Eliana Willis

New York’s American Museum of Natural History is unveiling a project billions of years in the making—the new film at the Hayden Planetarium narrated by Pedro Pascal that maps our sun’s place among the stars, not only today, but over the course of the history of the universe.
To bring this stunning view of our galaxy to life, the museum enlisted a team of astronomers, artists, educators, and experts in science visualization—plus a little bit of Hollywood star power (pun intended). The result is Encounters in the Milky Way, opening June 9, a film that is both educational and visually striking, transporting viewers across the cosmos.
“I want to call AMNH science Pixar,” Jackie Faherty, the museum’s senior scientist for astrophysics and senior education manager, said at the press preview for the film.
“This is the story of our sun and solar system, traveling through the Milky Way,” Vivian Trakinski, the museum’s director of science visualization, added. “Then we’re doing research to find the best data sets that can support this story. And we’re hiring artists from out in the world, artists that work on feature films and commercials, to come in and visualize the data.”

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No less than 20 academic institutions contributed to the project, which is sponsored by Van Cleef and Arpels. That includes the University of Surrey in the U.K.; NASA’s Space Telescope Science Institute, the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard and the Smithsonian; Technische Universität Berlin, Institute of Science and Technology Austria; and the European Space Agency.
To bring visitors on this otherworldly journey across time and space, the film employs a score by composer Robert Miller, a script by the museum’s Laura Moustakerski (read by Pascal with direction by museum trustee Shawn Levy, a filmmaker and executive producer of Stranger Things), and, of course, plenty of incredible visuals.
Watching the 30-minute film inside the Hayden Planetarium sphere is an awe-inspiring experience that spotlights the vastness of our universe, our planet incomprehensibly small amid a sea of darkness punctuated by stars that extends in every direction.
“It’s a combination of artistry and a foundation in science,” Carter Emmar, the museum’s director of astrovisualization, said. “It makes me emotional. Hopefully it makes you emotional too!”
The museum’s director of astrovisualization Carter Emmart made this hand-drawn sketch for the production for Encounters in the Milky Way. It shows our solar system’s entry to the “Local Bubble,” an area of the Milky Way galaxy cleared of gas and dust by supernova explosions. ©AMNH.
“This is a vast story,” he added.
As Encounters explains, we know more than ever about just how unimaginably long those distances between the stars are, thanks to the European Space Agency’s space observatory, Gaia. Launched in 2013 and powered down in March of this year, Gaia has observed the stars with unprecedented precision. The observatory’s mission has revolutionized astrometry, a branch of astronomy that measures the positions, distances, and movements of the stars and other celestial objects.
Before Gaia, astronomers had only measured the distances between 116,000 stars. Now, thanks to Gaia, we have mapped 1.7 billion of them, allowing us to create a map of the universe, and to better comprehend the place of the Milky Way, our solar system, and our planet in the skies.
“This is the map of your cosmos—this is humanity’s map,” Faherty said. “And the data is available for everybody. Look at where these stars are. Look at where they are going. You can make discoveries. So much science to be had.”
The opening of Encounters marks the 25th anniversary of the opening of the museum’s Rose Center for Earth and Space. The planetarium’s inaugural film, narrated by Tom Hanks, was updated in 2017. The other productions have been voiced by Harrison Ford in 2002, Robert Redford in 2006, Whoopi Goldberg in 2009, Neil deGrasse Tyson (the Hayden Planetarium’s director) in 2013, and Lupita Nyong’o in 2020.
The Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for Earth and Space, which opened in 2000. Photo: by Alvaro Keding, ©AMNH.
That makes Encounters the seventh space show created for the planetarium’s high-tech digital dome projection system. And, for the first time, the museum made a discovery during the production process, as it worked to render a detailed visualization of the Oort cloud, the far-flung field of comets and other icy bodies at the fringes of our Solar System, extending one-and-a-half light years from the sun.
The museum tapped David Nesvorný, a scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, to provide a simulation of the millions of particles in the Oort cloud, based on the data from scientific observations. But the rendering wasn’t what anyone expected: it showed a spiral-like formation in the Oort cloud, similar to the dramatic shapes that you can see in galaxies.
“No one has ever seen the Oort cloud structure like that before,” Faherty said.
While fine-tuning a simulation of the Oort cloud, a vast expanse of ice material left over from the birth of our Sun, the Encounters in the Milky Way production team noticed a very clear shape: a structure made of billions of comets and shaped like a spiral-armed galaxy, seen here in a scene from the final Space Show (curving, dusty S-shape behind the Sun). ©AMNH.
The team behind the film has published these findings in the Astrophysical Journal, hypothesizing that the spiral is shaped by the so-called galactic tide, the gravitational force of the larger Milky Way on our Solar System.
The discovery speaks to the power of the combined forces of science and art. When the museum works with artists and filmmakers to bring stories of science and the natural world to life, creatives can sometimes get carried away, imagining spectacular visuals that aren’t rooted in the real data. But here, those hard numbers made it possible to spot a truth about the Oort Cloud that had not yet occurred to even the most inventive artist.
“The math was all there. We just needed the visuals,” Faherty said.
In about 1.3 million years, the star system Gliese 710 is set to pass directly through our Oort Cloud, an event visualized in a dramatic scene in Encounters in the Milky Way. During its flyby, our systems will swap icy comets, flinging some out on new paths. ©AMNH.
Of course, your average museum goer won’t recognize the significance of that spiral. But there are other undeniably dramatic moments in the film, such as the rendering of the star Gliese 710 passing through the Oort Cloud some 1.3 million years from now, triggering firework-like explosions. Or the shot of our galactic “local bubble,” presented in a colorful infrared view.
“It looks like these beautiful paintings that are unfolding for you as these gas clouds are getting shock waved out with the blue, beautiful stars. And then we highlight some of the other ionized parts of the galaxy with some pink in there, too. Color-wise, it’s just gorgeous. Resolution wise, you’re catching all these shapes forming, coming together and then dissipating. You can think of that as pretty, but that’s also new stars being born right there,” Faherty said. “It’s a visually appealing scene, and then it’s really scientifically rich.”
This visualization shows the “local bubble,” a clearing within dense clouds of gas and dust that our solar system entered about 5 million years ago, around the time that early human ancestors were beginning to walk upright. ©AMNH.
And while the film uses the latest technological advances to render these galactic scenes in such gorgeous detail, Encounters is just the latest chapter in the museum’s long history of using art to help viewers get invested in and to understand complicated stories about science and our natural world. (That dates back to the museum’s first habitat dioramas in the early 1900s, transporting viewers across the world before there was internet, television, or color photography, and international travel was expensive and rare.)
“If this museum is testament to anything, it’s a testament to wonder,” Emmar said. “But the art is important, because art is the way to the soul. And that is the key and the testament to what this museum does. It’s not just the collections; it’s the presentation of it that really fires the imagination.”
Encounters in the Milky Way is on view at the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West, New York, New York, from June 9, 2025. More

By the 1960s, Charles and Ray Eames had chalked up decades’ worth of designs that revolutionized modern living. The husband-and-wife team reimagined the storage unit as a modular system in eye-popping color, reenvisioned the humble table, and, of course, created chairs upon chairs—in wire, plastic, molded plywood, and curved fiberglass. It was work that ranked them among the midcentury’s most sought-after industrial designers, ones who dared to fuse function with experimentation.
What’s lesser known, though, is the couple’s last 10 years of collaboration. From 1968 to 1978, they set out to refine their previous designs to meet new production realities and ergonomic demands. This refreshing of their oeuvre to align with contemporary tastes echoes the Eames ethos. “Most people aren’t trained to face the process of re-understanding a subject they already know,” Charles once reflected. “One must obtain not just literacy, but deep involvement and re-understanding.”
Installation view of “Past as Prologue” at the Transamerica Pyramid Center. Photo courtesy of the Eames Institute.
The Eameses’ final decade is now under the spotlight at “Past as Prologue: The Last Decade of Furniture Design by Ray and Charles Eames,” an exhibition opening on June 7 at the Transamerica Pyramid Center during San Francisco Design Week.
The show surfaces key objects from the collection of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity. On view are some of the Eameses’ most recognizable inventions—from their side chair and executive chair to their chess stool and chaise—as well as other rarely seen designs. They’re joined by models and materials that shed light on the couple’s design processes.
Installation view of “Past as Prologue” at the Transamerica Pyramid Center. Photo courtesy of the Eames Institute.
“As an often-overlooked era of my grandparents’ designs, it felt imperative to uncover some ephemera that isn’t always highlighted hence [our] choosing some of their lesser-known pieces,” Llisa Demetrios, the Institute’s chief curator and the Eameses’ granddaughter, said in a statement. “It was exhilarating bringing out pieces that were created within my lifetime.”
Charles and Ray Eames met in the 1940s at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where he was a teacher and she a student. While both had carved individual creative paths—Charles in architecture and Ray in abstract art—they found kindred spirits in each other. By 1950, their Los Angeles-based company, the Eames Office, had unveiled its earliest design, the molded Fiberglass Chair, on which it would make its name. (The couple would also go on to leave their mark on architecture, graphic design, and film.)
Shell of the Fiberglass Chair by Charles and Ray Eames. Photo courtesy of the Eames Institute.
The Eameses’ creations, however, never sat still. Changing tastes, new materials, and shifts in production methods drove them to revisit their designs, even decades on. The Fiberglass Chair, for one, was created at a time of postwar shortage—hence the choice of fiberglass over the designers’ initial proposal of a stamped metal shell. The material would eventually be supplanted by injection-molded plastics and polyurethane.
Similarly, as manufacturers Herman Miller and Vitra increasingly turned their focus to office markets, the Eameses adapted their home icons for use in professional environments by rethinking their durability, modularity, and ergonomics. Eames work chairs are now available in myriad shapes and sizes, from the soft-padded executive chair to simple task chair (yet another reimagining of the Fiberglass Chair, this time with a four-star base).
Installation view of “Past as Prologue” at the Transamerica Pyramid Center. Photo courtesy of the Eames Institute.
“Past as Prologue” marks the Eames Institute’s first public outing beyond the Eames Archives. The organization, which was formed to preserve and steward the couple’s legacy, has hosted a series of online exhibitions on the Eameses and most recently found itself a permanent home in Richmond, California.
“Past as Prologue” is on view at the Transamerica Pyramid Center, 600 Montgomery St, San Francisco, California, June 7–July 7. More

Who doesn’t love a little sweet treat?
An exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands shows there’s more to dessert than just a satisfying end to a meal. “Grand Dessert” serves up a feast of sweets and their social significance through a mix of historical art and artifacts, as well as contemporary painting, video, and sculpture.
The museum brought in a dessert expert, Janny van der Heijden—the host of the Great Dutch Bake Off and the author of dozens of cookbooks—to guest curate the exhibition alongside Suzanne Lambooy, its curator of applied arts.
“Food connects us,” Lambooy told me. “It’s also an inspiration to a lot of artists. There are so many stories related to food to be told”
She first pitched the show to the museum 10 years ago, convinced that it would be of art historical interest but also fun. Visitors don’t seem to mind the educational spin on the subject: the show has been such a hit that the museum extended it another six months, with over 250,000 visitors already.
Wayne Thiebaud’s Bakery Case !996) on display in “Grand Dessert” at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. Courtesy of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
It’s definitely not your typical museum show, although there is a classic Wayne Thiebaud painting of cakes in a bakery display case. The exhibition is broken up by different types of dessert, including pudding, chocolate, cake, and ice cream.
Specifically Dutch art historical nods range from an 18th-century painting on loan from the Mauritshuis by Willem van Mieris of someone ordering cookies from a grocer, to a Piet Mondrian, shown next to a marzipan reproduction of a cake designed to look like his gridded canvases. It was made by Dutch pastry chef Robèrt van Beckhoven based on a recipe from Caitlin Freeman’s Modern Art Desserts, written while she ran the cafe at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art—one of a number of cookbooks included in the show, if you’re hoping to recreate some of these delicacies for yourself.
Willem van Mieris, A Grocer’s Shop (1717). Collection of the Mauritshuis, The Hague.
Other works are just pure fun, like the delectable looking purses from Dutch accessory designer Rommy Kuperus, founder of one-woman design brand RommyDeBommy. The artist sculpts each bag with lightweight clay, using acrylic paint to create mouthwateringly realistic copies of everything from cherry pie to crème brûlée.
“They’re all handmade by her,” Lambooy said. “And you can actually see that there is a zipper. I mean, it’s not that practical for every day, but you can use them!”
The show also includes specific nods to the history of the Netherlands, and the role that sugar played in trade by the Dutch West India Company and colonization.
RommyDeBommy, Charlotte Russe bag. Courtesy of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
In a show-stopping work, Natasja Sadi has filled a pair of 17th-century Delftware tulipières from the museum’s collection with delicate, hyperrealistic flowers hand-molded from sugar paste. The towering, pyramid-shaped, blue-and-white vases have many openings for displaying individual blooms, and would have been inspired by Chinese porcelain, brought to the nation by the Dutch East India Company.
Sadi was born in Suriname, a former Dutch colony, and now lives in Amsterdam. The work is responding to her African heritage, and the dark history of slavery that entails.
The artist is also tapping into a long history of sugar as a sculpting material, as evidenced by two antique books with illustrated instructions for making your own sugar flowers.
Natasja Sadi’s sugar flowers in Delfware tulipieres on display in “Grand Dessert” at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. Photo: courtesy of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
“In Europe, most castles would have pastry chefs who would make sugar sculptures for the tables,” Lambooy added. A later section of the show is dedicated to the extravagance of royal desserts, with banquet tables featuring over 100 dishes, not counting purely decorative sugar work.
Those confections, and Sadi’s delicate florals—some of which Lambooy hopes will join the Kunstmuseum collection—weren’t meant to be eaten. But the show highlights the artistic qualities of other desserts destined to be devoured.
There’s an incredible display of dessert molds made from ceramic, glazed earthenware, pressed glass, or metal that would have been used to make jellies and pudding.
“They are so sculptural, almost architectural,” Lambooy said.
“Grand Desserts.” Courtesy of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
There are some from van der Heijden’s own kitchen, a collection of copper ones from Twickel Castle in Delden, the Netherlands, and even a pair of 18th-century porcelain examples from China. But the centerpiece is a massive collection of 20th-century ceramic molds amassed by the late Agnes Jansen-van Daalen, a woman from The Hague so passionate about the form that she helped found a club called the Kring van Puddingvorm Verzamelaars, or Circle of Pudding Mould Collectors.
Arrayed on a tiered, hot pink display case in the center of the gallery, those molds are accompanied by magnetic sand models of a finished pudding, allowing viewers to get a sense of what kind of marvelous-looking desserts they can create, such a Easter bunny or a swaddled infant.
Other works in the room include a beautiful painting of a mint green pudding by Dutch still life painter Arnout van Albada, and colorful glass jelly sculptures by Ayaka Hayashi.
Ayaka Hayashi, Garden of Sweets (2024). On loan from the artist. Courtesy of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
But perhaps the most visually satisfying part of the jelly gallery is the delightfully surreal video Adventures in Jelly, featuring an array of wobbling, jiggling jellies bouncing around. They look altogether too fantastic to be real—but the piece features real desserts Caroline Tremlett made using her collection of antique jelly molds, after taking a class with food historian Ivan Day.
For Lambooy, it was important that the exhibition celebrate women’s historic role in making desserts, and the artistry that goes into so many of these confections.
“There’s also a female empowerment movement with desserts, and we are giving it a place in the museum,” she said. “It’s the applied arts of the home.”
Historic artifacts related to dessert on view—which date from 1600 to the present day—include a 19th-century silver service with every possible utensil, such as special pastry forks, petit fours servers, and dedicated bun tongs. A display of historic cake stands are used to display adorable crocheted treats by Kate Jenkins, a British textile artist who specializes in food art.
A crochet dessert by Kate Jenkins. Courtesy of the artist.
And there’s plenty of work that looks good enough to eat, such as Shayna Leib’s glass and porcelain sculptures “Pâtisserie: French Series and American Series” (2016–17) inspired by the different styles of desserts in both countries—and the artist’s craving for sweets she had to give up due to allergies.
The exhibition also explores the international histories of some individual desserts, like baklava, variations of which can be found in Turkey, Syria, and Egypt.
And then there’s the classic Chinese fortune cookie, likely invented in Japan and popularized in the U.S. The crisp cookie is represented here by larger-than-life ceramic sculptures by Rotterdam based artist Benjamin Li, who draws inspiration from his family’s experience moving to the Netherlands and working in Chinese-Indonesian restaurants.
Illustration from The Book of Patisserie (1873), Jules Gouffé. Collection of the University of Amsterdam.
It’s an exhibition as widely varied as dessert itself, its range of different dishes telling all manner of stories, about race and class, power and responsibility. Dessert is more than just delicious—it’s a force throughout history.
“That’s the surprising effect of the exhibition,” Lambooy said. “There’s so much to learn, and so much to see.” And, arguably, so much to eat.
“Grand Dessert: The History of the Dessert” is on view at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Stadhouderslaan 41, 2517 HV The Haag, Netherlands, November 23, 2024–October 26, 2025. More

In November last year, two print curators from the Rijksmuseum were perusing the showrooms of an auction house in Haarlem, northwest Netherlands, when something unexpected caught their eye: a 19th-century condom with an erotic print stretched across its parchment-colored surface.
Huigen Leeflang and Joyce Zelen had missed the listing in the catalogue and were intrigued, not only because it represented a gap in the Amsterdam museum’s collection, but also because Zelen’s doctoral work had focused on erotica. First though, they needed permission from the bosses in Amsterdam. They got it, acquiring the 1830s condom for €1,000 ($1,140), something of a steal, the curators believe. There were no other bidders.
The 200-year-old condom is now the centerpiece of “Safe Sex?” a small exhibition at the Rijksmuseum that explores 19th-century sex work and sexual health predominately through Dutch and French prints. In the interim between acquisition and display, the curators catalogued the condom (there was previously no “condom” classifier in the database) and examined it extensively under UV light (it has never been used). Their conclusion? The condom was a souvenir from an upmarket French brothel.
The condom is the centerpiece of a new exhibition “Safe Sex?” Photo: courtesy the Rijksmuseum.
The proof rests in the printed etching that presents a half-naked nun seated beside three variously endowed clergymen of differing denominations. The caption reads, “Voilà, mon choix” (“there, that’s my choice”). It’s something of a three-way joke: first on celibacy in the clergy, second on the various sects of the church, and third in referencing the judgement of Paris in which the Trojan prince was forced to decide who was most beautiful among the goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena. It’s these details that has led curators to believe the condom was designed with a wealthy and well-read audience in mind.
The use of protective sheaths can be traced as far back as the ancient Egyptians; from the late 15th century on, they were predominantly made from linen, leather, or animal bladders, materials that were neither particularly comfortable nor safe. The Rijksmuseum’s condom is likely made from sheep’s appendix (though further testing is needed), and is of a kind that was available under the counter at brothels or barber shops until the introduction of vulcanized rubber condoms following its invention in the late 1830s.
The 1830s condom with a print is one of only a handful of known examples. Photo: courtesy Rijksmuseum.
To create the image, the appendix would have been laid out flat and pressed into an inked copper plate etching.
Despite its potential benefits, the use of condoms was strongly disapproved of in society, particularly by the church. “Like today there were two sides to sexuality in the 19th century,” a spokesperson for the Rijksmuseum said over email. “The pleasure on one side and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases on the other side. So this object embodies both the lighter and darker sides of sexual health, in an era when the quest for sensual pleasure was fraught with fears of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, especially syphilis.”
The condom is one of only a handful of such objects from the 19th century. In 2011, a condom from the same era sold for €12,000 (about $13,650) at the French auction house Drouot and in 2019 a pig bladder condom from 1830 sold for €2,000 ($2,275).
“Safe Sex?” is on view at the Rijksmuseum, Museumstraat 1, 1071 XX Amsterdam, Netherlands, through the end of November. More

If Swiss-born textile artist Silvia Heyden had had her way, she would have been a violin maker. Born in Basel in 1927, she was an avid violinist even as a child. While still a girl, she decided she wanted to learn to make the object that brought such beauty into her life, but she was born too soon for that life course.
“Her dad took her around to a few violin makers. They said, ‘Oh, this is nothing for a girl or a woman. It’s too rough on your hands.’ She was disappointed, but she accepted it,” said her son, Daniel Heyden, during a recent conversation.
Instead, Heyden became a tapestry weaver, a path nearly as difficult, and which her teacher Elsi Giauque told her it would “take a lifetime” to learn. For over half a century, Heyden did just that, devoting herself to the loom and creating close to 800 innovative and rhythmic tapestries until soon before her death in 2015. From Switzerland to Durham, North Carolina, where she moved with her family in 1966 (her husband was hired as a professor at Duke), Heyden found the manipulating of tensile threads an experience akin to the manipulating of strings on a violin. She created unexpectedly modern tapestries inspired by the movements of the natural world and music—but which never received widespread acclaim in her lifetime.
Courtesy of the Heyden Estate and Charles Moffett Gallery.
Now, a new exhibition “Improvisational Nature: The Weavings and Drawings of Silvia Heyden” at Charles Moffett (through June 7) is shining a light on Heyden’s overlooked oeuvre, marking both the first New York solo exhibition for the late artist, and the first exhibition of the artist’s tapestries and drawings in the U.S. since 1972.
The exhibition, which was put together in close collaboration with the artist’s son and daughter, is a joyful introduction to a vibrant, hitherto unknown creative talent. Heyden, over her decades of experimenting, discovered a singular approach to weaving, working in a spirit of improvisation that embraced learning through sensation. In some ways, the works are reminiscent of jazz music.
“Silvia’s work possesses such a palpable energy. Her formidable skill and boldness at the loom—the bends, shifts, and folds in her lines, the vibrant and surprising relationships between her colors—enliven her tapestries with an innate movement, force, and dynamism,” said Charles Moffett, in an interview.
Silvia Heyden, Chaconne I (1992). Photo: Daniel Greer. Courtesy Charles Moffett.
And while Heyden spent her career working outside of the global art centers, she nevertheless found inspiration and creative dialogue within the work of fellow women textile artists, including Olga de Amaral (with whom she traded a work), Anni Albers, and Gunta Stölzl, whom she met in 1972.
Heyden’s journey as an artist began as a student at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich in the late 1940s and early 1950s. There she fell under the tutelage of Bauhaus master Johannes Itten and the pioneering textile artist Elsi Giauque, who had been a student of Sophie Tauber-Arp. Here, Heyden learned about color theory, experimental philosophy, materiality, and geometry—all of which would form her nascent approach to tapestry. The school, however, was not entirely encouraging, regarding tapestry as a decorative relic of centuries past/ while looms were present at the school, they were covered in cobwebs, according to Heyden’s accounts.
“Ironically, the founders of the Bauhaus (including Itten) had very little appreciation for tapestry weaving because they only thought of the representational tapestries depicting court scenes and battles. The weavers of those tapestries had to imitate paintings, thereby losing the woven quality…” wrote Heyden in a 2009 letter. “This misunderstanding about weaving since the Renaissance meant that the Bauhaus principles of integrating art and craft, of letting how things are made help determine how they appear, of experimenting and improvising, were never really fully applied to weaving.”
Installation view “Improvisational Nature: The Weavings and Drawings of Silvia Heyden,” 2025. Courtesy of Charles Moffett.
Heyden remained resolute as she graduated in 1952, having been moved by a visit to the medieval tapestries at the Museum of History in Basel.  She saw an expressive potential for tapestry that was yet untapped.  While artists in the Renaissance had made their tapestries working against cartoons, full-scale drawings that served as the blueprint that would determine their forms, previous generations and cultures embraced other strategies. In the Medieval era, the work was far more intuitive and less predetermined.
Heyden embraced this organic spontaneity. Heyden’s drawings, included in the exhibition, underscore her appreciation for the natural world, be it running water or the movement of trees in the breeze. In Durham, living near the Eno River, she often walked the wooded grounds, making sketches. While sometimes these drawings bear strong resemblances to her finished tapestries, other times they are quite different.
Silvia Heyden, Tulips (2011). Photo: Andy Romer. Courtesy Charles Moffett.
Creating a sense of movement in the often flattened medium of tapestry was one of Heyden’s central concerns. In the early 1990s, she had a critical breakthrough at the loom, coming by chance on what she would call feathered weaving, itself a variation on Native American wedge weaving. In a process that involves weaving weft threads diagonally across the warp threads, the tapestry gains a dimensionality and scalloped edges when removed from the loom.
“She wrote a lot about the movement and the rhythm,” her son recalled. “To make a composition dynamic and hold the viewer’s attention, movement could lead the viewer through the work.”  In the gallery, many of Heyden’s tapestries ripple, sculpturally, against the walls in crests. These tensions give the work a sense of momentum. In Breaking Wave (2002), the pull of the threads, like a riptide, moves from left to right, while in Tulips (2011), energy builds upward, echoing the growth of the flowers. “The feather weave is not something you can possibly preconceive, and that was what she was after,” Heyden added.
Silvia Heyden, tbt (c.a. 1999). Photo: Daniel Greer. Courtesy Charles Moffett.
She was not wholly unknown in her lifetime,  though she never had ambitions toward fame. In 1972, Heyden had her first major exhibition at the Duke University Museum of Art. She exhibited mostly in the U.S. and particularly in North Carolina, but her works were also shown in Switzerland and Germany. In 1994, the Textile Museum of St. Gallen, Switzerland, presented the most significant exhibition of her work to date. She was not one for self-promotion, however.
“The last thing she wanted to do was deal with money or marketing or publicity. It was not her thing,” said her son. “She wanted to be left in peace, which was ultimately why we lived in North Carolina, because she thought that it was a place where it would be nice and quiet. She said that North Carolina had been her cocoon.”
Silvia Heyden, Chaconne I (1992). Photo: Daniel Greer. Courtesy Charles Moffett.
In some ways, her underexposure may have liberated her creatively, however. “While in some ways, I think the fact that she spent most of her life working outside the prevailing European and American developments in modern tapestry that were shaping the field in the 20th century meant that her work was vastly under-appreciated during her lifetime, I also believe those conditions gave her the freedom, space, and time to hone her approach,” said Moffett.
Rightly, Moffett notes that her works feel startlingly contemporary, “We are already thinking about how we can present her work alongside that of artists of different generations,” he said. “Her work feels very of the moment. It feels like it could’ve newly left the studio when in fact we have work at the gallery that spans roughly forty years of her work at the loom.”
For her family, they hope the exhibition brings Heyden some of the very attention she eschewed in her lifetime. “She was left out to some extent—and happily from her perspective, but something has been missing,” said her son, “I’ve spent a lot of time with her work. There are a lot of artists out there, but I think her work is right up there with the rest of them. I just wonder, why haven’t people seen this work?” More

I was walking through an ancient wood when the symphony of birdsong around me was interrupted by a haunting, melodic voice singing an old English folk tune—seemingly coming from a tree. Another voice, several yards away, soon joined it, and yet another across the path shortly after that. One more completed the quartet, and the soft swaying of the towering conifer canopy above me provided light percussion as well as dance instruction.
Could this be some sort of spell? No, it was Scottish artist Susan Philipsz’s 2015 “sound sculpture,” As Many As Will, derived from a series of Elizabethan country dance songs. The work is installed on the grounds of the Goodwood Art Foundation, a sprawling new contemporary art destination in the Sussex countryside, opening to the public on May 31. While this art park may not be bewitched, I nevertheless found myself enchanted by it for its seamless blending of art and nature.
The inaugural season opens with a headlining presentation of works by acclaimed YBA sculptor Rachel Whiteread, including a monumental new staircase sculpture, Down and Up, set into an open field, its stairs connecting both earth and sky. New works by Veronica Ryan and Rose Wylie also dot the 70-acre landscape, as do works by Isamu Noguchi. Hélio Oiticica’s Magic Square #3 (1977–79) is currently under construction and will be unveiled later this summer; it will mark the first outdoor sculpture by the late Brazilian Neo-concrete artist in Europe.
Isamu Noguchi, Octetra (three-element-stack), 1968–2021, at Goodwood Art Foundation. Photo: Lucy Dawkins. Courtesy of Goodwood Art Foundation.
Goodwood is better known for its sporting events like the Festival of Speed, a motorsports fête held every July, and Glorious Goodwood, an annual multi-day horse-racing event that dates to 1802, now officially called the Qatar Goodwood Festival. The grounds belong to Charles Gordon-Lennox, the 11th Duke of Richmond, whose family has held the 11,000-acre estate in West Sussex since the 17th century. The first duke—son of King Charles II and his allegedly “favorite” mistress, Louise de Keroualle—purchased what was then a hunting lodge in order to partake in the Charlton Hunt, reportedly the oldest fox hunt in England. Subsequent dukes added palatial kennels and stables (as well as more wings to the house). Its cricket pitch is one of the oldest in England, with reports of the game being played there dating back to 1702.
“We’re very sporty,” Gordon-Lennox told me over an Earl Grey (his) and a flat white (mine) while we sat on the terrace of 24, the art foundation’s new onsite café designed by Studio Downie Architects. He added that he’s keen to balance that perception with the launch of the sculpture park.
Goodwood Estate.
As is the case with most dukes, Gordon-Lennox already has quite the historical art collection. Among the more than 300 works are a series of Canalettos that were commissioned by his ancestor, the second Duke of Richmond, in 1747. There is also a rich collection of sporting paintings by George Stubbs, many of which depict the estate—unsurprising given that his family was one of the artist’s biggest patrons. Stubbs even lived on the estate as an artist-in-residence between 1759–60. Portraits on view bear the signatures of major artists like Joshua Reynolds and Anthony van Dyck. Gordon-Lennox himself is a photographer and, within the last decade or so, a collector of Post-War and Abstract Expressionist photography, “especially camera-less photography,” he said.
Goodwood’s pivot to contemporary art could be positioned as a brand extension strategy, elevating Goodwood’s cultural capital in line with heritage luxury branding—think LVMH’s Fondation Louis Vuitton or Château La Coste. Indeed, his grace has grown Goodwood’s luxury portfolio substantially since taking on the estate’s management in 1994. He now boasts nearly 20 businesses on his property, including Rolls Royce, which established its headquarters there in 2003. Also among the Goodwood portfolio is a 91-room hotel, health club, two golf courses, organic farm, and the impeccably named Goodwoof dog show. The group employs over 550 people and attracts 800,000 visitors to the estate each year. In 2023, its turnover was £135.9 million (around $183 million), according to the Financial Times. 
The Duke of Richmond with artist Rachel Whiteread, in front of her new work Down and Up (2025). Photo: Dave Dodge/PA Media Assignments.
Gordon-Lennox sees the art foundation as more of a continuation of a mission than a business proposition. Previously, the site was leased to art collectors Wilfred and Jeannette Cass, who originally started a sculpture park there, which closed in 2020. “There’s been a bit of a gap,” his grace said, “but it was important to me that contemporary art remained a part of what’s here.” Two indoor gallery spaces, already in existence thanks to the Cass Sculpture Foundation, have been revamped by Studio Downie. The main gallery features sculptures and photographs by Whiteread. In the Pigott Gallery, set back into the woods, Amie Siegel’s film Bloodlines (2022) plays on loop; it follows the handling and movement of Stubbs paintings from different stately homes around the U.K., including Goodwood.
The curatorial program is run by Ann Gallagher, most recently the director of collections, British Art at Tate. She explained that the foundation will focus on one solo presentation per year, which will be centered in the main gallery and extend out into the landscape, “to allow artists to show works in different mediums and to encourage different experiences with their work.” She added that she hopes to get the program to a stage where it can commission new, permanent works and offer residencies. A later phase of the project will also include another gallery, a performance space, and an education center.
The Gallery at Goodwood Art Foundation 2025. Photo: Jonathan James Wilson. Courtesy of Goodwood Art Foundation.
For the launch of the art park, Goodwood has also commissioned a new performance by musician and broadcaster Nabihah Iqbal, curated by Helen Nisbet, who was just tapped as the new director of the Glasgow International. Both Iqbal and Nisbet will continue to work with the foundation to develop a performance and experience program.
Gordon-Lennox wants to ensure that as many people as possible are able to enjoy Goodwood. “Unlike other major outdoor art destinations in the U.K., like Jupiter Artland [in Scotland] and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, we’re accessible by train from London for day trips,” he explained.  Adult tickets are priced at £15 per person, but “green” discounts are available if you arrive by bike or foot. An ambitious learning program will partner with local schools to provide arts education, something sorely lacking from British state school curricula. Visit and transport costs will be covered by the foundation for schools that don’t have the resources to pay.
Bluebells at Goodwood Art Foundation. Photo: Lucy Dawkins. Courtesy of Goodwood Art Foundation.
Environmentalism and sustainability are central to Goodwood, Gordon-Lennox said. To that end, the art foundation has expanded the previously used outdoor sculpture area by nearly two thirds, funded by a major donation from Stephen Scharzman, the CEO of the U.S.-based investment firm Blackrock. The renowned horticulturist and landscape designer Dan Pearson has augmented the site with ever-changing naturalistic, mostly native plantings intended to highlight 24 seasonal moments—thus the numeric name of the café, which features on its menu produce either foraged from the landscape or produced on Goodwood’s farm. 
“When you finish planting something, that’s only the beginning,” Pearson said as we walked the grounds on a damp Thursday morning. The rain had been welcome, given the unusually dry spring England has experienced this year. Purple foxgloves, euphorbias, and geraniums dotted the sloping entryway—what was previously a parking lot. These join naturally growing English bluebells elsewhere in the wood, which had just finished blooming when I visited. 
Rose Wylie, Pineapple (2021) at Goodwood Art Foundation. Photo: Toby Adamson. Courtesy of Goodwood Art Foundation.
A second planned phase of additions will encompass more wildflower meadows, a lake just past where Philipsz’s sound work is installed, and possibly a biodiversity area going towards the sea—which is visible on clear days, along with the Isle of Wight. 
More than 1,000 trees have also been planted. Among these is a grove of cherry trees, also just freshly out of bloom and in bright green leaf. These lead to a small chalk quarry, on the opposite side, where Wylie’s new work, Pale-Pink Pineapple/Bomb presides, set back against the curve of the quarry’s side. A single cherry tree is adjacent to it.
“Nature, rather than sign posts, acts as a guide through the park,” Pearson explained, meaning the course of your visit could be shaped differently depending on what time of year you visit and what’s in bloom. 
And it’s true: you don’t necessarily go looking for the artworks at Goodwood, instead you discover them while looking at other things. Much like Philipsz’s voice in the trees, it’s like the sculptures and the soil are sharing a quiet conversation that you just happen to overhear—so you move closer to hear better. That small thrill—that’s where the magic is. More

Ever found yourself at Artechouse thinking, “This could use a killer soundtrack?” Good news for you: the immersive venue has teamed up with storied music publication Rolling Stone for an outing that brings the live experience to, well, life.
Titled “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience,” the showcase transforms the magazine’s photography archive into a 270-degree deep dive into rock history. There are more than 1,000 images, 200 videos, and 1,300 Rolling Stone covers. There’s a soundtrack of classics. You’ll encounter some 300 musicians—from Patti Smith and the Sex Pistols to Snoop Dogg and Radiohead. It’s like being in a mosh pit, we’re promised.
Installation view of “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” at Artechouse. Photo: ATH Studio.
“This is just another way to reach out to fans—whoever they’re fans of, no matter how old they are—to bring them into the experience of music,” Joe Levy, music director of “Amplified” and former music editor of Rolling Stone, told me at the preview. “And I think that’s what the magazine did.”
The 50-minute journey is split into distinct chapters. “Backstage” and “The Band,” which open the experience, transport viewers into the concert venue for a glimpse into how the likes of David Bowie and Lizzo prepare to take the stage. “Fans” explores the adulation that greets artists (Beatlemania is aptly spotlit), while “Studio” and “The Message” unpack songwriting processes. There are also sections for “Cars,” an enduring motif in songs, and “Hair,” key to the appeal of such musicians as Elvis Presley and Frank Zappa.
Installation view of “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” at Artechouse. Photo: ATH Studio.
Between needle drops—the Who’s “My Generation” and Blondie’s “One Way or Another” among them—is narration by Kevin Bacon, actor and member of the Bacon Brothers. “It’s a voice you know,” said Levy. “It’s a rasp that’s pure rock ‘n’ roll.”
When it came to crafting “Amplified,” the creative team had more than enough to work with. Rolling Stone magazine, in publication for nearly six decades, has been present for some of popular culture’s most significant moments  (at times writing itself into rock history). Along the way, it has amassed a substantive trove of archival photographs—numbering upwards of 60,000 images—created by names including Lynn Goldsmith, Bob Gruen, Janette Beckman, Mark Seliger, Danny Clinch, Anton Corbijn, and Neil Preston.
IDLES in concert, from “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” at Artechouse. Photo: Sacha Lecca.
Led by Jodi Peckman, the experience’s executive producer and former creative director of Rolling Stone, the photo research and editing process took about two years, according to Levy. Whittling down the number of images was a months-long endeavor, he explained, as was “putting them on a screen and seeing how they play in the room.” In this, rock photography proved itself a versatile format.
“Music imagery is about experiences,” said Peckman in a statement. “It’s about the unbridled joy of concerts and our connection to our favorite artists.”
Installation view of “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” at Artechouse. Photo: ATH Studio.
“To be able to deliver these photos 40 feet high, bigger than the actual event, is to really communicate the power of the photograph and put you in that moment,” Levy said. “If you have them in a magazine, if you have them on your computer, they’re powerful. But the difference between having them on your phone in the palm of your hand and having it surround you is indescribable.”
Such an immersive showcase, too, is not that alien to the rock ‘n’ roll experience. Levy pointed out the psychedelic light shows of the 1960s—lava-lamp art that accompanied the concerts of West Coast bands such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Starship. Just as transportive were Andy Warhol’s traveling multimedia extravaganzas, known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which combined film, performance art, and the sounds of the Velvet Underground. “Popular music,” Levy noted, “has grown hand in hand with technology.”
Installation view of “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” at Artechouse. Photo: ATH Studio.
And as with those other developments in popular music, Rolling Stone is not sitting this one out.
“The magazine, in its genius, recognized that rock ‘n’ roll was more than just music—it was also culture, politics, style, all of these things,” he said. “I like to think that the show delivers all of that. Everything that the magazine stands for and wants to communicate about music, you can find here in the show and the story that we’re telling.”
“Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” is on view at Artechouse, 439 W 15th St, New York, and 600 W. 6th Street, Houston, Texas. More