicken was grilled to perfection—crispy, seasoned skin, juicy and super flavorful. The sardines were served in all their bone-in, head-on glory, and tasted like the ocean.”
CHEF AND CO-OWNER OF TAQUERIA RAMÍREZ AND CARNITAS RAMÍREZ
“My last solo trip was to Cadaqués, Spain. Whenever I’m in a coastal town, I never miss the seafood—shrimp especially. I’ve been in love with shrimp since I can remember. I’m fascinated by its structure, color, and that clean scent of salt and shells. During my last night in town, I had nothing to do and wandered aimlessly until a narrow street pulled me in. At the end was a small place, La Sirena. I got a glass of wine, opened the menu, and PUMM! Carpaccio de Gambas. The dish completely changed how I felt about my trip. The simple but exotic presentation—the poetry of a few carefully selected ingredients on a plate—made me fall in love with shrimp all over again.”
FORMER EXECUTIVE CHEF OF BLANCA
“Nothing evokes more warmth, nostalgia, and admiration for me than the moments I shared with my great-great-aunt, Filomena, in Chile. Out of all the amazing dishes she would prepare, my favorite was her salad of tomatoes and green beans. On a summer day, she would leave her apartment, walk to the local market, and talk to her people. Farmers loved her. They would shout, ‘Señora Filomena! ¡Aqui! ’ Back at her apartment, she would cut the green beans into strips then blanch them until nice and soft—none of the crunchy bullshit I’ve learned in fancy restaurants. Then she’d peel and slice gigantic, ripe tomatoes. With juice running down her hands, she’d layer the slices in a beautiful ring, scatter the beans on top, then dress them with Greek olive oil, salt, and lemon juice to bring out the sweet and grassy flavor. I can never replicate it, but it is stuck in my memory forever.”
CHEF AND CO-OWNER OF BAR CONTRA, WILDAIR, AND THE HENSON
“The first time I went to London, I had just started cooking. My parents had met there, and they wanted to show me around—it was a touristy walk down their memory lane. The one thing I asked them was if we could go to St. John. They had no idea what they were getting into. We arrived at this white cube of a place with no music and a really small, weird menu. I was immediately in heaven. I knew what I wanted: deviled kidneys on toast. I wasn’t so much into offal, but it just sounded delicious to me. To this day, I can’t stop thinking about that dish. It changed my way of cooking: From then on, I just wanted to make everything simpler.”
Ballet would be nowhere without Paris’s Académie Royale de Danse. Established in 1661 by Louis XIV, who had a penchant for all things terpsichorean, it became the Western world’s first dance school. It was within its walls that, by the 1720s, dancer Marie-Anne de Cupis de Camargo convinced leading ballerinas to abandon heeled shoes for slippers, and where a century later, Marie Taglioni popularized the art of dancing en pointe, using nothing but a few tufts of cotton wool to pad her feet. By the dawn of the 1900s, Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova had pioneered a more strategic—and controversial—construction, whipping across the stage in slippers buttressed with leather supports and a flattened box toe to protect her famously high arches. The modern pointe slipper was born.
With its delicate creases of folded silk and reinforced toe, the shoe remains a stirring embodiment of elegance and grit. This year, the silhouette serves as the muse for Louboutin’s recurring capsule collection Nudes, released in an array of tones designed to disappear against the skin. The hero of the Parisian label’s offering is the Cassia Lace Up—with its square toe, sensual stiletto heel, and crepe satin finish—which ties with satin ribbon at the ankle, an homage to the laborious lacing-up pre-performance ritual.
For the issue, photographer Chiara Gabellini staged the collection in a setting a world away from the ballet studio: Eero Saarinen’s TWA Hotel, a mid-century marvel tucked in the anarchic sprawl of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
“THE WEIGHT OF WORDS IS IMPORTANT—NUDE IS NOT A BEIGE COLOR, BUT A CONCEPT. IT SHOULD BE PLURAL TO REFLECT THE FULL SPECTRUM OF SKIN TONES.” —CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
PRIYA KRISHNA, RUTH REICHL, and MATTHEW SCHNEIER have spent a combined 30-plus years dissecting restaurant culture, one review at a time.
In a world where the prices are steeper, the lines are longer, and the opinions are cheaper by the dozen, here’s why they’re still searching for the next great meal.
By Julia Halperin
by Marisa Langley
Depending on your disposition, the job of a restaurant critic sounds like either a dream or a nightmare. It takes a special kind of person to dine out six nights a week, sometimes in elaborate disguise; visit the same place at least 3 and as many as 12 times; and condense the entire experience—as well as what it says about a scene and a moment in time—into around 1,000 words.
But while the key job requirements for a restaurant critic haven’t changed in decades, the audience for their work has. Over the past 30 years, with the advent of cooking shows and social media, high-end restaurants have gone from exclusive sanctums to pop-culture phenomena. Our understanding of what fine dining means—and who can create it—has likewise expanded precipitously. This development is best embodied by two distinct but definitely not disconnected sea changes: The number of food critics at local newspapers has dwindled while TikTok enthusiasts who flout traditional rules (like not accepting free food) attract millions of followers.
To discuss their vocation’s current challenges and contradictions, along with its enduring joys, CULTURED convened three of its leading practitioners over lunch at La Mercerie in SoHo. In attendance was Ruth Reichl, who served as a restaurant critic for more than 20 years at outlets including The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times and wrote a best-selling memoir, Garlic and Sapphires, about her experience in New York; Matthew Schneier, a former reporter, fashion critic, and, later, features writer for New York who became the magazine’s chief restaurant critic in 2023; and Priya Krishna, a bestselling cookbook author and writer known for revealing the unseen stories behind the food we eat, who stepped in as co-interim restaurant critic (with Melissa Clark) for The New York Times after Pete Wells announced his departure from the role last year.
Over little gem salads, buckwheat crepes, and a strawberry tart, the trio discussed the tricks of the trade, why we continue to go out to eat, and how to cultivate a good appetite in both work and life.
How did you find your way into restaurant criticism?
Ruth Reichl: I fell into it. I wrote a cookbook when I was 22, and then I was part of a restaurant collective in Berkeley, but I was writing freelance articles, mostly about art. One of my editors ate dinner in my restaurant a few nights a week. He just looked at me one day and said, “You know, you’re a much better writer than a cook. Have you ever thought about writing reviews?” We were dirt poor. I was living in a commune with my husband. I was not thinking, Oh, this is my new career. All I thought was: free food . It was 1976, and I was waiting for my real life to begin. I never thought that this was going to be my real life.
Matthew Schneier: I started writing food reviews for a downtown magazine called Paper when I moved back to New York as a young graduate because it was what was available. It broke me out of my adolescent vegetarianism. I didn’t end up pursuing [food writing] at that time—there seemed no way to do it. I wrote and eventually edited culture, style, and fashion [stories]. My predecessor at New York, Adam Platt, stepped away, and they did a long search for his replacement. At a certain point, they came to me and said, “What would you think about throwing your hat in the ring?”
Priya Krishna: I had a column in my college newspaper where I took the food in the dining hall and told students how they [could] transform it to make it taste better. I loved it so much that I decided I wanted to try writing about food for a living. I applied to work at what was at the time my favorite food magazine, Lucky Peach. I addressed the email to [Lucky Peach co-founder] David Chang, as if he were checking their generic inbox. My first job was as a customer service representative, picking up the phone and applying discount codes.
“The prospect of a free restaurant meal completely enraptures even the richest people.” —Matthew Schneier
Priya, you are now doing the job that Ruth did in the ’90s. I’d be curious for you to compare notes.
Krishna: Ruth, I feel like New Yorkers waited with bated breath to see what restaurant you would review that week.
Reichl: Yes, food was just becoming part of popular culture. I came [back] to New York [in 1993], the same year that the Food Network started. People didn’t know much about anything except European food. But I was coming from the West Coast, where people were interested in looking south, looking east.
My first day, I was sitting in my pod in that grubby old New York Times building. My first call was from a college friend who lived in Morocco. He said, “I was on the plane to Mecca to do the hajj, and I read that you had become the restaurant critic of The New York Times.” At that point, it was international news. That’s not the case anymore.
Do you still feel like critics can make or break a restaurant?
Krishna: I don’t think a restaurant critic alone can make or break a restaurant.
Schneier: It would be easier to make than to break. We’ve all written great reviews of places that were a little bit under the radar and changed their fortunes in the short term. It’s much harder two years later when you’re not the flavor of the month.
Reichl: That is a real change in the restaurantgoing public. People were loyal.
Do you ever recall breaking a restaurant? When something that you wrote led it to close?
Reichl: There were restaurants who think that happened to them. Probably the funniest review I ever wrote was of a Japanese restaurant [Shin’s]—everything that could go wrong on my visits there went wrong. We ordered, sat there for an hour, and then the manager came over and said, “I’m so sorry, your waitress just quit.” They lost my umbrella. The guy who was crumbing the table put all the crumbs into my purse. They bought a full-page ad on the back of The New York Times, reprinted the review, and said, “We’re so sorry. Please come back.” They did close. But they deserved to close.
When do you think a negative review is warranted?
Schneier: I’m not afraid to write a negative review. It’s a disservice not to write reviews of big, often extremely well-funded centers of interest that don’t live up to the mark they’ve set for themselves. I would be much more circumspect about giving a very negative review to some tiny independent operator. I feel more comfortable picking on someone my own size, as it were.
Reichl: There’s no point in telling people not to go to a restaurant that nobody’s going to. American restaurant critics aren’t like the Brits, who revel in writing the nastiest things.
Priya: I lose sleep before any review, but especially a critical review. It’s really hard. I don’t like it.
Reichl: When I did the Le Cirque review, which was my most famous review, I was so beside myself with anxiety at 2 o’clock in the morning that I convinced myself I had never even been to the restaurant. The review I’ve been most envious of in my entire career was Pete Wells’s review of Guy Fieri’s restaurant [Guy’s
American Kitchen & Bar in 2012]. It’s a wonderful piece of writing. But also, he got to write a negative review that would not impact the restaurant at all. It was such a freebie! The people who go there couldn’t care less what the snobbish critic of The New York Times thinks.
“In some of the really high-end new restaurants where they haven’t recognized me, I have received shockingly bad service.” —Priya Krishna
Ruth, you are famous for the disguises you wore to restaurants. Is that still a thing?
Krishna: It is, because of Ruth. The first time [I wore a disguise], I was reviewing an Indian restaurant called Bungalow. If the chef recognizes you, especially if you’re Indian, he will just lavish attention on you. So I asked a friend of a friend who is a wig and costume designer on Broadway to give me some tips. There are certain restaurants where it’s made a pretty marked difference in both the food and the way I’m treated.
Reichl: I was really lucky ’cause I had my mother’s friend, the acting coach, who I called for a wig, and she said, “No, you can’t just wear a wig. Who are you gonna be?” It’s a very interesting process. [The characters] are all powerful. The problem is they got known. When I left the Times, all these restaurateurs bought an ad and said, “Goodbye Ruth,” and they had a reservation book with all the names they knew I used.
Schneier: I try to maintain the element of surprise, which means booking under assumed names or laundering reservations through other people. But Adam Platt took a real stand against disguises. His point was in the age of Google Images, it’s just not the best use of a critic’s time to try to maintain anonymity. I tend to agree with that.
Reichl: I have noticed that an empty restaurant suddenly fills up around me and you think, Oh, they recognize me. They don’t want me to think that nobody comes to their restaurant. These are all their friends, raving about the food.
Schneier: That’s why we go multiple times— different days, different hours, different size groups.
Krishna: Sometimes I wonder if the reason that I feel like I have to do this is because I get treated like shit at fine dining restaurants where they don’t recognize me. When I’m bringing other younger people of color, we get
treated like customers who won’t be able to pay the bill at the end. In some of the really high-end new restaurants where they haven’t recognized me, I have received shockingly bad service.
What do you make of the rise of TikTok food criticism and the non-professional enthusiast critic?
Schneier: The entire world has gone usergenerated and I’m not gonna upset myself against that. Everybody’s entitled to an opinion.
Reichl: Some of them are filling a gap, actually. Keith Lee, who’s got millions of followers on TikTok, is writing about Black restaurants for Black people. I really enjoy what he’s doing and he’s found a niche that no one else was filling.
I realized fairly recently that when I became the restaurant critic of The Los Angeles Times, every major restaurant critic in America, or almost every, was Jewish. We took a job that there wasn’t really a definition for—it didn’t exist. We went into a place that nobody wanted and we found a space to write in. So, Keith Lee
found a space that nobody was occupying.
Krishna: I do find, though, that a lot of the critics who are allowed to be generalists on social media are still pretty white. There was this review that sent shock waves through the Indian community—this TikTok from these girls who call themselves the VIP List. They posted a review of Semma, this restaurant that pretty much all Indians agree is fantastic. It’s okay if you don’t like it, but the reasons they didn’t like it were so uninformed. They were mispronouncing the names of Indian dishes that didn’t even exist. It just felt so flippant, so careless.
Reichl: We’re talking about two things here. One is restaurant review as consumer reporting: “This is where you should spend your money.” That’s not what critics do. If you were writing about Semma, you would write a piece for an audience of people who are probably fairly ignorant about real Indian food, and you would give them new tools to appreciate that restaurant.
Schneier: The difference between a restaurant
getting 4.5 stars on Google and a restaurant getting a positive review is that I’m trying to understand and communicate how this restaurant fits into the wider culture. I don’t aspire to be someone who knows the best bagel.
Krishna: But critics are being asked to do a lot of the things that you see on social media—to make lists of the best pizza in New York, to make TikToks. I’m about to release the list of the top 100 restaurants in New York. The world is changing and, at least at the Times, they want us to change with it.
Reichl: Don’t forget, food has become one of the two major economic engines of The New York Times [along with games]. One of the purposes of restaurant reviews has always been to sell newspapers.
I’m curious how you think about price and value when it comes to evaluating a restaurant, especially as it becomes more and more expensive to eat out.
“It’s a disservice not to write reviews of big, often extremely well-funded centers of interest that don’t live up to the mark they’ve set for themselves.”
—Matthew Schneier
Krishna: When I arrived in New York at 21 years old, my starting salary was $30,000. If I read a review in The New York Times that excited me, I would go to that restaurant and blow my week’s pay. And it would be so hard if that restaurant ended up being really disappointing.
Schneier: Value is a different category than price, and it’s the one we’re focusing on. I have had meals that I considered extremely valuable at $250 a head and ones where I would’ve been better served with a $1.50 slice of pizza. I try to keep in mind a diversity across the spectrum, not only of geography, cuisine, and location, but also price point.
Reichl: It is a labor-intensive business. Corporate restaurants have economies of scale that non-corporate restaurants don’t. I’ve always tried to remember, and remind readers, that the best part of this business is that it’s money that’s staying in the community. That, and it’s a valuable experience.
“I’m not a small-bite critic. I don’t like waste. I take food home. I eat it for lunch the next day.”
—Priya Krishna
A number of critics have cited health as one of the big reasons that they stepped down from the job. How do you think about the physical demands of what you do?
Schneier: Well, I started statins on day one. I had a conversation with my doctor where she said, “I think we can wait a couple years on this.” And I said, “I don’t think a couple years are gonna improve the situation.”
Krishna: I get asked three or four times a week, “Why aren’t you fat? Are you actually very fat and you do a good job hiding it?” This job certainly gives you, especially if you’re a woman, a sense of body dysmorphia. I think the biggest thing is, if it’s under 45 minutes, I’ll walk to the restaurant, even in the rain. I try to live an active lifestyle. There are some critics who just take small bites and that’s it. I’m not a small-bite critic. I don’t like waste. I take food home. I eat it for lunch the next day.
Reichl: In some ways, I ate less as a critic than I did in real life. You have to moderate your eating because you’re having a big lunch, but you know you’re gonna have a big dinner too, and you want to be fair to the restaurant.
Do you all have a deep bench of dining companions?
Krishna: Extremely deep bench. Some of my favorite people to take to dinner are comedians because they are actually observational journalists.
Reichl: I’ve always had starving-artist friends, and I would tell them, “Bring three people.” The one thing that nobody really understands about being a professional critic, where you’re eating out twice a day for most of your days, is you have to be social. You are spending hours sitting at a table talking to people. And then when you’re at The New York Times, famous people call you up and say, “Take me to dinner.” Mike Nichols. Peter Jennings. The secretary of state used to call me when he was coming to New York.
Schneier: The prospect of a free restaurant meal completely enraptures even the richest people. Someone can be an absolute titan of industry, able to buy out the restaurant 15 times over, and if you say, “It’s on me, order whatever you want”—it’s like Christmas morning.
How do you choose what to review?
Schneier: There are some places there’s a ton of expectation about, and it’s our responsibility
to have a take on that. But you want to make sure that you’re not reviewing 15 Italian restaurants in a row with the same price bracket in the same part of town.
Krishna: I review restaurants that are interesting to me. Restaurants where you can tell a story that extends beyond the four walls of that restaurant.
Reichl: There are places it is obvious everybody’s gonna review. Somebody is going to review [Daniel Boulud’s new steakhouse] La Tête d’Or, right? Talk about price—I was so offended by the idea of paying $130 for prime rib.
Schneier: I’ve got bad news for you about several prime ribs in this town.
Krishna: We should do a series where we just show Ruth the prices of things.
Do you have any tips for how to write an entertaining review?
Reichl: We don’t have many words for taste and flavor. So you’ve got to use your imagination when you’re writing about food, which is part of the fun. How does it make you feel? What does it sound like? In the end, the thing that’s really different about food criticism is none of us knows if I taste the same thing as you taste. So all you can do is describe the sensation of what’s happening in your mouth when you’re eating. You’re using every tool in a writer’s box.
Schneier: It’s also important to make the reviews feel like episodes in a serial social comedy, which is how I think about dining in New York. The more that you can create that scene for a reader, the more they understand not only if they want to eat there, but if they want to be there. That’s the other thing about restaurants—you’re spending your night with them. You can get pretty good takeout if that’s all you’re interested in, or learn to cook. But the holistic experience is what a restaurant gives you. And that’s what a review can give you too, over and above how it tastes to you on any given day.
“There’s no point in telling people not to go to a restaurant that nobody’s going to. American restaurant critics aren’t like the Brits, who revel in writing the nastiest things.”
—Ruth Reichl
Photography by Jon Ervin
This year, Bottega Veneta celebrates the 50th anniversary of Intrecciato, the woven innovation that became its signature. A quiet revolution in craft, it’s a testament to the latitude it takes to become—and stay—an icon.
By Giuliana Brida
Intrecciato, the woven leather technique that’s become synonymous with Bottega Veneta, wasn’t developed to make a statement, but to provide a solution. Introduced by the Italian house in 1975, the weave’s subtle shift from horizontal to diagonal allowed for leather pieces—wallets, bags—to be both supple and sturdy. Over the decades, the technique—pronounced “in-trehchah-toh” for the uninitiated—has become a quiet revolution in craft.
When Michele Taddei and Renzo Zengiaro, the house’s founders, began crafting luxury leather goods in 1966, sewing machines were no match for dense animal hide. The Veneto region’s local artisans devised a method as intricate as it was innovative: weaving slender strips of leather,
known as fettucce, into a perforated base. Rooted in leatherworking traditions native to Vicenza, where the house’s main atelier is located, the novel technique brought unprecedented malleability to calf-and lambskin—and a timeless calling card to a nascent brand.
Taddei and Zengiaro knew the pattern would leave a more memorable impression than any logo, giving rise to Bottega Veneta’s credo: “When your own initials are enough.” This understated elegance reached new heights in the crook of Lauren Hutton’s arm: An oxblood Intrecciato clutch appeared tucked in the billows of her trench coat in the 1980 film American Gigolo, and the house’s vision quickly transcended its home country’s borders to achieve zeitgeist status.
At 50, the method is as iconic as ever, as evidenced by Bottega’s new “Craft Is Our Language” campaign, shot by Jack Davison and centering the hand gestures of cultural architects like Julianne Moore, Zadie Smith, Dario Argento, and, of course, Hutton. A-lister buzz aside, at the house’s atelier, Intrecciato weaving is preserved as a meditative technique largely untampered with by modern efficiencies—each piece is completed over hours, sometimes days, as fettucce are threaded together. Wallets, bags, and shoes now accompany collectible sculptural furnishings and home objects, but Intrecciato never strays too far from its roots. Its structure is a master class in both restraint and durability, a testament to Bottega Veneta’s commitment to slow fashion and generational wear—a beacon of timeless design, and proof that some things are meant to last.
Fifty years into crafting the Intrecciato weave, Bottega Veneta has printed the fine leather across wheatpasted posters, billboards, and in the pages of magazines from New York to Milan, as seen in these stills pulled from the depths of the archive.
‘I
THIRTY YEARS SINCE IT BURST ONTO THE WEB 1.0 SCENE, EBAY REMAINS A BASTION OF DISCOVERY FOR DESIGNERS, STYLISTS, AND ARCHIVAL RUBBERNECKERS ALIKE.
Few platforms make the art of the hunt more thrilling than eBay. The enduring e-commerce juggernaut was founded in 1995, the peak of the Web 1.0 era. It was one of the first to tap the Internet’s vast potential for connection—a marketplace for people to bid on vintage treasures and connect with each other in the comments section.
Three decades since its founding, eBay is still a bastion of discovery, and everyone—from designers to beanie baby fanatics, artists to car
aficionados—is in its thrall. For Brie Welch, recently dubbed the company’s “Resident Stylist,” the site is the ultimate source of creative stimulation. “When I'm working on a project that involves bringing history, rarity, and intimacy to a character, I have to source pre-loved,” says the New York–based creative, who has worked with clients ranging from Katie Holmes to Givenchy. (Her most frequent eBay search? “Prada 2010 beach print”). In her new role as the brand’s fashion authority, Welch will lend her eye to the newly minted eBay
Watchlist—a digest of current style trends (from utilitarian workwear to boho-chic) supported by eBay shopper data that features curated finds and coveted insider commentary.
Today, the platform serves as a repository of rare archival pieces and one-of-a-kind curiosities (a single giant Croc, anyone?), fueling a new generation of creatives. Welch sat down with three young and very online talents from the brand’s vast creator network to discuss how eBay has influenced their work.
DESCRIBE YOUR WORK IN TWO SENTENCES. I incorporate anything I go through—my experiences and my hot takes—into my content. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s serious.
“ONE THING ABOUT ME—I LOVE TO GATEKEEP A GOOD FASHION FIND.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THREE MOST COMMON EBAY SEARCHES? “Maison Margiela.” “Ann Demeulemeester.” “Jean Paul Gaultier.”
WHAT’S YOUR WHITE WHALE? A navy blue, suede Hermès Kelly bag.
HOW DOES DISCOVERING PRE-LOVED PIECES OR MATERIALS FIT INTO YOUR WORK? One thing about me—I love to gatekeep a good fashion find. Especially archival, one-of-a-kind pieces.
THE BEST DEAL YOU EVER STRUCK? I got this vintage Balenciaga blazer for 30 percent off because there was a missing button. I took her to my tailor and she was just like new.
CONTENT CREATOR
DESCRIBE YOUR WORK IN ONE SENTENCE. I’m professionally, chronically online.
HOW DOES DISCOVERING PRE-LOVED PIECES OR MATERIALS FIT INTO YOUR WORK? Discovering vintage pieces is essential for tracking the digital histories of fashion. I do a ton of research on a fashion house, and then I reward myself with a piece from the designer’s archive.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU USED THE PLATFORM? My dad’s first eBay account says “member since 1999.” I do not remember a time in my life when I wasn’t on eBay.
“I DO A TON OF RESEARCH ON A FASHION HOUSE, AND THEN I REWARD MYSELF WITH A PIECE FROM THE DESIGNER’S ARCHIVE.”
WHAT ARE YOUR MOST COMMON EBAY SEARCHES? “Yohji Yamamoto suit.” I have been compulsively checking the prices and selection for the last 10 years. And “HBA (Hood By Air).” The HBA collector community lurks and immediately snatches every rare, coveted piece so quickly. Collectors who are passionate about the brand pass their pieces to other megafans. It’s so much fun.
WHAT’S YOUR WHITE WHALE? Dior couture gowns from the runway. I just like to look.
DESCRIBE YOUR BEST VINTAGE DISCOVERY ON EBAY. This Jean Paul Gaultier puffer with harness straps from an early 2000s collection. It was purchased and then, by some miracle, relisted—I thought it was gone forever. I wear it every winter; it’s my signature.
THE BEST DEAL YOU EVER STRUCK?
Miu Miu boots for $40 in 2021, right before they became a huge trend. Lucky.
DESCRIBE YOUR WORK IN TWO SENTENCES. My practice centers around upcycling—reworking pre-loved and vintage items into something entirely new. I love giving forgotten pieces a second life.
HOW DOES DISCOVERING PRE-LOVED PIECES OR MATERIALS FIT INTO YOUR WORK? Each project begins with the hunt: I’m always looking for unique, rare, or unexpected pieces that inspire new ideas. I’m passionate about keeping these items in circulation and extending their lifespan.
“NO MATTER WHAT I’M IMAGINING, I CAN USUALLY FIND WHAT I NEED TO BRING IT TO LIFE.”
HOW LONG HAVE YOU USED THE PLATFORM? I’ve been using eBay for over a decade. Early in my career, I worked in sportswear and used eBay to hunt down vintage references for design inspiration. When I started making my own clothes, it became my go-to for sourcing materials. No matter what I’m imagining, I can usually find what I need to bring it to life.
WHAT ARE YOUR MOST COMMON EBAY SEARCHES? “Vintage store displays,” “junk drawer lots,” and “vintage designer sunglasses.”
WHAT’S YOUR WHITE WHALE? This pair of Miu Miu pants I’ve been looking for forever. They zip off into shorts, and they also have a pocket on the back that zips off and turns into a bag!
WHAT’S YOUR MOST OUTRAGEOUS EBAY DISCOVERY? I found a giant Croc—and yes, I bought it!
Rooted in sturdy wooden legs and slung with smooth, earthy leather, the simple silhouette of Molteni & C’s Monk Chair evokes a sense of devout remove. Pioneered in 1973, the design, which fell out of production in 1990, returns to take its place in the brand’s Heritage collection.
FOR CONTEMPORARY DESIGN TO PREVAIL IN A CROWDED MARKETPLACE, IT MUST ENTER INTO DIALOGUE WITH HISTORY AND ART. BUT TIMELESS DESIGN IS ROOTED IN SOMETHING DEEPER, TRANSCENDING EARTHLY CONCERNS TO CHANNEL SOMETHING ELEMENTAL. STONE, METAL, GLASS, LEATHER, WOOD, TEXTILES, CERAMICS—THESE CORE MATERIALS ARE DEEPLY ENTWINED IN OUR COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS; PURE TEXTURES THAT SPARK OUR FUNDAMENTAL URGE TO BASK, FEEL WONDER, AND SEEK COMFORT. HERE, A SELECTION OF PREEMINENT DESIGN HOUSES PRESENTS PIECES THAT REVEL IN THE SIMPLICITY OF PURE MATERIALS.
Edra’s On the Rocks seating collection evokes an assemblage of primordial sediments. Hand-molded by the house’s artisans, the design recalls an eons-old rock formation at rest.
The latest expression of an 85-year-long tradition in metal work, Vipp’s V3 kitchen system harnesses the levity of naturally anodized aluminum. This brighter, lighter design stands on the shoulders of V1— an inquiry into the possibilities of steel, one of the oldest manmade materials.
Channeling the artisanal spirit of a sawhorse workbench, Henrybuilt’s Diplomat island is a place to gather and partake in the conjuring of a meal—an homage to the warmth of oak and walnut wood.
Crystal—glass infused with minerals to transform how the material refracts light—is pure wonder in its molten form. The undulating substance takes shape through constant tempering, an exercise in patience. The latest lighting collection from Saint Louis, Torsade, pushes the craft to the edge before pulling it back—creating twisted, rope-like pieces that glow from within, like molten crystal itself.
Poliform’s Ernest sofa is a harmony of organic forms blanketed in soft natural fibers, each fabric-wrapped element resting gently against the next.
Tightly-laid ceramic tiles glazed to refract rich crystalline hues are the core material of Hannes Peer’s Andrée Table for Minotti. The ’70s-inspired design is elegant and luminous, a welcoming setting for dinner en plein air.
