Art & Exhibitions

In the early 1970s, the pioneer generation of graffiti writers from A-One to Zephyr were making their presence known on New York’s streets and subways. Theirs were wild, energetic styles that caught the ire of the authorities—but more significantly, they also captured the eye of gallerists and fellow artists. In time, it’s the latter group that would fix graffiti as an art form (and then, art market juggernaut), transplanting it from the urban jungle into the white cube.
A new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) revisits exactly this moment of graffiti’s evolution. At “Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection,” you’ll find works by some of the field’s key players—Keith Haring, Lady Pink, Rammellzee, Haze, Futura 2000, Tracy 168—created not on a city wall or subway door, but on canvas. It’s a major turning point, reckons curator Sean Corcoran, during which the artists more than met the moment.
“These young people had real ambitions to make work in a more traditional setting,” he told me during a walk-through of the exhibition. “Sometimes it carried that same energy that happened on the streets. Sometimes it transformed and became something totally different.”
Installation view of “Above Ground” at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo courtesy of MCNY.
To capture what Corcoran described as “a real serious turn by some of these young people to create something real and permanent,” the exhibition opens with artifacts marking graffiti’s move into the mainstream. There’s a May 1974 Esquire cover story written by Norman Mailer (“The Faith of Graffiti”) and a flurry of flyers announcing various graffiti showcases at galleries (Lee Quiñones at Barbara Gladstone in 1982, Haring at Shafrazi Gallery in 1987, and so on).
But of course, it’s the canvases that are the main draw for transmuting an ephemeral form into something far more enduring. A handful have been pulled from the collection of Martin Wong, the painter and collector whose avid amassing of graffiti works led to his founding of the Museum of American Graffiti in the East Village in 1989. In 1994, prior to his premature death, Wong gifted his 300-strong collection to the MCNY. The bulk of these holdings are on view in its traveling show “City as Canvas” (also organized by Corcoran), which opened in 2014 and is currently on view at the Hunter Museum in Tennessee.
Keith (Dez) Grayson, Kaygee (ca. 1985). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.
For “Above Ground,” some previously unseen gems from Wong’s trove have been unrolled—literally—for the first time in decades. There’s Delta 2’s astounding 1984 work, large and earth-toned but for some blinding white spray-paint sparkles, which was newly cleaned and stretched for the show. A ca. 1985 Kaygee tag on canvas by Dez, aka Keith Grayson or DJ Kay Slay, also gets a rare outing, as does a Haring monograph featuring doodles by the late artist and his frequent collaborator LA II.
Installation view of “Above Ground” at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo courtesy of MCNY.
What’s notable, Corcoran pointed out, was the sheer breadth of techniques that the artists deployed across their canvases. While sticking with their choice tool, the aerosol can, they nonetheless devised methods to variously achieve bold strokes, splatters, and wispy lines. Stan 153’s creation of a crinkled-paper effect using an airbrush, in particular, is spectacular.
“Today, artists have their spray paint manufactured specifically for their use,” he said. “But these guys only had maybe four or four different kinds of cans, and they had to figure out how to get the desired effect through a lot of experimentation and practice.”
Stan 153, Green Krinkle in Stereo (1983). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.
Most poignantly, the exhibition acutely reflects the positive effect of patronage—specifically Wong’s—on the nascent art form. Wong’s support did not stop at snapping up these canvases; his presence is woven through their back stories. You get a sense of it in a documentary, filmed by Charlie Ahearn of Wild Style fame, that screens in the gallery: in it, archival interviews with Wong are interspersed with contemporary footage of artists including Daze and Quiñones discussing their time with Wong and the works he collected.
Lee Quiñones, Breakfast at Baychester (ca. 1980). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.
That relationship is further drawn out in one of the show’s most striking pieces, Quiñones’s Breakfast at Baychester (ca. 1980). A pencil composition, it delicately details the inner machinery of two subway trains, with two apartment blocks rising in the background. The artist had filled in some areas with color but, according to Corcoran, was encouraged by Wong to stop and leave it unfinished, allowing his meticulous draftsmanship to stand out.
Installation view of “Above Ground” at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo courtesy of MCNY.
As meaningful is another work by Crash, titled Broken Wings (1990). A striking presence in the gallery, the assemblage is dynamic with a bold, Pop art aesthetic and affixed with shards of painted wood. Crash created the piece as part of an artwork swap with Wong, but the pair never got around to it before the latter’s passing. It has remained wrapped up in storage, until now.
“He’s like, ‘I’ve held it for him ever since, and I’ve never brought it out, or done anything with it,’” Corcoran recalled Crash telling him of the painting, “‘but this is the right reason to show it.’”
“Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection” is on view at the Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Avenue, New York, New York, November 22, 2024–August 10, 2025. More

Albertz Benda is hosting a new star at their glitzy Los Angeles home, behind Chateau Marmont. Through February 1, 2025, the gallery is sharing an exhibition of eight abstract landscapes by renowned Aṉangu singer and painter Zaachariaha Fielding. The eponymous presentation marks the first-ever U.S. solo show by Fielding, who’s best known around the world as the voice of Electric Fields, the pop-techno duo that brought Australian Aboriginal language to Eurovision for the first time this past May.
At the rate Fielding’s painting practice is progressing, however, singing may not remain his number one claim to fame.
Zaachariaha Fielding performing with Electric Fields at the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden, 2024. Photo: Jessica GOW / TT News Agency / AFP via Getty Images.
Fielding got into music long before he became a painter, as a child growing up amidst the disenfranchised desert of Central Australia’s Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. He transcended his tiny Mimili community in a big way during 2011, when his X Factor audition wowed judges and audience members alike. He and keyboardist Michael Ross went on to form Electric Fields in 2015.
Years ago, Fielding was readying himself for a trip to America to further his music career. Then, lockdowns intervened. “I had nothing to do, like everybody else in the world,” Fielding told me over the phone. “I produced work after work after work, and then I had an elder offer me a solo exhibition. I was like, ‘what is a solo exhibition?’”
“I became very comfortable and happy as a visual artist, and I approached the visual world the way I approach the music industry—just being nothing but heart and curiosity,” he continued.
“Zaachariaha Fielding” on view at Albertz Benda. Photo: Photo: Julian Calero.
By Fall 2022, Fielding had a solo show of looming, dense abstractions with Brisbane’s buzzy Jan Murphy Gallery. The following spring, he won the prestigious $50,000 Wynne Prize, awarded annually for either the best landscape painting of Australian scenery, or the best figure sculpture by an Australian artist. Eventually, Fielding linked up with Albertz Benda via a mutual collector.
The paintings across his eponymous U.S. debut are part of the ongoing series that constitutes Fielding’s entire practice. His abstract, bold gestures jump off the linen they’re painted on straight away. Fielding himself compared his compositional process to instinctual choreography. “I don’t want to become anything; I just want it to be something,” he said. The artist often employs actual iconography, like the serpent he placed on a bridal gown during a collaboration with cult Aussie fashion house Romance Was Born this fall. Here, however, flashes of figuration tend to resolve back into pareidolia—even if the silhouettes of eyeballs remain persistent.
Moments of intense detail do actually emerge in this show, though—further complicating viewers’ attempts to determine what they’re really looking at. Each one of the works on view features wavy lines comprised of small, dense text all drawing from intergenerational aboriginal songs that bear wisdom about the environment and beyond.
“Zaachariaha Fielding” on view at Albertz Benda. Photo: Photo: Julian Calero.
Through abstraction, Fielding hopes to portray internal and external landscapes at once. “How do they work as a collaboration?” he asked.
“We’re very powerful creatures, but we limit what we can and cannot do, and that’s the most frustrating thing about this whole experience of being a human,” the artist continued. “You do have a sense of, ‘I am not having the full experience with this life.’” Individuals are constrained by the monotonous expectations of marriage and mortgages, and populations remain restrained from their rightful lands. Layers of personal, collective, and historical pain radiate from these paintings. Their lush purple-magenta palettes evoke both juicy fruits and bruises.
Given Fielding’s velocity as an artist this past year, it’s tempting to bet whether singing or painting will win out over the next one. But, the two mediums are more likely to deepen each other in a sort of symbiosis moving forward.
“Zaachariaha Fielding” is on view at Albertz Benda Los Angeles, 8260 Marmont Lane, Los Angeles, California, through February 1, 2025. More

One of the most viral artworks of 2024 will return to its Tasmanian home, following a short period of being mothballed after losing a discrimination court case.
That’s right, artist Kirsha Kaechele’s Ladies Lounge, which captivated audiences and made headlines all over the globe, is going back on view at the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, just in time for the holidays.
The performance-installation work consists of a luxe parlor where men exist only to serve the needs of women as they lounge, snack on canapés, and and sip champagne, all as a playful commentary on a long history of discrimination in the other direction. Precious artworks hang on the walls, including supposedly priceless Picassos from the artist’s grandmother’s collection (later revealed as fakes created just for the installation).
Kirsha Kaechele and a male butler. Courtesy Museum of Old and New Art.
It was on uncontroversial view since 2020 at the museum, founded by Kaechele’s husband, David Walsh, (she refers to herself as the institution’s “first lady”), until March 2024, when one Jason Lau of New South Wales took issue and filed a discrimination complaint with the local Anti-Discrimination Commissioner at the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. A judge decided against the museum and the artist in April, ruling that the lounge must admit men or close; they appealed to the Supreme Court of Tasmania, in Hobart.
While awaiting the high court’s decision, Kaechele slyly exploited a clause in the lower court’s judgement that said men could reasonably be excluded from a ladies’ restroom, temporarily moving the “Picassos” and other artifacts into a women’s bathroom.
But ultimately the Supreme Court decided in favor of the artist in September, writing in his judgement that the work gave women “a rare glimpse of what it is like to be advantaged.”
Kirsha Kaechele celebrates the verdict of the Tasmanian Supreme Court. Photo: Jesse Hunniford, courtesy Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania.
According to press materials, “Entry for ladies, and exclusion for men, is included as part of the museum entry ticket.”
“Welcome back, ladies,” says Kaechele in press materials. “Through the court case, the Ladies Lounge has transcended the art museum and come to life. People from all over the world have been invited to contemplate the experiences of women throughout history and today. It is time to celebrate in the place where it all began—with the dedicated adoration of our butlers and copious amounts of champagne to toast this incredible chapter!”
New artworks will be on display, along with some surprise programming and a performance by artist Betty Grumble. 
If you can’t make it to Tasmania but want to experience the scent of victory, you’re in luck—Kaechele is also releasing a commemorative, limited edition fragrance, dubbed The Verdict, with the punning tagline “for the lady who appeals.”
Men who are just dying to experience the lounge can apply via the museum’s app, The O, to be one of the servants. 
Here’s your chance, Mr. Lau! 
Ladies Lounge will be on view at the Museum of Old and New Art, 655 Main Rd, Berriedale, Tasmania,, Australia, from December 19, 2024, to January 13, 2025. More

The 22nd edition Art Basel Miami Beach concluded on Sunday, and everyone should be safely back home by now, with artworks following soon after. The consensus view seems to be that business was middling and that big-budget events were few and far between.
And yet! There were still exciting works on view at the Miami Beach Convention Center (here are a few picks), and there were superb events of every type all over town. Below, seven highlights from beyond the big fair.
At left, Allen Yu’s South Korean Breakfast Sandwiches (2024), which was presented by Philadelphia’s Center for Creative Works at the Open Invitational. At right, a wall of works brought to the fair by the Living Museum of Queens. Photos by Andrew Russeth
Most Enjoyable Art Fair: The Open Invitational
Miami is not exactly short on art fairs, so news of an another one should fill any sensible person with dread—and even anger. Thankfully, though, this year’s big newcomer, the Open Invitational, was a stunner, the quiet hit of the week. Organized by New York dealer David Fierman and Miami art patron Ross McCalla, it featured just 11 exhibitors (a very nice size for a fair) in an event space in the tony Miami Design District. All of the participants were studios that focus on artists with disabilities, and they included the Center for Creative Works in Philadelphia, Creative Growth in Oakland, California, and Vinfen’s Gateway Arts in Boston. One highlight: the meticulous, loving portraits of South Korean breakfast sandwiches by Allen Yu in CCW’s section. (The price was just under four figures; I regret not buying it.) “It was the best-feeling art fair I’ve ever participated in, with collaboration in the place of competition and a genuine feeling of mutual support,” Fierman told me after the fact. “We will definitely be back in Miami next year and hope to grow.” Here’s hoping.
A work by Nari Ward in the lobby of the Historic Hampton House in Miami, which is presenting “Invisible Luggage” through February 15. Photo by Andrew Russeth
Best Off-Site Exhibition: “Invisible Luggage” at the Historic Hampton House in Miami
I regret that it took an art exhibition to get me to the Historic Hampton House in Miami’s Brownsville neighborhood. A Green Book hotel where Black travelers, including Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King Jr., stayed during Jim Crow, it is now a cultural center. Right before the start of Miami Basel, it opened a massive group exhibition with works by more than 50 artists, titled “Invisible Baggage” and curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody, Laura Dvorkin, Maynard Monrow, Zoe Lukov, and Auttrianna Ward. There are superstars like Frank Bowling and Firelei Báez, Florida Highwaymen landscape painters, including Alfred Hair and Mary Ann Carroll, and lesser-known greats. The work in the show is strong, and it amounts to a multilayered look at how travel and migration shape identity. Best of all, unlike so much that takes place during Miami Art Week, the exhibition is still up, and it will be until February 15. If you pass anywhere near Miami, don’t miss it. And don’t miss the two hotel rooms that have been carefully restored.
In William Kentridge’s The Great Yes, The Great No Charon, the ferryman of the dead, played by Hamilton Dhlamini, conducts the ship’s journey from Marseille to Martinique. Photo by Monika Rittershaus
Best Performance, Contemporary Art: William Kentridge at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Art
This past summer, William Kentridge premiered a new chamber opera, The Great Yes, The Great No (2024), at the Luma Foundation in Arles, France. In Miami last week, it made its U.S. debut, and it is a stunner—an intricate mixture of video, singing, and dancing, a heady gesamtkunstwerk. It concerns a ship sailing in 1941 from Vichy France to Martinique with passengers like Claude Lévi-Strauss, Wifredo Lam, and André Breton—a real historical episode that the South African artist has enlivened by inviting aboard additional luminaries, like Frida Kahlo and Frantz Fanon. Charon, the ferryman of the Greek underworld, is the captain. While it’s set during World War II, the piece feels bracingly of the moment, urgent, as a kind of poetic exegesis on the power of art in dark times. How does Kentridge manage to craft such astonishingly satisfying works? You can try to figure that out at upcoming performances in California, at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills in February and at the University of California, Berkeley in March.
Hajime Kinoko and Marie Sauvage performing at the Ground.
Best Performance, Non-Contemporary Art: Hajime Kinoko and Marie Sauvage at the Ground
On the night of the dress rehearsal for Kentridge’s triumph, Hajime Kinoko and Marie Sauvage—experts in shibari (Japanese rope bondage) based, respectively, in Tokyo and Paris—kicked off a U.S. tour at the Ground, a venue inside the action-packed Club Space. As hundreds watched and foreboding techno grew more intense, the Tokyo-based Kinoko (who is also an artist) spent about an hour threading rope from metal trusses into a kind of starburst shape. Then Sauvage appeared, staring down the audience as he tied her, pulled her into the air, and guided her through an astonishing array of positions. It looked painful, though she betrayed no hint of discomfort. The work concluded with Kinoko weaving Sauvage into his web so that she seemed almost to be floating.  “I always feel grateful to share my vulnerability in the form of an artistic symbol with Kinoko,” she said, “to inspire others to be more open-hearted.” That’s an important message to deliver in rough-and-tumble, dog-eat-dog Miami.
The Resy Lounge at Untitled, “brought to you by Delta Air Lines and American Express®.” And its dessert table, by Jon & Vinny’s. Photos by Andrew Russeth.
Best VIP Lounge (and Best Brand Collaboration): The Resy Lounge at the Untitled Art Fair
There were disturbingly few collaborations between powerful brands this year. (We didn’t know how lucky we had it back in 2017, when Porsche, Sonos, Surface, and Chateau d’Esclans had Eleven Madison Park chef Daniel Humm sling truffle burgers for an event.) A welcome exception was the Resy Lounge, which was sponsored by Delta Air Lines and American Express, at the Untitled Art Fair. I am not an Amex cardholder, have few Delta miles, and use Resy begrudgingly, but I summoned every ounce of entitlement I have (it was not difficult) and asked to enter. “You’re in luck,” the kind receptionist said, almost whispering. “We are taking walk-ins right now.” I was more than lucky. A feast of delights from Los Angeles’s estimable Italian restaurant Jon and Vinny’s awaited: luscious slices of steak, a Caesar salad with a surprising kick, cocktails, wines, and a full dessert table with made-to-order affogatos. Heavenly.
Straight to jail: A Miami Police Department cruiser in Wynwood. Photo by Andrew Russeth
Most Surprising Art Collaboration: An Artist-Designed Police Car in Miami
Apparently it’s something of a tradition for local artists to create work for the Miami Police Department. A few years ago, the big-selling Romero Britto conceived a very energetic paint job for one of its SUVs. While in Wynwood last week, I came across this memorable design on a cruiser. It is not, as I first thought, the work of the irrepressible Alec Monopoly, a pioneer of this cartoon-luxury style. One Victor Gosa is responsible. On the opposite side of the car there is graffiti reading, “Woop-woop! That’s the sound of da…” Imagine being arrested and shoved into the back of this thing. Can’t be a great feeling.
The Frenchie: French salami, brie cheese, and all the toppings on a croissant. Photo by Andrew Russeth
Best Sandwich: The Frenchie at La Sandwicherie in South Beach
Since 1988, La Sandwicherie has been serving massive sandwiches at manageable prices to Miami Beachers, a short walk from the notorious dive Mac’s Club Deuce (and, more recently, the Untitled Art Fair). Six years had passed since I last visited Magic City—six years long years since I had tasted La Sandwicherie’s offerings—and I can confirm that these sandwiches remain peerless and unsurpassed. My go-to is the Frenchie: French salami, brie cheese, and all the glorious toppings. If you wanted to be critical, you could say that the enormous slabs of brie that adorn this sandwich are perhaps not sourced from the world’s greatest brie producer, but that would be churlish. These sandwiches want you to be happy, they aim to please, and they succeed. Being happy: That is what Miami is all about. More

The New York City agency that operates its public healthcare systems has honored a radical activist group that occupied a hospital to demand better healthcare services for underserved communities in the 1960s with a new public art installation.
Artist Miguel Luciano designed the installation Joy, Love and Resistance in El Barrio (2024) on a new floodwall outside of the Metropolitan Hospital Center in East Harlem, a part of the NYC Health + Hospitals public health system, using historic photographs by his late friend and mentor Hiram Maristany.
Luciano’s new work mostly features joyous moments of life in East Harlem, including Maristany’s photographs like Children at Play (1965) and Kids on Bikes (ca. 1970). The art, made from ceramic frit on tempered glass, was funded with the wall by FEMA as a protective measure after severe flooding from Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
A drone shot of Metropolitan Hospital Center in East Harlem shows the work Joy, Love and Resistance in El Barrio (2024) by Artist Miguel Luciano featuring photographs by Hiram Maristany. Photo courtesy of NYC Health + Hospitals
“It celebrates the beauty and strength of our community’s history, from children playing in the fire hydrants in the summertime to community members marching with the Young Lords—the beauty of everyday people in moments of joy, play and resistance,” Luciano said in a statement.
Maristany was the official photographer and a founding member of the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican activist group inspired by the Black Panthers and once branded as “militant” by The New York Times. Luciano, who was mentored by Maristany, once heralded him as “the People’s photographer here in El Barrio.”
In 1968, a group of Puerto Rican youth founded the Young Lords as a street gang in Chicago, but it quickly became a rallying group for social activism to support the rights of Puerto Ricans and other marginalized communities after World War II.
A view of an installation at Metropolitan Hospital Center in East Harlem showing the work Joy, Love and Resistance in El Barrio (2024) by artist Miguel Luciano featuring photographs by Hiram Maristany. Photo courtesy of Miguel Luciano/NYC Health + Hospitals
A chapter founded in New York by 1969, which launched its first major protest action blocking traffic on 100th Street in Manhattan with garbage to protest the city’s inadequate sanitation services, according to the Museum of the City of New York.
“We thought Sanitation would come take the trash away once we’d bagged it all up for them,” Maristany told The New York Times in 2019. “We had bags and bags and bags of trash. We said, ‘You going to come clean this trash up now or what?’ They refused.”
Maristany, a lifelong resident of East Harlem who died of cancer in 2002, had been given a camera by a social worker when he was a young teenager. He went on to document each of the Young Lords’ acts of protest in New York, as well as the poverty and congestion of his neighborhood during the diaspora from Puerto Rico after the war.
A view of an installation at Metropolitan Hospital Center in East Harlem showing the work Joy, Love and Resistance in El Barrio (2024) by artist Miguel Luciano featuring photographs by Hiram Maristany. Photo courtesy of Miguel Luciano/NYC Health + Hospitals
Among their most radical acts was the occupation of a building owned by Lincoln Hospital in 1970. The group invaded the building in the morning and held it for more than 12 hours while negotiating with hospital officials for better health care rights. The city replaced the aging facilities with a new Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx in 1976.
“Lincoln Hospital is only butcher shop that kills patients and frustrates workers from serving these patients,” Gloria Cruz, health lieutenant for the Young Lords, said at the time. “This is because Lincoln exists under a capitalist system that only looks for profit.”
Later that year, the Young Lords would occupy a church to demand for reforms to the city’s jail system after a man named Julio Roldan was found dead in his cell at the Manhattan House of Detention. Roldan had been arrested and charged with arson for garbage fires set to protest the Department of Sanitation. In its existence, the group also called for better access to tuberculosis screenings, free breakfast for children, and safe reproductive care.
Hiram Maristany, Hydrant: In the Air (1963). Photo courtesy of El Museo del Barrio.
Larissa Trinder, an assistant vice president for the health system’s Arts in Medicine division, noted that the 1970 takeover of Lincoln Hospital is commemorated in a mural titled Legacy (2024) by artist Dister Rondon that was unveiled earlier this year at the Bronx hospital.
“Miguel Luciano’s installation reflects the history and resilience of the people of East Harlem, and we are grateful to be the conduit for sharing this work with our community and each person who passes our walls,” said Julian John, the chief executive of Metropolitan Hospital Center. “This installation represents the essence of East Harlem and its history, and we are proud to be a part of it.”
Works by the artists are featured in the collections of major American museums, with Luciano’s art also featured in El Museo del Barrio where Maristany served as director during a crucial period of its development through the 1970s. Both men are currently featured in the exhibition “Shifting Landscapes” at the Whitney Museum of American Art. More

It has been almost two decades since a devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean caused unspeakable devastation across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, killing more than 200,000 people. Among those lost in the December 26, 2004, disaster was renowned Argentine photographer Fernando Bengoechea who, along with being a top commercial photographer, pioneered a unique and beautiful technique of re-creating his photographic images on woven paper. His subject matter is often drawn from the natural world.
Bengoechea, who was in Sri Lanka that day with his then-partner, top designer, and frequent Oprah Winfrey guest Nate Berkus, was never found after the ocean swept him away. Berkus managed to survive.
L to R: Cristina Grajales, Wendy Goodman, Nate Berkus, and Marcelo Bengoechoa on the opening night of “Woven Tapestries” at Cristina Grajales Gallery in Tribeca.
Now Berkus and Fernando’s brother, Marcelo, are paying homage to their loved one with a stunning show at Cristina Grajales gallery in Tribeca. Marcelo has taken up Fernando’s practice of weaving photographic paper—which is no small feat especially when you see the works up close—in a show called “Woven Together: Reflections” that Berkus curated. Works by both Marcelo and Fernando are displayed concurrently.
Along with the woven paper works by both brothers, Berkus included possessions he has held on to over the years, including an antique table and typewriter as well as pottery and ephemera, like business cards and receipts commemorating special places and meals that were stored in envelopes. They’re displayed alongside select works from the Grajales gallery’s eye-catching design collection, with pieces by artists like Michele Oka Doner, Hechizoo, and Aaron Poritz.
Installation view of “Woven Together,” at Cristina Grjales in Tribeca. Image courtesy Cristina Grajales.
It’s clear that Berkus and Marcelo have worked through and are still processing their grief and loss. As Marcelo eloquently put it, both in exhibit text and in a moving short film, shot in Sri Lanka: “I’ve come to accept my brother’s death, but I refuse to let his art die with him. It took me 15 years to reach that conclusion, and since then, I’ve been dedicated to keeping Fernando’s art alive.”
As for the public’s response to the exhibition, gallerist Cristina Grjales said, “The opening of our exhibition ‘Woven Together: Reflections’ was magical and the response to Marcelo’s work and Nate’s insightful and meaningful curation has been wonderful… you could see how people were captured by the story and wanted to celebrate Fernando’s legacy.”
Marcelo Bengoechea working on a woven photograph. Image courtesy Marcelo Bengoechea.
We asked Berkus to tell us about the experience of curating the show and seeing the ensuing viewer reaction. “I often think about the trajectory of my life and how fundamentally I was changed for having known and loved Fernando,”  said Berkus.  A decade ago, he married fellow designer Jeremiah Brent and they are currently raising two children.
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“I look at my husband and our two children, who have helped me live with his memory—and in my love for my own family, I recognize the foundation that Fernando helped to build. In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, those closest to me said that their greatest wish for me would be that one day, I would be able to look back on my time with Fernando and remember only the good things and not be focused solely on the tragic way our story ended. That time has come, and I’ve found a clear appreciation for the intensity of the gifts that he gave me.”
Installation view of “Woven Together” at Cristina Grajales in Tribeca. Image courtesy Cristina Grajales.
The opening night in late October saw a stellar turnout and featured a conversation between Nate Berkus, Marcelo Bengoechea, Wendy Goodman, and Cristina Grajales.
During the conversation, Berkus remarked: “It’s hard to believe the Indian Ocean Tsunami was 20 years ago, Fernando would never have imagined how his brother Marcelo carries on the beauty of his work today. Standing in this room surrounded by Fernando’s singular vision is spiritually, emotionally, and physically yet another treasured full-circle moment. Lucky me.”
“Woven Together: Reflections” is on view at Cristina Grajales at 50 Vestry Street, in Tribeca, through January 30, 2025. More

Remember when you could throw your phone after sending a risky text without worrying it would break? Long before sleek glass rectangles rendered Nokia’s bold and durable silhouettes obsolete, designers working for the pioneering electronics firm played with all the potential shapes that our brave, unnerving present could someday take.
To honor Nokia’s foundational contributions to the rise of cell phones (and contemporary consumer culture), Finland’s Aalto University is launching the Nokia Design Archive—a database of 700 Nokia sketches, prototypes, and more hailing from the 1990s through 2017. The online resource will go live on January 15, 2025.
Dale Frye (designer), Sketches and notes for a clamshell phone (page4), 1996. Photo: Nokia Design Archive, Aalto University Archives.
Nokia started off in 1865 as a pulp mill, then started generating electricity in 1902. The company’s electronics division formed in 1967. 15 years later, Nokia released its first car phone, and in 1984, its first mobile phone. But, it wasn’t until 1987 that Nokia released one of the world’s first hand-held cell phones—which soon acquired global notoriety, and the nickname “Gorba,” after paps spotted Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev using one to place a call to Moscow from Helsinki.
Only the advent of Apple’s iPhone could unseat Nokia 20 years later. Microsoft acquired the ailing company in 2013, and subsequently sold it off in 2016.
“Mangophone” (Nokia7600) surrounded by designer Tej Chauhan’s sketches. Photo: AleskiPoutanen/AaltoUniversity.
That’s precisely when former Nokia designer and current Aalto University professor Anna Valtonen secured the database’s full 20,000 pieces of source material. That year, a Microsoft Mobile employee called her and said, “You know those archives you were interested in? I’m about to put the boxes out in the street by the dumpster,” according to Aalto University’s international editor of communications services Sarah Hudson.
“This was how a treasure trove of real-life objects including the original ‘brick’ and ‘banana’ phones and never-before-seen handmade prototypes, alongside digitally curated sketches, eye-opening market profiling, interviews, videos and presentations made its way into the hands of researchers,” Hudson told me over email. Valtonen secured the appropriate licensing, then hopped in a van to pick up the goods.
Render of virtual reality glasses. Photo: Nokia Design Archive, Aalto University Archives.
Over email, Michel Nader Sayun—one of the many experts who helped build the Nokia Design Archive—said it took their team two years to catalog the trove for digital consumption. Historian Kaisu Savola took the lead on determining which pieces proved most interesting.
“There is still a lot of work to do,” Nader Sayun wrote. “Thousands of files in the archive have not been catalogued.” Plus, several former Nokia designers have since donated their personal collections, adding to the 959GB of content already on hand.
Different colourways of Nokia 5110, 1990s. Photo: Nokia Design Archive, Aalto University Archives.
The database pairs iconic models like the Nokia3310 “Brick” with lesser known designs straight out of aughts-era sci-fi, such as the Nokia7600 “Mango” phone. A slide-up phone featuring accents from Italian fashion designer Giambattista Valli appears, alongside renderings of early wearable tech. There’s an unnamed egg-shaped phone that never even reached the market. It’s enough to make you yearn for an era where everything looked a little less… boring.
3rd Generation Mobile Concept Rendering, unknown designer, 1998. Photo: Nokia Design Archive, Aalto University Archives.
“Designers were having fun and finding inspirations all around,” Nader Sayun observed of the disparity between then and now. “Moreover, customization, and segmentation were very important values for Nokia Design.”
So, while cell phone users can’t turn back time, at least we can now properly admire the past. More

A bright and cheerful mural just brought a little extra color to sunny Miami Beach, courtesy of the city and artist Jen Stark. Sundial Spectrum is the seventh work in “Elevate Española,” a public art series that launched during Miami Art Week in 2022.
The project decorates not only the walls along Española Way, but suspends art above the street, dangling between the palm trees.
“It’s beautiful, and it’s such an honor to have Jen Stark. She has strong roots here,” Lissette Garcia Arrogante, the director of the city’s Tourism and Culture Department, told me at the project’s unveiling. “Her grandfather was a resident of Miami Beach, and he was also an artist.… and now she’s come back and really left her mark with this amazing mural.”
Stark, who lives in Los Angeles but was born and raised in Miami, has added her signature psychedelic rainbow-hued designs to the street’s white walls, while creating reflective and translucent Plexiglas sculptures to hang overhead.
Jen Stark, Sundial Spectrum (2024). The seventh work in “Elevate Española,” a public art series on Española Way in Miami Beach. Photo by Peter Vahan, courtesy of City of Miami Beach Tourism and Culture.
“My work is inspired by color theory and nature. I choose a lot of geometric shapes, like fractals in nature and plant growth,” Stark said. “For this one, I wanted it to seem like an abstract sundial, where the colors will change throughout the day depending on where the sun is in the sky.”
When the Miami sun shines—as it typically does—the light casts colorful shadows across the street, adding an unexpected dimension to the site-specific installation.
Jen Stark painting Sundial Spectrum (2024). Photo by Peter Vahan, courtesy of City of Miami Beach Tourism and Culture.
“I’ve always wanted to do a public work on South Beach, so this was the perfect moment, and I’m glad that they picked me for it this year,” Stark added. “Public art is my favorite kind of art. It levels the playing field, and it adds beauty to the city.”
The city first installed public art on Española Way during Miami Art Week in 2021, with Little Cloud Sky, a friendly installation of floating inflated clouds from FriendsWithYou.
Jen Stark, Sundial Spectrum (2024). Photo by Rudy Duboué, courtesy of City of Miami Beach Tourism and Culture.
Española Way West was the first commercial development on the beach in the 1920s, and was originally home to artist studios. In 2017, the city turned it into a pedestrian-only street. The idea for “Elevate Española” was that a public art installation could help draw visitors down the corridor from the beach on Ocean Drive.
“We’re looking for work that is vibrant, that is going to help bring life and and beauty to this corridor, and spark visitors and our residents to come and hang out in this area,” Garcia Arrogante said. “When we reached out to the property owners, they were very open to having an activation from the city and presenting amazing temporary works of art on their walls. It’s the city’s first private-public partnership when it comes to contemporary art.”
Jen Stark, Sundial Spectrum (2024). Photo by Rudy Duboué, courtesy of City of Miami Beach Tourism and Culture.
Sundial Spectrum is just one of the ways the city of Miami Beach participates in Miami Art Week. For the fifth year, the city hosted “No Vacancy, Miami Beach,” with public artworks and site-specific installations by 12 artists, each at a different Miami Beach hotel.
Participating artists each have a shot at a $10,000 prize, selected by public vote and presented by the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, and a $25,000 juried prize.
dNASAb, Faux Ecologies + Augmented Visions of the Micro-verse (2024), on view in “No Vacancy, Miami Beach” on “The Egg” at the Betsy, Miami Beach. Photo by Monica McGivern, courtesy of Miami Beach Arts and Culture.
Among the highlights was a haunting display by [dNASAb] at the Betsy, displayed on “The Egg,” a spherical orb sculpture that connects the third floor of the hotel’s two buildings in dramatic fashion. Titled Faux Ecologies + Augmented Visions of the Micro-verse, the A.I.-powered piece is trained on the artist’s paintings. It is an imagined microscopic trip inside a water droplet, offering a message about the dangers of microplastics, with a message reading “The Climate Can’t Wait.”
The city also let residents vote to purchase one artwork from Art Basel Miami Beach for its public art collection, through the Legacy Purchase Program. The Miami Beach Art in Public Places Committee chose works by william cordova, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, and Nina Surel as this year’s finalists, with a $50,000 budget.
The winner was Miami-based, Argentine-born Surel, who is represented by local gallery Spinello Projects, and her monumental 100-piece stoneware ceramic wall relief Allegory of Florida. The work casts Florida as a goddess of feminine fertility and matriarchal figure surrounded by symbols of the local flora and fauna.
Nina Surel, Allegory of Florida. Photo courtesy of the artist and Spinello Projects, Miami.
Surel joins a select group that includes Ebony G. Patterson, Amoako Boafo, Sanford Biggers, Farah Al Qasimi, Juana Valdés—also represented by Spinello Projects—and Anneke Eussen. Each winning piece goes on permanent view in the Miami Beach Convention Center, where the fair is held each year.
“It’s my pleasure to represent and place the second work into the Legacy Collection by a woman artist,” Anthony Spinello, the artist’s dealer, said in a statement. “This acquisition and recognition hits differently considering women artists are still underrepresented, undervalued, and especially at a time when women’s rights are being challenged.”
“Jen Stark: Sundial Spectrum” is on view on Española Way between Washington and Collins Avenues, Miami Beach, Florida, December 3, 2024–February 9, 2025.
“No Vacancy, Miami Beach” is on view at Avalon Hotel Miami, 700 Ocean Drive; the Betsy Hotel, 1440 Ocean Drive; Cadillac Hotel and Beach Club, 3925 Collins Avenue; the Catalina Hotel & Beach Club, 1732 Collins Avenue; Esmé Miami Beach Hotel, 1438 Washington Avenue; Faena Miami Beach, 3201 Collins Avenue; Hotel Croydon Miami Beach, 3720 Collins Avenue; International Inn on the Bay, 2301 Normandy Drive; Kimpton Hotel Palomar South Beach, 1750 Alton Road; Kimpton Surfcomber Hotel, 1717 Collins Avenue; Royal Palm South Beach, 1545 Collins Avenue; Sherry Frontenac Hotel, 6565 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, Florida, November 14–December 12, 2024.  More