Design Hunting - History Is Not Past

In a week that will, we all hope, result in a turn for the better in America’s history, I talked to two artists who made homes in dialogue with the past.

Artist Andrew LaMar Hopkins’s show at Venus Over Manhattan, “Créolité,” features paintings of an intimate domestic landscape that he has also re-created for himself in an apartment he has rented in a Federal house in Savannah, Georgia. I talked to Hopkins as he was settling into his new space that seems somehow meant to be. “My 205-year-old place in Savannah is very light and airy,” Hopkins says. “I can look out of the 12 windows of my apartment and see the 200-year-old live-oak trees bringing nature right into my space.” It also happens to be in the Savannah neighborhood where, before the Civil War, free people of color lived, which he found inspirational.

And I talked with artist Scott Bluedorn about a floating tiny house he created in the form of a duck blind in East Hampton. It’s charming, but the idea was to draw attention to the lack of affordable housing for working-class families, many of whom have lived in the area for centuries.

What else is happening on Curbed? Diana Budds spoke to Afrofuturist Ari Melenciano about how her Bed-Stuy loft has fed her creativity during lockdown; Mercedes Kraus visited with five people who were profiled by the magazine Nest to see what has become of their lives since; and the novelist Rumaan Alam wrote about his appreciation of “the nuances of the high-end real-estate listing.”

Yours,
Wendy Goodman

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Before it ends on November 8, wander through the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition on New York’s most iconic nightclub, Studio 54. The museum will also host its last “Art on the Stoop” that day: an outdoor exhibition of video artworks in its collection.

This Friday, begin scrolling through the Affordable Art Fair’s first online fair, featuring a roster of 50 handpicked galleries from 15 countries. The international event promises thousands of artworks at many different price points.

This week only, make an appointment with Salon 94 on the Upper East Side to see a presentation of metal furniture designed by Donald Judd in 1984.

Digitally explore Intersect Chicago, formerly known as SOFA, which will launch as an online art and design fair this Friday, featuring over 100 galleries, free talks, and special days dedicated to themes like public art, ceramics and craft, and design.

Page through this Chairpedia, a book of 101 different seats that seeks to tell the story of chair design. Also check out New York’s own new encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia of New York, a guide to all of the city’s greatest innovations and inventions.

A Maplewood mid-century built by a Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice.

A pretty Upper East Side apartment with lots of casement windows.

A Park Slope spot with Issey Miyake lighting.

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