Curated

Curated DEC 21

2021

IN +PIACNDTYUWRAREHOSL
REVELATION

Contents

VOL. 1 C
12 . 2021

SACKLER GALLERY On The Cover
From “2022:a year in pictures” a
photo of an Ethiopian rape victim
by Lindsay Addario

4

Metropolitan Museum drops the Sackler family name from its galleries in the wake of the opiod crisis
Gabriella Angeleti 9 December 2021 / The Art Newspaper

STALONE EXIBIT 7

Actor turned artists opens third musuem show in Germany with experimental works painted almost 60
years ago Anny Shaw 6 December 2021 / The Art Newspaper

ANDY WARHOLrevelation 13

The Brooklyn Museum shows how Catholicism seeped into his art, complicating our view of the Pop
master. Karen Rosenberg 2 December 2021 / The New York TImes

2021 a year in pictures 19

The most poingnat, and beautiful photos in a historic year. Featuring photos from national geographics
best photographers Susan Goldburg 9 December 2021 / National Geographic

HOW TO: GALLERY WALL 30

How to stage your own art / By Jaime Lowe 14 December 2021 / The New York Times

4METROPOLITAN
DROPS SACKLER
NAME FROM ITS
GALLERIES
The Met and the descendants of Mortimer
The announcement comes as museums Sackler and Raymond Sackler, the brothers
worldwide sever ties with members of the who helped established the multi-generational
Sackler family over their role in the opioid crisis Sackler fortune, said in a joint statement that
“we believe this to be in the best interest of
the museum and the important mission that
it serves”, and that “the earliest of these gifts
were made almost 50 years ago, and now we
are passing the torch to others who might wish
to step forward to support the museum”.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York In October last year, the US Department of Jus-
will remove the Sackler family name from its tice announced that members of the Sackler
galleries. The museum previously contained family involved with Purdue Pharma agreed
seven exhibition spaces, including a popular to pay $225m in civil penalties to resolve
wing housing the ancient Egyptian Temple of allegations that the aggressive marketing of
Dendur, named for members of the Sackler Oxycontin caused doctors to overprescribe the
family. medication. The settlement also cleared the
Sacklers from claims that assets from Purdue
The announcement comes as a wave of Pharma were transferred to holding companies
institutions, including the Musée du Louvre, and trusts to protect the company from a bank-
the Solomon R. Guggenheim, the Tate and the ruptcy case. In settling that bankruptcy case,
Victoria and Albert Museum, cut ties with the the Sacklers, many of their associates and their
Sackler family following years-long protests network of trusts and companies were granted
against Purdue Pharma, the company owned immunity from future opioid lawsuits.
in principal by members of the family. The firm
manufactured the painkiller Oxycontin and has The artist Nan Goldin, who has suffered from
been accused of fueling the opioid epidemic in opioid addiction, has led many demonstrations
the US. (According to the Center for Disease against the Sacklers with the activist group
Control and Prevention, opioids were involved Pain (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now)
in nearly 50,000 overdose deaths in 2019, or since 2018, including a protest where demon-
70.6% of all deaths in the US that year.) strators threw hundreds of prescription bottles
into the moat surrounding the Temple

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STALLONE’S NEW 7
EXPERIMENTAL
PAINTINGS ON VIEW
IN GERMANY The Rocky and Rambo actor-turned-artist

Sylvester Stallone has unveiled a series of
paintings he created nearly 60 years ago and
would sell for $5 in order to pay for the bus
fare to school and back. The works—part of
an exhibition which opened at the Osthaus
Museum in Hagen, Germany over the week-

Actor-turned-artist opens third museum end—have been hidden in Stalone’s wardrobe
show in Germany with experimental ever since.
works painted almost 60 years ago

Speaking at the press conference on 4 Decem-
ber, the artist, who turned 75 earlier this year,
says he used to buy cheap canvases for $2 and
then sell them on for $5. “I had a few left, but
I’m sort of embarrassed by [them] because
the style was quite different […], so I had them
in my closet,” Stalone says. “There was no
pretext or scholarly schooling, it was just paint
flowing on canvas with a lot of emotion, and
they haven’t been seen close to 55-60 years.
They’ve been in my closet, so it’s great to take
them out.”

The exhibition spans these early works, which
he signed “Mike Stallone”, to paintings made
today. Several self-portraits are also included
such as Finding Rocky (1975), which predates
the movie script and the film. As Mathias
Rastorfer, the chief executive and co-owner of
Galerie Gmurzynska, which has represented
the artist for a decade, puts it: “Stallone is a
very visual person, his ideas form visually and
painting has been the most personal intricate
part of him. When skill and imagination meet
longevity it is the real deal.”

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Although art fuelled his cinematic work, for
financial reasons, Stallone was forced to
choose writing and then acting over paint-
ing, quickly making his fortune in the movie
industry. After filming Rocky, Stallone lived for
a period in Miami, where he acquired works by
Francis Bacon and Monet. Other artists in his
collection include Picasso, Gerhard Richter or
Anselm Kiefer.

“It was just As for the market for his own works, Stallone is
paint flowing on yet to hit the big time. Prices at auction range
canvas with a lot from $1,500 to $3,500, though Rastorfer says
prices for past works can “go up to the tens of
of emotion” thousands”, depending on the subject matter.
Given that Stallone is worth an estimated
$400m, such values are unlikely to bother the
artist, who laments to the Hollywood Reporter:
“You know, maybe I should have been a paint-
er. It sure would have meant a lot less stress.”

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9

Andy

Warhol
Revelation
The Brooklyn Museum shows how Catholicism seeped into
his art, complicating our view of the Pop master.

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REVELATION10

yd“It wasnjust AAlthoughartfuelledhiscinematicwork,for
financial reasons, Stallone was forced to
choose writing and then acting over paint-
ing, quickly making his fortune in the movie
industry. After filming Rocky, Stallone lived for
a period in Miami, where he acquired works by
Francis Bacon and Monet. Other artists in his
collection include Picasso, Gerhard Richter or
Anselm Kiefer.
As for the market for his own works, Stallone is
yet to hit the big time. Prices at auction range
from $1,500 to $3,500, though Rastorfer says
prices for past works can “go up to the tens of
paint flowing on thousands”, depending on the subject matter.
Given that Stallone is worth an estimated
canvas with a lot $400m, such values are unlikely to bother the
artist, who laments to the Hollywood Reporter:
of emotion” “You know, maybe I should have been a paint-
er. It sure would have meant a lot less stress.”

noitaleveR

otni depees msicilohtaC woh swohs muesuM nylkoorB ehT
.retsam poP eht fo weiv ruo gnitacilpmoc ,tra sih

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REVELATION12FOR WARHOL, FAITH
AND SEXUALITY
INTERTWINE Art historian John Richardson, speaking to the

glittering crowd at Andy Warhol’s memorial
service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1987, said
of the artist’s Catholic faith: “Those of you
who knew him in circumstances that were the
antithesis of spiritual may be surprised that
such a side existed. But exist it did, and it’s key
to the artist’s psyche.”

“Andy Warhol: Revelation,” a paradigm-shift-
ing exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, takes
this eulogy and runs with it, finding ample
evidence of religious belief in Warhol’s pub-
lic-facing art as well as the more private self
observed by Richardson. It explores Warhol’s
Catholicism in all its anxiety and complexity
— with full attention paid to his life as a gay
man and to the secular consumer objects and
celebrities of his Pop Art.

These conflicts play out his lesser-known
works on view, like the 1985-6 painting “The
Last Supper (Be a Somebody With a Body),”
which merges Leonardo da Vinci’s Chris with
a buff fitness model from an advertisement,
and in new readings of such familiar objects
as boxes screen-printed with logo for Heinz
ketchup (here linked to the bread and wine of
Catholic ritual).

Installation view, “Andy Warhol: The show reflects an intriguing new empha-
Revelation” at the Brooklyn sis, among curators and scholars, on a more
biographical and identity-driven reading of
Museum. Left, two silkscreens Warhol: more person, less persona. The Whit-
titled “Cross” (1981-82); right, ney’s 2018 blockbuster “Andy Warhol: From
A to B and Back Again” gave considerable
room to the artist’s early, explicitly homoerotic
drawings; as Holland Cotter wrote in The New
York Times, the inclusion of these works made
us think about “how and to what degree his
art queered — to use a term from academic
theory — received versions of American

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REVELATION

1A4ndy Warhol’s baptism certificate

is in a section of the show called
“Immigrant Roots and Religion,”
along with a prayer book passed
from mother to son, an array of
crosses preserved by Warhol,
religious objects, a Christmas card
he made, and a letter affirming
donations to New York churches.

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REVELATION

culture: questioned their validity, revealed sometime during the 1950s and possibly
their contradictions, turned them inside out.” related to the holiday advertising campaigns
Similarly, the traveling survey “Andy Warhol: he worked on as a commercial illustrator.
Lifetimes,” opening at the Aspen Art Museum
this week, “casts a queer lens over the artist” In general, the exhibition (organized by José
(per the exhibition website) and foregrounds Carlos Diaz, chief curator of the Andy Warhol
archival material “to examine the artist’s life Museum in Pittsburgh, where the show
parallel to his work.” debuted in 2019, and overseen in Brooklyn by
the associate curator Carmen Hermo) relies
Warhol, born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh on more obscure material from the Warhol
to parents who had immigrated from Slovakia, Museum’s collection, including works that
grew up in the city’s Ruska Dolina neighbor- might be considered preparatory or unfinished.
hood (where the Byzantine Catholic church, One fascinating example is a 1981 series of
St. John Chrysostom, was a hub for the mainly photographs and drawings of female models
Carpatho-Rusyn working-class population). breastfeeding their children, for an abandoned
He attended services with his mother every painting project titled “Modern Madonnas”
weekend, where he saw, among other icons, (made in collaboration with the photogra-
paintings of the apostles Saint John, Saint pher Christopher Makos). The curators offer
Andrew, Saint Thomas, and Saint Peter; a revealing quotation from Warhol, who was
on loan from the church for this exhibition, apparently worried that these images would
they anchor an opening gallery of religious not be well received: “I just know this series is
ephemera from Warhol’s upbringing. Nearby going to be a problem. It’s just too strange a
are delicate drawings of angels by the artist’s thing, mothers and babies and breastfeeding.”
mother, Julia Warhola, whose influence on
his faith — well into his adult life, when she Warhol’s abiding interest in bodily fluids and
continued to live with him — cannot be overes- processes receives further scrutiny in a section
timated. (In a 1966 article in Esquire, she called of the show titled “The Catholic Body,” which
him a “good religious boy.”) is the exhibition’s strongest. Here, the tension
between Warhol’s Catholic upbringing and his
Warhol also would have been familiar with the adult life as an openly gay man plays out in
gold-ground icon paintings of the Byzantine small cotton and linen canvases stained with
Catholic tradition, to which his paintings of abstract blobs of semen and urine, as well as
Marilyn Monroe on a gilded background are the aforementioned bodybuilder Jesus paint-
often compared. The show could have used ing. Speaking to this work and others from
one of these luminous works — the Museum the early 1980s, the curators make a powerful
of Modern Art’s “Gold Marilyn” comes to mind connection between Warhol’s “intertwined
— although it does include a delicate gold-leaf faith and sexuality” and his well-documented
collage of a Nativity scene, created by Warhol fears of AIDS, citing recent scholarship by the

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REVELATION

“More than a demonstration
of reverence for Leonardo’s

masterwork, or even an
unveiling of his own Catholic
faith, Warhol’s ‘Last Supper’
paintings are a confession of

the conflict he felt between
his faith and his sexuality”

Warhol Museum curator Jessica Beck.Warhol Leonardo, but Beck makes a compelling case
was haunted by the vulnerability of his own for them as agonized expressions of grief and
body, particularly after he was shot in 1968 fear in response to the AIDS crisis (particularly
during an assassination attempt by the Factory after the disease killed Warhol’s boyfriend Jon
member Valerie Solanas, and his fear often Gould in 1986).
plays out in Catholic imagery. In Richard Ave-
don’s famous 1969 photograph — a close-up “More than a demonstration of reverence for
of Warhol’s torso, crisscrossed with scars from Leonardo’s masterwork, or even an unveiling of
his surgery after the shooting — he becomes his own Catholic faith, Warhol’s ‘Last Supper’
a Saint Sebastian, the Christian martyr who is paintings are a confession of the conflict he
shown tied to a tree and pierced by arrows in felt between his faith and his sexuality,” she
many images from Western art. writes, “and ultimately a plea for salvation
from the suffering to which the homosexual
His fears of illness, imperfection and bodily community was subjected during these years.”
decay reached a kind of apex in his late paint- (Her essay, which first appeared in the Whitney
ings based on Leonardo’s “Last Supper” — the exhibition’s catalog, is not included in the small
final series he exhibited before his death from book for “Andy Warhol: Revelation” but is avail-
cardiac arrest a day after undergoing gallblad- able online and should be required reading.)
der surgery. These works were shown to great
fanfare in Milan in 1987, in a monastery just Just how Catholic was Warhol, in his own
across the street from the Leonardo mural — eyes? We know from his diaries that he went
an event represented, in Brooklyn, by a striking to church often, but sometimes just for “ten
gallery of two large-scale paintings and a or five minutes.” Blake Gopnik, in his recent
sampling of the popular, sometimes kitschy biography of Warhol, disputes the notion that
reproductions on which Warhol based them. Warhol was a fervent Catholic. “Throughout his
life, Warhol was certainly a regular churchgoer,
Previous commentary on Warhol’s “Last at least off and on,” he notes. “But there’s no
Supper” paintings has tended to focus on ideas way to look into the artist’s heart and know
about celebrity and artistic copying, which whether this shows deep religiosity or instead
are certainly present anytime Warhol riffs on a mix of aesthetics and of a quite practical

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REVELATION superstition — after all, he also wore crystals reel from an unrealized project, intended for a
to ward off disease, and it can’t be right to bill Vatican-sponsored ecumenical pavilion for the
that as less sensible or normal or less effec- 1968 HemisFair (the official World’s Fair of that
tive than Christian prayer.”Certainly Warhol year) in San Antonio. Warhol’s original idea,
was irreverent enough to make works like the commissioned by the Menil family and funded
painting “Christ, $9.98,” based on a newspaper by the Catholic Church, was to show the sun
advertisement for a night light shaped like setting at various locations across the country.
Jesus. And he was not afraid to be critical of For reasons that remain unclear, the pavilion
the role the Catholic Church played in history, was never completed; Warhol then incorpo-
as seen in a series called “Guns, Knives, and rated the footage into his 25-hour 1967 film
Crosses” made in 1981 for an exhibition in “****(Four Stars).”
Madrid that makes explicit connections between
the crucifix and instruments of violence. In the approximately 15-minute excerpt at
the Brooklyn Museum, the sun sinks into the
After viewing “Andy Warhol: Revelation,” Pacific Ocean somewhere along the California
though, it’s hard to argue with the idea that coast as the singer Nico slowly recites cryptic
Catholicism mattered to Warhol. Its rituals, lines about life and death, light and darkness.
structures, and even some of its beliefs seeped It’s not, on first impression, a very Warhol-like
into his art, and complicate our understanding work — the sunset’s deep purple bands have
of it — and of him. This comes across with earned the film comparisons to another Menil
particular sensitivity in a mesmerizing film commission, the Rothko Chapel. But it is

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2021Ayearinpictures
Covid / Climate / Conflict / Conservation C

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whether this shows deep religiosity or instead This comes across with particular sensitivity
a mix of aesthetics and of a quite practical in a mesmerizing film reel from an unrealized
superstition — after all, he also wore crystals project, intended for a Vatican-sponsored
to ward off disease, and it can’t be right to bill ecumenical pavilion for the 1968 HemisFair
that as less sensible or normal or less effective (the official World’s Fair of that year) in San
than Christian prayer.” Antonio. Warhol’s original idea, commissioned
by the Menil family and funded by the Catholic
Certainly Warhol was irreverent enough to Church, was to show the sun setting at various
make works like the painting “Christ, $9.98,” locations across the country. For reasons that
based on a newspaper advertisement for a remain unclear, the pavilion was never com-
night light shaped like Jesus. And he was not pleted; Warhol then incorporated the footage
afraid to be critical of the role the Catholic into his 25-hour 1967 film “****(Four Stars).”
Church played in history, as seen in a series
called “Guns, Knives, and Crosses” made in In the approximately 15-minute excerpt at
1981 and 1982 for an exhibition in Madrid that the Brooklyn Museum, the sun sinks into the
makes explicit connections between the cruci- Pacific Ocean somewhere along the California
fix and other instruments of violence. coast as the singer Nico slowly recites cryptic
lines about life and death, light and darkness.
After viewing “Andy Warhol: Revelation,” It’s not, on first impression, a very Warhol-like
though, it’s hard to argue with the idea that work — the sunset’s deep purple bands have
Catholicism mattered to Warhol. Its rituals, earned the film comparisons to another Menil
structures, and even some of its beliefs seeped commission, the Rothko Chapel. But it is
into his art, and complicate our understanding deeply, convincingly spiritual.

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202122 COVID

It was supposed to be a triumphant year, the summer. Scientists making discoveries and
year we defeated COVID-19. Revolutionary adjusting recommendations aroused suspicion.
vaccines—developed at breakneck speed from Misinformation and snake oil spread as rapidly
genetic technology decades in the making— as the virus. Vaccines were denounced as a
were rolling out, ushering in the largest global form of government control; masks a violation
immunization campaign in history. Lockdowns, of personal liberty. In much of the world, by
isolation, masking, and sparsely attended contrast, immunizations were simply, tragically,
funerals would give way to open borders,
family reunions, and rebounding economies. As we squandered the opportunity to reach
herd immunity, the virus took advantage.
What we didn’t know, though, was that the SARS-CoV-2 multiplied, yielding countless
vaccination drive would falter. In the United mutations. With each genetic change came
States, millions spurned vaccines despite a a chance for the virus to grow deadlier—to
deadly winter surge followed by another in the dodge the immune system, infect cells more

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With a sunset’s fading light behind them, workers from a funeral home in 2021
Huancavelica wait for the end of a service to move a coffin into a niche at the
city’s general cemetery. Although COVID-19 death counts are unreliable, Peru
has one of the world’s highest per capita death tolls. In the rural area around
Huancavelica, the pandemic has claimed more than 1,160 lives

easily, trigger more severe disease, spread around the clock. By July, Delta was becom-
across borders. We were at the mercy of high- ing the dominant variant worldwide, and by
speed natural selection. September, it had pushed U.S. deaths past the
toll from the 1918 Spanish flu, making COVID-
Thus began the rise of the variants: Alpha, in 19 the deadliest pandemic in the nation’s
the United Kingdom; Beta, in South Africa; history. More than 750,000 Americans had
Gamma, in Brazil; and then, from India, Delta. died by early November. But the coronavirus
More infectious and possibly more lethal than has hit some communities harder: Indigenous,
any of its predecessors, Delta swept through Hispanic, and Black Americans have died
the world’s second most populous country at the highest rates.The pandemic laid bare
with relentless ferocity, overwhelming health- another glaring health disparity, the global
care workers, packing hospitals with feverish, vaccine divide: an abundance of doses in
oxygen-starved patients, and sending bodies countries where people didn’t want them and
to crematoria where funeral pyres blazed a shortage, or absence, in those where people

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202124CLIMATE

During the decades-long struggle to forestall
climate change, some moments looked like
watersheds at the time. In 1992, with much
fanfare, the world’s nations signed a treaty in
Rio de Janeiro promising action; in 2015, after
contentious negotiations, they pledged in Paris
to adopt national plans to limit greenhouse gas
emissions. Yet global carbon emissions from
fossil fuels kept rising—until 2020, when they
fell as much as 7 percent as a result of lower
fossil fuel usage during COVID-19 lockdowns.

So does 2021 finally mark a turning point in
public opinion on climate? National Geograph-
ic reporter Alejandra Borunda and I spoke
with two expert observers: Katharine Hayhoe,
a climate scientist at Texas Tech University,
chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy, and
author of Saving Us, and Katharine Wilkinson,
a best-selling writer, podcaster, and co-editor
(with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson) of All We Can
Save, a book of essays on climate by women.

KUNZIG: Alejandra, the weather this year kept
finding fresh ways to appall us.

Swarms of locusts descended on East Africa BORUNDA: It’s just a continuation of a trend
from 2019 into 2021, destroying crops in a region toward more and more extremes. Here in
where millions of people are at risk of starvation. California, it became clear pretty early [in 2021]
that it was going to be a very dry and probably
The outbreaks were driven by unusually strong very hot year. We were seeing streams drying
cyclones that dumped torrential rains, creating up, baby salmon dying, and people’s wells
drying up. When the heat started to come, we
perfect conditions for the insects. saw absolutely unprecedented heat waves
across the Pacific Northwest. Then, of course,
the fires started, which is another thing we’ve
gotten all too used to.

C And that’s just the American West. Things hap-
pening across the planet: devastating floods in
Europe and China that took hundreds of lives
and, during Hurricane Ida, from the Gulf Coast
all the way to the Northeast. Every year as
climate reporters, we’re cataloging disasters.

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CONFLICT27 2021

Even during a public health catastrophe Secretary-General of the United Nations Antó-
one that threatened everyone on nio Guterres called for an immediate global
the planet conflicts raged ceasefire when the pandemic began.

“It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown
and focus together on the true fight of our
lives,” he said.

His plea went unheeded. Even during a public
health catastrophe—one that threatened every-
one on the planet—conflicts raged.

Two years into the pandemic, dozens of
ongoing conflicts blaze around the world. The
Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project
reports that since 2016 more than 100,000
people have died each year in tens of thou-
sands of battles, riots, explosions, protests, and
violence targeting civilians.

In 2021 the Taliban swept through Afghanistan
and back into power after 20 years. Hamas
sent rockets into Israel, which responded with
air strikes into the Gaza Strip. Ethiopia’s war
on its northern state of Tigray sowed a deadly
famine.

In the United States, insurrectionists stormed
the Capitol, and killings by police, especially
of Black Americans, drove protesters back into
the streets. Haitian migrants escaped strife,
hunger, and natural disaster in their homeland,
only to encounter violence at the U.S. border.

The details of conflicts vary: They take place C
in different countries within different cultures,
and people fight over different things. In
Afghanistan it’s the push to remake the country
into a conservative Islamic state. In Myanmar,
it’s the military’s unwillingness to cede power.
In Israel and the Palestinian territories, to put it
simplistically, it’s about who can live where. In
Ethiopia it’s the combustion of years of political
resentment. In the United States it’s about who
has the right to power and safety, as well as

202128 CONSERVATION

As the family of 16 Asian elephants started sprawling city of eight million people. Along
moving north, no one knew where they were the way they became global celebrities—and
heading, or why. At first, no one thought much presented a conundrum for government
about it. Elephants sometimes stray beyond officials. The elephants were racking up about
the boundaries of Xishuangbanna National a half million dollars in damage, and there was
Nature Reserve, in southwestern China’s the ever present risk of an elephant charging a
Yunnan Province, but they always return. curious onlooker.The simple answer would be
to tranquilize the giant mammals and transport
Not this time. them back to the reserve.

Over the course of 16 months they crop-raid- But that would be risky for this group, especial-
ed, mud-bathed, and road-tripped 300 miles ly the three calves. Instead, officials mobilized
north to the provincial capital of Kunming, a an emergency task force to keep everyone, ele-

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Members of a wedding party made up of local tribesmen loyal to Yemen’s 2021
government visit the ruins of the Awwam Temple to take photos. The ancient
temple is one of the most important surviving monuments of the Kingdom of Saba.
to the third century A.D. and has been linked by some historians to the biblical
land of Sheba. The antiquitie remain at risk as Iran-backed Houthi rebels continue
their fight to take over Marib.

phants and humans alike, safe. Drones tracked searching for an undiscovered species of
the elephants’ every move. Tons of corn, frog on never before climbed mountains, or
pineapples, and bananas were used as bait to building new museums, or stuffing mortar into
lure them away from towns. Electric fences, the eroding cracks of Stonehenge’s prehistoric
road barriers, and new pathways steered them megaliths.
toward safer routes. These measures ultimately
involved tens of thousands of people at a cost But conserving our natural and human her-
equal to hundreds of thousands of dollars. itage—like efforts to cure disease and stop
war—is about nurturing good in the world. We
In a year torn by climate change, conflict, and need wildlife and ancient artifacts, just as we
COVID-19, some might argue that going to need health and peace. They’re the backdrop
extremes to keep a family of elephants safe against which our lives take place, and they
was wasteful. They might say the same about help us make sense of our own stories. They

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HAOGWALTLOEHRAYNG“Ilovetryingtofindpiecesthatdialogue—

either in terms of textures, in terms of colors,
in terms of what is represented — so that

WALL they feel connected with each other,” says
Anne-Laure Lemaitre, an art adviser who has
recently curated shows at Swivel Gallery and
BY JAIME LOWE Kapp Kapp in New York. “You can have an
DEC. 14, 2021 abstract piece that is super-textured and a very
precise drawing, but they both have something
that connects them, like green and orange
tones.” Or two portraits might be very different
in feel, yet “they kind of talk to each other.”

But if you mix all types of media, like paint-
ing, photography or sculpture, or all types of
framing, there’s a risk that the group can look
a little confusing and be “a little rough on the
eye,” Lemaitre says. She suggests trying a
group of all black-and-white artworks or of
pieces that are body-centric, that include, for
example, a hand or profile.

After choosing the pieces you want to hang,
shuffle them around on the floor until you like a
composition. Start at the bottom, in the center,
and work up and out. Don’t center the biggest
piece of art. “It can create a massive focal
point and everything else becomes almost
peripheral,” Lemaitre says. One way to organize
a cluster is by keeping the spacing between
pieces consistent; another is to line up the
tops, bottoms or sides of several pieces.

Once you’ve settled on an arrangement that
you like, cut out pieces of brown paper that
match the sizes of the things you want to hang
and tape them to the wall. This, Lemaitre says,
lets you “get a feel for the pieces” — that is,
check the layout before you put them up.

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