Eliana Willis

Isabelle Brourman was a little-known fine artist until she sketched her way into stardom at the Depp-Heard trial. Now, her vivid depictions of Donald Trump are redefining the art of legal drama and have earned her a solo show at New York’s Will Shott Gallery.
“I’m on so much adrenaline,” Brourman said, describing to me how she instinctively chose to use a piece of red paper she had with her to sketch the face of the returning president amid closing arguments in his criminal “hush money” trial for payments he made to Stormy Daniels. “A lot of [the work was made] in the middle of an adrenaline moment so it was sort of just my intuition, my faith that things were going to work out.”
Brourman’s solo show at Will Shott features her courtroom sketches of the Trump trial during his New York court battles last year. The exhibition opened with bipartisan political fanfare the night before he was to be sentenced in his criminal trial and marks the artist’s second outing after she debuted her Depp-Heard work at Murmurs Gallery in Los Angeles in 2023.
Isabelle Brourman, Grossed Up, Hush Money Trial (2024). Photo courtesy of Will Shott Gallery
While political stars packed Shott’s Chinatown gallery, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block the sentencing from occurring. Ultimately, Trump was sentenced to an unconditional discharge. “It’s been like that, so I haven’t really come down from the adrenaline,” Brourman said.
“There’s a lot of genius in the work,” Trump has said of Brourman’s art. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has separately taken legal actions against Trump’s family business, called Brourman an “incredible artist” whose work captures “subtle emotions to major revelations.”
Isabelle Brourman, Red, Hu$h Money Trial (2024). Photo courtesy of Will Shott Gallery
Brourman, 31, sat down for an interview fresh off a trip to Washington, D.C., to sketch the Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth — Trump’s pick to serve as the Secretary of Defense in his second cabinet.
“It was like my first day at school because I utilized my congressional pass for the first time for Rolling Stone on this political project and there’s not really a space for me,” she said of her time at Hegseth’s hearing. “I was being told 1,000 different things and shuttling back-and-forth trying to figure out what I could do. Eventually, I just settled for sitting with the public.”
Her rise in the art world has earned her glowing features in Rolling Stone and the New York Times, which documented her high-octane lifestyle since deciding nearly three years ago to drive down to Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia to see the former married couple Johnny Depp and Amber Heard taking each other on in court over mutual allegations of domestic violence.
“I read an article that said, ‘Meet the people waiting in line to enter the trial’ which I forgot that that was an aspect of the justice system,” she said. “So, I drove down there, and it was just so fucking interesting.”
A group of students listen as artist Isabelle Brourman discusses her court sketches of Donald Trump. Photo by Adam Schrader
Brourman, who received her master’s degree in fine art drawing and painting from the Pratt Institute, felt her career solidify during the Depp-Heard trial in Virginia, driven by adrenaline and positive feedback. Inspired by Bill Hennessy, who covered significant events like President Clinton’s impeachment and the Guantanamo Bay trials, she embraced the life of a court sketch artist.
As she stepped further from her comfort zone to document the trial, she received more recognition from the public, reinforcing her nerves amid the high-stress environment.
“There’s always going to be the nerves of drawing strangers, who are being watched and who might be intimidating, and people who you might possibly in the past have looked up to and having them literally look over your shoulder at your work,” she said. “That feeling is different than confidence. I am still humble, and I still get nervous. I just know the lemonade of all that is that I can filter it through the artwork and create something honest.”
Isabelle Brourman, I Want to See It, The People of New York v. Donald Trump, Civil Fraud Trial (2023). Photo courtesy of Will Shott Gallery
For certain witnesses, Brourman has admitted to a little preparation—such as using a certain paper she bought from a handmade paper mill in Williamsburg for Ivanka Trump. The paper has pearl dust crush adding pearl and violet tones. Such preparation, including Brourman’s organizational skills in planning the logistics of her courtroom visits, underscores her meticulous approach, blending artistry with strategy to document history.
“It takes more organization skills than I would like. I’m becoming a different person. Maybe now I am just a logistics person,” Brourman said. “It’s tough. Every like legal space I go into, the traditions are really in place. It’s hard for me to get my seat.”
Addressing her feelings amid her proximity to power, Brourman said there are some instances that feel “exciting” while other times leave her telling herself “that was too much” as she drives away from the courthouse.
Installation view of Isabelle Brourman’s works at Will Shott Gallery in Manhattan. Photo courtesy of Will Shott Gallery
“This is Stormy on the cross exam when they asked her if she hated the president,” Brourman beamed at one of her drawings. “You want to talk about confidence, she was ready to talk, and she dished everything until somebody stopped her.”
When I interviewed Brourman at the gallery, a classroom of students appeared to witness the historic show and peppered the artist with questions about her practice. Brourman took to it like an expert witness on the stand. Shott whispered that his phone has been ringing with New York area teachers seeking to visit his gallery to see the work.
Now, Brourman is preparing to cover Luigi Mangione’s trial, following his arrest after a multi-state manhunt for allegedly killing a health insurance executive in broad daylight on a New York street. Public support frames his actions as vigilantism amid widespread anger at the U.S. healthcare system.
She called her work “a collaboration with the world” and said there isn’t too much she can prepare besides arranging access to courtrooms she visits and other political theaters. As the new Trump presidency enters into play, Brourman hit at the unpredictability of it all.
Isabelle Brourman, Portrait of New York Attorney General Letitia James on Day 1, The People of New York v. Donald Trump, Civil Fraud Trial (2023). Photo courtesy of Will Shott Gallery
“We are in the ‘concepts of a plan’ era, and I have concepts of a plan,” she said. “I have Mangione lined up to do and I’m painting the inauguration so I’m going to follow this thing through.”
Brourman unwinds by taking long walks on weekends and avoiding her phone, which her friends and family understand. “I just wanted to relax and be alone,” she said. After Trump’s civil trial, she took a trip to Mexico and spent two weeks on a boat with her family.
Among the important details in Brourman’s works that show the urgency under which they are made are quotes and names from the trials scrawled on the pages and sometimes misspelled. But not all courtroom moments are thrilling.
Brourman took time to admire fashionably dressed court stenographers in at least one of her works, and she mentioned that a witness during Trump’s civil trial was so dull discussing financial matters that she began depicting him in a cubist style.
“I was so bored I had to abstract myself,” she said. “I had to abstract him.”
“Exhibit 1: Paper Trail” is on view at Will Shott Gallery, 17 Pike Street, New York, through February 23. More

In 1942, a 13-year-old Anne Frank and her family entered a cramped space in the rear of an office building in Amsterdam. It was to be their home for the next few years as they hid from Nazi persecution. While there, Frank began a diary in which she avidly documented life in the Achterhuis, or Secret Annex—its rhythms and tensions, but also her dreams and passions that reached far beyond her confined circumstances. “I see the eight of us in the Annex,” she reflected, “as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds.”
Today, the Annex that harbored the Frank clan and four other Jews, including the Van Pels family, during World War II is preserved by the Anne Frank House. But for the first time, the nonprofit organization is bringing a full-scale replica of the hidden space outside of the Netherlands, as part of its remit to foster global understanding of the Holocaust.
The bookcase that hid the entrance of the Secret Annex, in the Anne Frank House. Photo: Cris Toala Olivares / © Anne Frank House.
The installation anchors “Anne Frank The Exhibition,” which opens today at the Center for Jewish History in New York. In it, visitors will be immersed in a faithful reproduction of the cloistered room, complete with artifacts and faded furnishings—from the movie star clippings Anne tacked to her wall to the pet carrier that housed the Van Pels’s cat.
2020 reconstruction of the Anne Frank room in the Secret Annex. Photo courtesy of the Anne Frank House.
“Through this exhibition, the Anne Frank House offers insights into how this could have happened and what it means for us today,” said Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House, in a statement. “The exhibition provides perspectives, geared toward younger generations, that are certain to deepen our collective understanding of Anne Frank and hopefully provide a better understanding of ourselves.”
Accompanying the recreated Annex are galleries that unfold the story of the Frank family through animation, photographs, videos, and more than 100 artifacts from the Anne Frank House’s collection, some traveling to the U.S. for the first time. Included here are Frank’s first photo album and handwritten verses, the family’s Torah, furniture, and surviving letters. Coloring in the political climate are images and films that detail the Nazi occupation.
Anne Frank’s poetry album. Photo: Ray van der Bas. © Anne Frank House.
The show doesn’t flinch in recounting Anne Frank’s fate. The Annex occupants were arrested in August 1944 and forcibly deported to concentration camps. Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her father, Otto, was the only family member to survive the Holocaust and worked to publish his daughter’s diary—a journey chronicled in the exhibition.
Today, The Diary of a Young Girl (also known as The Diary of Anne Frank), first published in 1947, is available in more than 75 languages and remains a searing document of the horrors of the Holocaust, as experienced by a teenager with an unflagging spirit. A replica of the original journal is featured in the Annex installation.
Installation view of “Anne Frank The Exhibition” at the Center for Jewish History in New York. Photo: Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images.
The exhibition arrives at a time when Holocaust misrepresentation and distortion—and outright denial—remains shockingly widespread.
In a first-of-its-kind survey, the Claims Conference, a nonprofit that supports Holocaust survivors, laid bare startling gaps in knowledge about the Nazi genocide across eight countries. While most respondents reflected a concern that the Holocaust could happen again, the Eight-Country Index of Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness found that some were unaware of basic facts about the atrocities.
One in five French adults had not heard or weren’t sure that they had heard about the Holocaust prior to the survey, while 48 percent of American respondents could not name a single concentration camp. In Romania, 53 percent of participants believe that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust—6 million, including 1.5 million children—is “greatly exaggerated.” American and Hungarian respondents were also more likely to report that Holocaust denial is common in their countries.
Photos of Anne Frank’s kindergarten class (in the bottom image, she is pictured in the back row center in a white dress). Photo: Ray van der Bas / © Anne Frank House
“The alarming gaps in knowledge, particularly among younger generations, highlight an urgent need for more effective Holocaust education,” said Gideon Taylor, Claims Conference president, in a statement. The majority of the survey’s participants are on his side: 93 percent of them stress the continued importance of teaching the Holocaust.
Such is the goal of “Anne Frank The Exhibition,” as Leopold, in his statement, noted “an obligation to help world audiences understand the historical roots and evolution of antisemitism, including how it fueled Nazi ideology that led to the Holocaust.” According to press materials, the show has already sold tens of thousands of tickets ahead of its limited run and aims to reach 250,000 students through its partnerships with hundreds of school districts.
2020 reconstruction of the Van Pels room in the Secret Annex. Photo courtesy of the Anne Frank House.
On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, said Gavriel Rosenfeld, president of the Center for Jewish History, “Anne Frank’s story becomes more urgent than ever. In a time of rising antisemitism, her diary serves as both a warning and a call to action, reminding us of the devastating impact of hatred. This exhibition challenges us to confront these dangers head-on and honor the memory of those lost in the Holocaust.”
“Anne Frank The Exhibition” is on view at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, through April 30. More

One of Japan’s—and the world’s—most beloved art forms is getting a rightful tribute at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.
Opening in September, “Art of Manga” will array more than 700 drawings by Japan’s most influential manga artists, in a showcase of the artistry and impact of the country’s leading comic books and graphic novels. Manga, after all, hasn’t just gripped readers for decades with its deft storytelling, but has radically shaped Japan’s pop culture and publishing industry.
“Captivating millions around the world with dynamic graphic narratives,” said Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, in a statement, “manga is one of the most significant visual mediums of our time.”
Taniguchi Jiro, Qusumi Masayuki (Author), FUSOSHA Publishing Inc. (Publisher), Solitary Gourmet (1994–96, 2008–15). © PAPIER/ Jiro Taniguchi/ Masayuki Qusumi, FUSOSHA.
The show is in good hands. Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, research director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in the U.K., is curating the exhibition, following her work on “The Citi Exhibition: Manga,” the British Museum’s blockbuster manga outing in 2019. She’s passionate about her subject.
“Manga,” she told me over a video call, “is an innate language that you understand. You immediately pick it up because it’s a visual language that has a grammar. It’s not just pictures—it’s pictures that are in a narrative.”
Yoshinaga Fumi, Hakusensha (publisher), Ōoku, The Inner Chambers (2004–21). © Fumi Yoshinaga / Hakusensha, Inc.
The form is rooted a long legacy of Japanese artistry: its predecessors include 12th-century emakimono, horizontal scrolls that offered viewers an unfolding narrative; the woodblocks of ukiyo-e artists such as Hokusai; and kibyōshi, 18th-century picture books, among others.
Manga flourished in Japan’s postwar period, with the emergence of popular titles (and their subsequent on-screen adaptations) such as Astro Boy, Dragon Ball, The Rose of Versailles, and Slam Dunk. Besides venturing stylistic innovations and techniques, these series would come to dominate Japan’s publishing landscape.
Oda Eiichiro, Shueisha Inc. (Publisher), ONE PIECE (1997–). © Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha.
Today, Japan’s manga market rakes in billions, not counting its footprint in other territories from France to the U.S. Manga artists, too, are gaining the recognition that has long eluded them, Rousmaniere said, as the form is increasingly being embraced in its home country.
“Manga artists are now going to art school,” she said, noting the marked difference from the previous generations’ practice of apprenticeship. “They’re learning techniques and that’s shifting the industry. The rapidity and the drawing are just breathtaking to look at. When you look at their originals, you see this amazing line quality. It changes the way you look at the printed example.”
Chiba Tetsuya, Takamori Asao (author), Kodansha Ltd, Ashita no Joe: Fighting for Tomorrow (1967–73). © Asao Takamori, Tetsuya Chiba / Kodansha Ltd.
“Art of Manga” delves into the medium’s past and present through the work of 10 artists. Drawings by early-generation masters Chiba Tetsuya, of Ashita no Joe fame, and Akatsuka Fujio, who created Tensai Bakabon, will provide historical grounding and insights into how manga is created and consumed.
Yamazaki Mari, Tori Miki, Shinchosha Co., Ltd. (publisher), Plinivs (2013–23). ©︎ Mari Yamazaki, Tori Miki /Shinchosha.
The following sections survey the craft of eight leading manga artists.
Among them are Oda Eiichiro, creator of the world-dominating One Piece; Yoshinaga Fumi, known for her sprawling epic Ōoku: The Inner Chambers; Tagame Gengoroh, whose My Brother’s Husband helped define gay manga; Araki Hirohiko, maker of the supernatural hit series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure; Yamashita Kazumi, whose otherworldly Land earned her a Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2021; and Yamazaki Mari, who created the award-winning Thermae Romae.
Araki Hirohiko, Shueisha Inc. (publisher), JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 6 Stone Ocean (2003). © Hirohiko Araki & Lucky Land Communications / Shueisha.
Also featured are manga giants, namely the late Taniguchi Jiro, best known for The Summit of the Gods and Kodoku no Gourmet; and Takahashi Rumiko, the widely celebrated author of Urusei Yatsura, Ranma ½, and the ongoing series Mao.
Takahashi Rumiko, SHOGAKUKAN Inc. (Publisher), MAO (2019–). © RUMIKO TAKAHASHI／SHOGAKUKAN INC.
These works, sourced directly from publishers and artists’ foundations, boast a sweep of styles that surface “the skill and art of creating manga” as well as each artist’s “range, breadth, and thought processes,” Rousmaniere noted. The medium’s ongoing appeal is further demonstrated in a new collaboration between Akatsuka Fujio and Pop artist Tanaami Keiichi, which will show up at the exhibition.
Tanaami Keiichi, TANAAMI!! AKATSUKA!! / Revolver 2 (Looking in the Mirror). ©Keiichi Tanaami Courtesy of NANZUKA © Fujio Productions Ltd. / Shueisha Inc.
As well, the exhibition will delve into how manga has entered the digital age by exploring publishing company Kodansha’s digital platform K MANGA and Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage, an initiative that explores new approaches to collecting manga via limited-run prints and NFTs. These new efforts, however, open up challenges for contemporary manga in terms of rights and piracy. The show will confront both these issues—the former impacting artists’ estates and the latter a billion-dollar concern.
“The numbers of people reading or purchasing a manga have a direct effect on not just the artist’s income, but on the artist’s viability,” Rousmaniere explained. “If they were being pirated, that has a direct effect. First of all, the publishers won’t do an English version [if legitimate sale numbers are not high enough]. Will they [continue] their series? Fans need to understand that when they’re reading the pirated version, they are hurting the artists.”
Yamashita Kazum, Kodansha Ltd. (Publisher), LAND (ランド) (2014–20). © Kazumi Yamashita / Kodansha Ltd.
While manga, a global phenomenon, needs little introduction, Rousmaniere hopes the show might shed new light on its creators and visual vocabulary—both keys to manga’s ongoing appeal. She aims to have viewers fluent in manga by the end of their visit.
“I’m trying to have every artist displayed in a slightly different way, so that you would have different insights. By the end of the exhibition, you would have an understanding of this incredible range and the skill of learning manga through looking at sequential images,” she said. “This grammar is intuitively understood if you allow it. What we’re going to do in the exhibition is show you how to allow it in.”
“Art of Manga” is on view at the de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, California, September 27, 2025–January 25, 2026. More

The Leroy Johnson exhibition at Margot Samel—the artist’s first solo in New York City—looks like a curious little neighborhood or city street. Little “houses” lined up, each wholly unique, with recognizable hallmarks that could be found in any number of communities: signs for restaurants, images of storefronts, stoops, people, and patchwork architecture.
Installation view of “Leroy Johnson” (2025). Photo: Matthew Sherman. Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
These modestly sized sculptures up close, however, don’t offer any viable, inhabitable space for the mind’s eye to occupy as a dollhouse or diorama might. Each work instead appears more as composites of artifacts: photos and clippings; scraps of wood, cardboard, and fabric; pieces of pottery; even gum wrappers. And, upon up-close inspection, the heart of Johnson’s practice can be found, revealed through symbolic and material clues that are both explicit and oblique.
Johnson was born in 1937 in the Eastwick neighborhood of Philadelphia, the city where he ultimately lived his entire life until his death in 2022. Eschewing art school and traditional arts training (beyond attending some classes at Fleisher Art Memorial), Johnson’s position as an outsider artist was a conscious decision. Fueled by what he saw as art world hegemony, he chose instead to forge his own path.
Leroy Johnson. Photo: Matthew Bender. Courtesy of the Estate of Leroy Johnson, Margot Samel, New York and The Center for Emerging Visual Artists.
Though Johnson first began making art while still in high school, over the course of his adult life he simultaneously held a wide range of jobs, including as a social worker, rehab counselor, and teacher to disabled youth, to name a few. He completed his M.A. in human services in 1988, and was deeply committed to the city and communities of Philadelphia—which can be traced throughout his artistic practice.
Johnson’s houses are largely comprised of found materials sourced from across Philadelphia, complemented by photos taken and printed by the artist as well as the addition of “graffiti” and painted surfaces. Some of these houses feature portions of fired ceramic, made from clay that the artist excavated from the ground in the city.
Leroy Johnson, Crosswalk (ca. 2000–2005). Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
Adding to the complexity of Johnson’s work are references to Black life and history, urban lived realities, art, and the effects of poverty, racism, and gentrification, with each work holding space for multiple truths and interpretations.
On Crosswalk (ca. 2000–2005), the white outline of a crown adorns the front side of a gable, alluding to the iconic signature of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Below, a series of shadowy silhouettes feature on the corner and within an inset porch; along the roof, a row of tiny, modeled pigeons quietly looks on. The details are simultaneously specific and common. Rather than lean into the exact representation of a singular building or site, it is a visceral portrait of a collection of places, pieced together through a psychological lens.
Leroy Johnson, recto: Who Is Eligible (ca. 2010–2015). Photo: Claire Iltis. Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
Elsewhere, images of corner stores, references to the civil rights movement—whether an image of Malcolm X or Cecil B. Moore’s name scribbled on a wall—and idiosyncratically reproduced figuration reflect the cultural and physical fabric of the city, acting as both a tender homage and unyielding record of the place Johnson lived for 85 years.
Notably, each of the houses is fully circumventable, with the details and compositions wrapping the entirety of the work, adding depth to this parallel world. In Who is Eligible (ca. 2010), the proverbial exterior resembles any number of row houses or apartments, but on the reverse side is a wide open blue sky above a collage of more building facades.
Leroy Johnson, Who Is Eligible (ca. 2010–2015. Photo: Claire Iltis. Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
Through his distinctive approach to construction and medium, Johnson situates himself as an architect of memory and archivist of materials; where the city of Philly ends and his work begins is undefinable, a testament to the artist’s commitment to depicting through poetic means the true scope of life in the City of Brotherly Love. More

“It all kind of started with this idea about edibles,” said Stacy Lynn Waddell via video call from her North Carolina base, describing her newest body of work set to go on view with Rebecca Camacho Presents at FOG Design+Art 2025. “The first time I went out West, I went to San Francisco and of course, when one goes out West and you go to San Francisco, you go to a weed shop or whatever they call them.”
Stacy Lynn Waddell. © Marco Giugliarelli for Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2022).
Cannabis-infused foods and candies have become an increasingly popular and widespread commodity, but, for Waddell, these products presented a potent starting point for a new line of artistic inquiry. “Edibles,” as the presentation within FOG Focus is aptly titled, features 10 works on paper, each featuring a plant specimen rendered in pastiglia, or paste work, and covered in 22-karat gold leaf, and marks Waddell’s first solo presentation with Camacho.
“I’ve been interested in Stacy’s unique and thoughtful practice for years, admiring her commitment to historical techniques and how her luminous, elegant surfaces belie her use of challenging, frequently unforgiving materials,” Camacho said. “After participating in a group exhibition at the gallery last summer, this solo FOG booth is a great opportunity to share Stacy’s work with a much larger audience within the Bay Area as well as national and international audiences. I am excited and proud to debut Stacy’s newest works at the fair.”
Installation view of “Stacy Lynn Waddell: Edibles” at FOG Design+Art 2025. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents.
Gilding with precious metals is an essential technique within Waddell’s practice, which was on full display in her last solo show, “light takes time to reach us,” at Candice Madey, New York, in 2023 (her third solo with Candice Madey is planned for this September). Here, works included compositions crafted with gold leaf but also variegated metal leaf, silver leaf, and Japanese-colored silver leaf.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Lemon Daylily) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
In “Edibles,” however, all 10 pieces are overlain exclusively with gold, making their low-relief images difficult to discern from a single vantage point, prompting the viewer to move around the piece to see all the different details depending on the light.
“My work tends to be a quieter read, I am asking you [the viewer] to look at something that is a monochrome, also a metallic monochrome, and engage with something that isn’t necessarily easy to engage with. The graphic capability of the work itself is a slow read, and it’s layered between other stuff. You’re negotiating light and shadow, depending on the space the work is shown in.”
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Wild Strawberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
Complementing this visual experience is the specificity of the work’s support, a “leathery” type of paper handmade in India with a distinctive, textural surface and irregular edges, which lends it a sense of objecthood in and of itself. Working in pastiglia, using paste or other mediums to build up the surface, certainly imbues Waddell’s work with a sculptural quality but simultaneously allows her to engage with a type of drawing.
“There’s something about being able to use words related to construction and building when thinking about drawing… it’s the way I think about making a drawing,” Waddell explained. “I couldn’t make paintings like wet media onto paper or canvas. It has to be mediated with drawing. Everything I do has to be a drawn painting, not a painted painting.”
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Blackberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
Across the series of golden pastiglia drawings, both everyday and rare plants make appearances, and their edibility ranges from delicious to medicinal to toxic, with the inspirations behind each varying broadly. “Some have very particular personal stories behind them, like the blackberry bush that I grew up with at my grandparent’s property that became this giant, almost mythological being in and of itself,” said Waddell. “It was huge and unruly, and every year I would wait for those first ripe berries.” Others capture the artist’s interest through their associated lore. Pokeweed, for instance, is incredibly toxic but has historically been used as a dye—one known, however, to fade quickly—and in traditional herbalism.
Other works feature wild strawberries, opium poppy, bunch flowered narcissus, lemon daylily, cherry tree, sweet violet, tulip, and orchid (these last two species appear together in one work, in a variation on the theme). The way they are arranged in their respective compositions echoes the tradition of botanical drawings, which Waddell cites as a reference point.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Pokeweed) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
The history of botanical drawings stretches back several thousand years, with the intrinsic purpose of documenting the details of various plants but also identifying their uses and classifying them as medicinal, edible, or poisonous. In more recent history, specifically in American history, it was a tool of exploration and colonization. Today, in light of climate change, environmental disasters, and habitat loss, the botanical drawing may very well be the only extant record of any number of plant species.
Connecting back to Waddell’s initial inspiration of edibles in California, the works also tap into the history and heritage of agriculture in the state, and how the Central Valley operates as a source of sustenance due to its extremely long growing season.
The gold leaf placed over the top of these drawings adds yet another layer of complexity to these works, evoking icon painting, religious images that were popular in the 6th as well as 13th through 17th centuries, which frequently depict portraits of figures and scenes from holy texts against a ground of gold leaf. These paneled works operated as a focus point for parishioners, and, similarly, Waddell’s works invite focused attention from viewers—both in how the compositions are optically perceived as well as reflection on and contemplation of what they depict.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Blackberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
The intended viewing experience of Waddell’s work in many ways parallels her working practice, which, Waddell admits, is rather gradual and time-consuming. “I work really slowly, and I have things I want to really experiment and play with.” Part of this prolonged approach is in no small part due to an interest in things that have had some time to settle, and tracing reference points between things that might otherwise be incongruous.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, detail of Untitled (Blackberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
“I need things that have a bit of a patina, to have a bit of age on it,” Waddell said. “It’s about connecting myself to history or rerouting what I want to make through the historical lens. It gives the work weight, but it also gives people a whole lot to bring with them too. You’re standing in 2025, looking at a work that was made at the end of 2024 with a process from the Renaissance, and then you’re bringing all of your experiences as a human being, your preferences art as a collector, your interests as a curator or gallerist. That’s super interesting to me.”
The angles, both physically and intellectually, at which Waddell’s new work can be approached are numerous yet subtle. Despite their glittering opulence, their presence is decidedly quiet, and contemplative. Against the backdrop of the fair’s (and life’s) clamor and commotion, they invite viewers to take pause, offering a moment of respite and reflection. More

A sprawling exhibition dedicated to one of the most legendary living artists, David Hockney, is set to open at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris this spring. With over 400 works dating from 1955 until the present day, among the highlights will be two new works inspired by the artists Edvard Munch and William Blake.
“This exhibition means an enormous amount because it is the largest exhibition I’ve ever had,” said Hockney in a press statement, noting that his works will fill 11 galleries at the foundation. “I think it’s going to be very good.”
The artist and his partner, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, have been personally involved in organizing “David Hockney 25,” which runs from April 9 through September 1, 2025. As we have come to expect of the British painter, whose exploratory approach to medium has readily evolved with the times, the show will include a wide variety of media from pencil and charcoal drawings to digital compositions worked on an iPad and even immersive installations.
David Hockney, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968). Photo: Fabrice Gibert, © David Hockney.
Hockney’s lengthy career has taken him from his native city of Bradford in Yorkshire to London, Paris, Los Angeles, and, more recently, a peaceful farmhouse in Normandy. The 87-year-old artist has now resettled in London and is showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, some of the works going into the show won’t even feature in the catalogue because they are still in the works.
With his trademark vibrant palette, imbuing his compositions with an eye-catching, hallucinatory quality, the artist has embarked on a new series of paintings that pay homage to some of the historical greats. On view will be After Munch: Less is Known than People Think (2023) and After Blake: Less is Known than People Think (2024), both works that take an impressively expansive view of our world today and realms that lie far beyond, invoking history, our future, and astronomy. In After Munch, the three graces hold up the world while an ancient philosopher meets our gaze.
David Hockney, After Blake: Less is Known that People Think (2024). Photo: Jonathan Wilkinson, © David Hockney.
Yet, these ambiguous pieces are, ultimately, humble observations about human naivety. Their titles were inspired by a headline Hockney saw in the New York Times around 2000 that read: “Less is known than people think.”
“I thought it was a gem, of course they don’t know much!” explained Hockney in the book Spring Cannot Be Cancelled by Martin Gayford. “Nobody knows anything.”
The acrylic painting After Blake was inspired by Dante and Virgil Approaching the Angel Who Guards the Entrance of Purgatory, one of the 18th century English poet and artist William Blake‘s interpretations of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The marvels of 14th and 15th century Florence have clearly captured Hockney’s imagination for many decades, since the show will include a little known work Renaissance Head from the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. It was painted in 1960s, just after Hockney graduated from the Royal College of Art.
David Hockney, 27th March 2020, No. 1 iPad painting printed on paper. Photo: © David Hockney.
Hockney has long introduced art historical references into his work, as will be obvious on the exhibition’s top floor. There will hang The Great Wall (2000), a collage of reproductions of some of the artist’s all-time favorite artworks from the early Renaissance onwards. Other nods to Hockney’s inspirations will come in the form of an installation that reimagines the artist’s studio as a dance hall, a reference to the regular musical performances he stages at his own home, and new reinterpretations of opera set designs originally made by Hockney in the 1970s.
Fans of Hockney’s quintessential subjects—swimming pools, interiors, characterful landscapes, and sensitive portraits of friends, family, or fellow artists—will find plenty of these classics on view. These include Portrait of My Father (1955), Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968), Portrait of An Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972), and A Bigger Grand Canyon (1998). The more recent Normandy landscapes, many of which were completed during lockdown, will also fill two galleries on the foundation’s 1st floor. More

“Color is bullshit,” the legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once told his younger colleague, William Eggleston. Less vulgar but equally dismissive, Ansel Adams once likened photographing in color (though he did plenty of it) to playing an out-of-tune piano, and claimed that he could get “a far greater sense of ‘color’ through a well-planned and executed black-and-white image than [he had] ever achieved with color photography.”
William Wegman, Ski Patrol (2017). Courtesy Galerie George-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois.
Indeed, color photography had a hard time of it after it was first developed in the mid-19th century, with critics and connoisseurs terming its seductive colors garish as opposed to the supposedly more dignified black and white. But that’s long since changed, and color photography is presently widely accepted, in fine art, fashion, journalism and other fields.
Walter Chandoha, New Jersey, 1962. ©️ Walter Chandoha Archive.
Now, multihyphenate artist Maurizio Cattelan has curated an exhibition on color photography along with Sam Stourdzé, director of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Médicis. It’s taking place at that Renaissance villa just moments away from the famed Spanish Steps in the heart of the Italian capital, which was once the residence of Cardinal Ferdinando I de’ Medici and home to the Academy since 1803.
The show presents the work of some 20 artists, broken up into what the curators call “chapters,” with titles like Early Birds, Raining Cats and Dogs, Femme Fatale, and Stranger Things. On the roster are Miles Aldridge, Erwin Blumenfeld, Guy Bourdin, Juno Calypso, Walter Chandoha, Harold Edgerton, Hassan Hajjaj, Hiro, Ouka Leele, Yevonde Middleton, Arnold Odermatt, Ruth Ossai, Martin Parr, Pierre et Gilles, Alex Prager, Adrienne Raquel, Sandy Skoglund, Toiletpaper (the magazine established by Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari), and William Wegman.
Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, Toiiletpaper. Courtesy Toiletpaper.
“What if color could save us?” said Stourdzé in an email. “In a world of grey where the clouds seem to be pilling up, this exhibition invites you to a chromotherapy session featuring lemon yellow, limitless blue, vibrant red, and sunshine orange.” 
Animals are frequent subjects. Wegman is perhaps best known for his photos of his Weimaraners in various poses, sometimes sporting human clothes. Chandoha, by contrast, is known as a cat photographer; of his archive of more than 225,000 photos, some 90,000 depict felines. “Cats are my favorite animal subject,” he said, “because of their unlimited range of attitude, posture, expression, and coloration.” A charming photo of his shows a furry specimen perched atop three stacked pillows; another shows a quartet in a loving embrace.
The back cover of Damiani’s catalogue for the exhibition “Chromotherapia: The Feel-Good Color Photography,” featuring a photo by Walter Chandoha.
Food also comes in for close study, for example in Martin Paar’s Common Sense [Donut, Ramsgate] (1999), a delightful shot of a child’s hands, poking out of brilliant red jacket cuffs, grasping a sugary treat, and Juno Calypso’s Chicken Dogs (2015), showing a model mysteriously lying face-down on a tile floor near a can of the titular food item, one dog tentatively poking out above the rim. 
Juno Calypso, Chicken Dogs, 2015.
Can’t make it to the show? Villa Medici will publish a 224-page book with Damiani, priced at €55, that will be available in U.K. bookstores in March for £50 ($61) and in the States in May at $60. 
“Chromotherapia: The Feel-Good Color Photography” will be on view at the French Academy in Rome – Villa Médicis, Viale della Trinità dei Monti, 1, February 28–June 9. More

In the 1980s, in lieu of a wedding ring, French sculptor Bernar Venet bent and looped a thin silver band around the ring finger of his soon-to-be-wife Diane. It was a playful, spontaneous act, but one that kindled in its recipient a fascination with artist-crafted jewelry. As she recalled, it drew her toward “the too-little-known world of these unique objets d’art, priceless for their rarity, and the symbolic meaning that is often the genesis of their creation.”
Over the next three decades, Diane Venet would build one of the most enviable collections of artist jewelry, numbering upwards of 220 pieces. Among them are creations by Dalí, Picasso, Braque, Lichtenstein, and Koons, as well as some others commissioned by Venet herself. So vast is the collector’s trove that it’s filled exhibitions, notably at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design in 2011 and Paris’s Les Arts Décoratifs in 2018, among other shows.
Salvador Dalí, Montre petite cuillère (1957). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Philippe Servent, Collection Diane Venet.
It’s now set for another outing, at the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Florida, in April. The exhibition, titled “Artists’ Jewelry: From Cubism to Pop,” will see more than 150 objects from Venet’s collection displayed alongside companion works by the same artists, pulled from the museum’s holdings.
“Diane Venet’s collection is second to none,” said Ghislain d’Humières, the museum’s director and CEO, in a statement. “The necklaces, rings, brooches, earrings, headpieces, and more that she has collected feature incredible details rendered in interesting materials by some of the most famous artists of our time.”
Pablo Picasso, Le Grand Faune (1973). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Sherry Griffin, Collection Diane Venet
Gathered here is a veritable who’s who of modern and contemporary art. Jean Cocteau and Picasso offer parallel gold recreations of a human face on a brooch and pendant respectively; Niki de Saint Phalle’s signature Nana figure is reimagined in gold and multi-colored enamel; Dalí has similarly installed his trademark clock on the head of a hair brooch.
Niki de Saint Phalle, Nana Ange (1991). Courtesy of the artist. Collection Diane Venet.
Elsewhere are rings by Frank Stella, Lowell Nesbitt, and Rashid Johnson, as well as a bracelet by Lucio Fontana and a rare geometric necklace by Meret Oppenheim, one of only nine produced.
The line-up, noted the museum, boasts artists who were prolific jewelry makers like Calder as much as those who created one-of-a-kind works, including Stella. These pieces also bear out a diversity of craftsmanship—some are dotted with precious stones, some created out of hammered metals, while others were made from non-traditional materials (see John Chamberlain’s aluminum and paint design).
John Chamberlain, Untitled (1998). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Philippe Gontier, Collection Diane Venet.
“Since the beginning of humanity, individuals have adorned themselves with fine metals and precious stones—as modes of class distinction and personal expression,” said J. Rachel Gustafson, the museum’s chief curatorial operations and research officer. “This exhibition bridges the gap between craft and fine art, two creative forms that seldom intersect or are interpreted within one exhibition.”
Man Ray, Optic Topic (1974). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Alain Leprince, Collection Diane Venet.
Woven through these objects, too, are personal narratives, particularly Venet’s. Man Ray’s sculptural mask, Optic Topic (1974), one of the show’s centerpieces, was snapped up by Venet for her husband. Originally conceived as a pair of gold sunglasses, the Dada pioneer’s final design instead obscures its wearer’s vision, giving new meaning to the word “mask.” Throughout the show are also gems that emerge from Venet’s friendship with artists including Stella and Rauschenberg, from whom she received an avant-garde brooch. The coiled wedding ring she received from Bernar is included here, too.
These displays will be accompanied by paintings, sculptures, and photographs to further contextualize the objects, and a sound-based work by Sheila Concari, which features audio snippets of Venet’s reflections on her remarkable collection.
Bernar Venet, Indeterminate Line (1985). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Damian Noszkowicz, Collection Diane Venet.
“The story of this collection is largely that of my friendships in the art world over the past 40 years,” said Venet in a statement. “In my rather itinerant life, this collection of jewelry is thus an intimate museum that I can take everywhere with me and the treasure trove which I can find on my return home.”
“Artists’ Jewelry: From Cubism to Pop, the Diane Venet Collection” is on view at the Norton Museum of Art, 1450 S Dixie Hwy, West Palm Beach, Florida, April 12–October 5. More