Installation image of Lost City Arts at the Collective.1 Design Fair. New York architect Steven Learner needed advice. While fairs like Design Miami/, which cater to collectors of 20th century and contemporary work, have popped up around the world, New York City lacked a similar event, and seeing a hole in the market, Learner decided to start his own. To bridge the knowledge gap between being an architect and being a design market impresario, he called on a group of some 13 dealers, collectors, curators, and other advisors, including fellow architect Alexander Gorlin, to help conceive a new fair. This

Photo courtesy Frieze Art Fair Alemani has organized a series of installations, talks, and other programming for the Frieze Art Fair in New York, held in a snaking tent designed by SO—IL, May 10-13. Cecilia Alemani’s favorite work of public art is Maurizio Cattelan’s massive statue of a hand that stands in front of the stock exchange in her native Milan, with every digit severed but an insouciant middle finger. While Alemani enjoys the provocation, she mostly admires the way it confounds expectations about what public art should be. Photo © Tom Medwell Cecilia Alemani As the director and curator

A Beacon on the East River, with its neon sign capping a jumble of buildings that represent more than 100 years of industrial architecture, Brooklyn’s Domino Sugar factory has had few visitors since shuttering more than a decade ago. But last week, guests at a fundraiser for the public art organization Creative Time got a look inside one of its main buildings. The massive hall is slated to become the center of a cultural complex flanked by residential towers in a SHoP Architects-designed plan to redevelop the factory. Creative Time board member, Jed Walentas, a principal at Two Trees (the

A Copenhagen duo adds contemporary furniture to a restored Finn Juhl interior at the United Nations. The renovated Trusteeship Council Chamber at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon spoke, as did the crown princess of Denmark, but at a grand opening for the renovated Trusteeship Council Chamber at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Thursday morning, all eyes were on the ceiling. Danish master Finn Juhl designed the meeting hall with Lego-like metal boxes hanging overhead. They conceal the chamber’s lighting and ventilation systems behind brightly colored panels that interrupt the spindles in

An art biennial in the United Arab Emirates inaugurates a set of new exhibition spaces and presents work by OFFICE, SANAA, Buro Ole Scheeren, and Studio Mumbai. The 11th Sharjah Biennial sprawls through more than a dozen venues in and around the emirate’s Heritage Area on the eastern bank of Sharjah Creek. (The Persian Gulf is visible in the background.) The art world loves a spectacle and rewards provocateurs. Sharjah bans the sale of alcohol, enforces strict blasphemy laws, and has a reputation as the most conservative of the United Arab Emirates. They make an unlikely couple, but the opening

An art biennial in the United Arab Emirates inaugurates a set of new exhibition spaces and presents work by OFFICE, SANAA, Buro Ole Scheeren, and Studio Mumbai. The 11th Sharjah Biennial sprawls through more than a dozen venues in and around the emirate’s Heritage Area on the eastern bank of Sharjah Creek. (The Persian Gulf is visible in the background.) The art world loves a spectacle and rewards provocateurs. Sharjah bans the sale of alcohol, enforces strict blasphemy laws, and has a reputation as the most conservative of the United Arab Emirates. They make an unlikely couple, but the opening

Installation view of Gaetano Pesce: L'Abbraccio at Fred Torres Collaborations. When I arrived at Gaetano Pesce’s first New York solo exhibition in 25 years, the designer had just stormed out. I was told that a reporter shooting a video had asked the maestro to say his name on camera, and Pesce, feeling he should require no such introduction, ended the interview abruptly. After making celebrated work for decades, perhaps you earn the right to leave your own opening, and the exhibition of more than 40 objects at Fred Torres Collaborations in Chelsea cherry picks from several periods in Pesce’s prolific

At the Storefront anniversary party: Honoree Steven Holl, director Eva Franch, event co-chair Linda Pollak, and board president Charles Renfro. New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture celebrated its 30th anniversary with a benefit and silent auction on Friday night. Vito Acconci, who designed Storefront's exhibition space and its jigsaw puzzle façade, was a no show, but director Eva Franch i Gilabert presided over the event in one of her appropriately architectural dresses. An event honoree (along with Yona Friedman and Mary Miss), Steven Holl exchanged some quick banter with Franch before he spoke to the crowd, remembering the Storefront's