An Evolving Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Teams Back Up with Moshe Safdie to Link the Past and the Future
The beauty of the site is part of the experience.” So notes architect Moshe Safdie, reflecting on the genesis of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. When, some two decades ago, philanthropist Alice Walton tapped him to design the project, the two began by walking the landscape: over 100 acres of pristine Ozark forest in Bentonville, Arkansas. In doing so, Safdie formed a singular vision of interconnected pavilions erected above and around a network of ponds—what has become both a global pilgrimage site and beacon of local creativity since opening in 2011. Now, Safdie and Walton have expanded upon that vision with the completion of a 114,000-square-foot addition, debuting to the public on June 6.
Spanning new galleries, educational spaces, a café, and more, the project responds less to a specific need than to bold ambitions, as Crystal Bridges has built its collections of American craft and Indigenous art, with a continuous goal toward greater community engagement. “Crystal Bridges was never built just to be a container for art, but rather as an artery of civic life,” says Olivia Walton, the museum’s board chair. “We are redefining what an art museum can be in the 21st century.” Adds executive director Rod Bigelow: “It’s a welcoming spirit that guides everything we do.”
Connected seamlessly with the existing architecture, the addition continues Safdie’s signature network of light-filled volumes north, the latest structures framing an outdoor splash pad for visitors. New galleries include a dedicated flexible space for special exhibitions, including its inaugural Keith Haring show. Meanwhile, the permanent collection has been reinstalled according to themes not chronology, so that destination works (Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter, Nari Ward’s We the People) appear alongside exquisite geological specimens and new acquisitions. “Whose voice isn’t here? Whose perspective isn’t here?” muses Olivia, reflecting on the expanding curatorial approach. “Alice is always asking who is missing from the story.”
Art, architecture, landscape, the public—all come together at Crystal Bridges. “The most fascinating thing to me is people-watching,” says Safdie, recounting the international mix one can always find perusing the galleries and exploring the grounds. “Crystal Bridges really feels like a place of community.” —Sam Cochran
Bridging the Gilded Age and Tomorrow, Ken Fulk Refreshes a San Francisco Icon
Where should I stay in San Francisco? That, according to Ken Fulk, has long been too tough a question. “We had grand hotels but not great hotels,” notes the local AD100 luminary. For years, those in the know checked into The Huntington, an erstwhile 1922 apartment tower atop Nob Hill, with spacious rooms and a perennially popular dining room, The Big Four. (Its name refers to the railroad magnates, among them Collis P. Huntington, whose mansions once dotted the neighborhood.) Then, in 2020, the property closed its doors, a victim of pandemic shutdowns.
Enter local real estate developer Greg Flynn, who purchased the property and enlisted Fulk to oversee its aesthetic evolution. “Ken was the perfect choice, not just a gifted designer but a true connoisseur of San Francisco,” reflects Flynn. If Fulk is often celebrated for his maximalist Midas touch, here he put on his preservationist hat. The team kept the hotel’s original floor plans and corridors, enhancing Georgian-style plasterwork and paneling while retaining a residential scale throughout the 71 guest rooms and 72 suites. The restaurant’s beloved green leather and polished brass likewise stayed put. Adds Fulk: “We put every piece of art back where it had been.”
Make no mistake, of course the designer left his stylish stamp, from the lobby’s green lacquered reception desk and cerused walls to the mashrabiya screens in the spa, a mash-up of global reference. “The city is very much a crossroads, a gateway to Asia and beyond,” explains Fulk, who meanwhile conjured a glamorous Pullman train car at Arabella’s, the hotel’s new cocktail salon—an homage to Huntington’s wife of the same name. Wrapping the room is a custom mural by Rafael Arana that depicts her rags-to-riches story, romantic scandals giving way to stratospheric society standing as the once wealthiest woman in America.
“It all feels imaginative without being over the top,” Flynn says of the project, notably Fulk’s first hotel in the city. His hometown pride feels palpable. “So often places get reinvented in ways you don’t recognize,” says the designer. “We were good stewards of the building.” –S.C.
Makrosha’s Maximalist Rugs Mine the Cross-Cultural Motifs of Japan’s Early-20th-Century Textiles
As early as the eighth century, Japanese artisans used katagami stencils cut from washi paper to print kimono fabrics with eye-catching patterns. “There are 1,000-year-old designs that feel so contemporary,” reflects Esha Ahmed, the New York–based textile designer and founder of Makrosha. Her deep dive into the historic tradition has now inspired her first full rug collection, titled Shinki and launched in May. “By the 1800s, they were already blending Eastern and Western influences, a precursor to Art Nouveau and Art Deco,” she explains.
Ahmed, who was born in Bangladesh, has always been attracted to the way textiles document cultural convergences. (Makrosha translates to spider—nature’s weaver—in her native Bengali.) Her new series of nine designs, all hand-knotted in Nepal out of wool and silk, looks specifically to Japan’s Taishō period, from 1912 to 1926, when European and Japanese motifs began to stir together in a rich decorative exchange. Ahmed’s own patterns give those global, turn-of-the-20th-century styles like Japonisme and Art Nouveau a fresh spin.
Bloom Matrix and Yuki, for instance, merge graphic grids with stylized blooms; Hana reinterprets Art Deco flora in autumnal colors; and Hasina packs vines and ginkgo leaves into foliage so dense it can behave like a solid. That’s by design. “When you look at some antique rugs, they’re so intricate that they almost read as neutral,” Ahmed explains. Accustomed to working with interior decorators, she often thinks this way, choosing patterns and scales that can layer nimbly in residential spaces. Several are destined for both her own home and her newly expanded Union Square atelier, a collaboration with AD PRO Directory designer Tara McCauley. “Shinki loosely means a fresh start,” Ahmed explains of the Japanese name. “It felt very appropriate.” —Hannah Martin
Organized by Dia Art Foundation, Two Far-Flung Shows Celebrate the Seminal Artist and Philosopher Lee Ufan on the Eve of His 90th Birthday
In his best-known series of Relatum sculptures, the Korean-born artist and philosopher Lee Ufan arranges natural and man-made objects in poetic compositions, emphasizing each material’s innate properties while building energy between them. A sheet of rusted steel might curl toward a boulder, or a hunk of rock might sit upon a plate of broken glass. Whatever the juxtaposition, of course, context is key, as the environment enhances Lee’s sublime pas de deux. Today, art lovers are flocking to shows of his work in two particularly dynamic settings: Dia Beacon in New York’s Hudson Valley and San Marco Art Centre (SMAC) in Venice.
On a recent afternoon in Kamakura, Japan, Lee, soft-spoken and meditative, turned his focus to both. Over tea at his home and studio, a two-story timber structure overlooking a bamboo-lined stream, he discussed the genesis of the coinciding exhibitions, organized by Dia Art Foundation on the occasion of his 90th birthday. “The works that I’ve chosen reveal how I express with my body—showing time and process,” said Lee, a founding member of Japan’s Mono-ha (School of Things) movement, speaking with the help of a translator. “If one person can feel vibrations from my work, that is the very expression. When the art vibrates, it can connect to others.”
Set inside a former Nabisco box–printing factory, the Beacon installation presents the eight paintings, created from the 1970s to the early 1990s, that Lee recently gifted to the foundation. (Unveiled on May 8, they appear alongside sculptures from Dia’s collection.) Those include examples from his From Point and From Lines series, in which Lee loads his brush with single-mineral pigment, then makes short or long strokes until he exhausts the paint, then repeats that process in rhythmic sequences that call to mind inhaling and exhaling. His later From Winds series, also represented, updates that process with more expressive gestures. “You can feel my breathing,” he reflected. “My body, my physicalities, are expressed directly. Individuality is expressed.”
On view through November 22, the SMAC survey distills his practice across eight galleries of Piazza San Marco’s Procuratie Vecchie building, renovated by David Chipperfield. As a complement to past works, Lee has completed site-specific installations, including a floor painting and an indoor adaptation of his Sky Road sculpture: a reflective strip of steel, seemingly anchored by two boulders, that captures glimpses of, if not the heavens, fellow viewers, an ever-shifting interplay. “I have a general idea of how something is going to be, but the conditions change,” he noted, recalling multiple visits to the space in advance of the show. “I won’t know until I am there on the ground.”
“The impact and importance of Lee’s work cannot be overstated,” notes Dia director Jessica Morgan, who curated the SMAC show. “These pivotal artworks illuminate the philosophical and material through lines—gesture, interval, balance, and spatial tension—that have defined his decades-long practice.”
Over the course of that celebrated career, Lee has exhibited his work in many rarefied settings, from the rotunda of New York’s Guggenheim museum to the gardens of Versailles. Perhaps most extraordinary is the Japanese island Naoshima, where, in 2010, he opened a museum (designed with Tadao Ando) for his work. A bucket list destination, it is now one of three spaces dedicated to Lee, including others in Busan, South Korea, and Arles, France. Whatever the surroundings, his work rewards a long and focused look. “Art always contains unknown territory,” said Lee. “You can encounter that unknown space through art. It makes you think.” —S.C.
At Her Brooklyn Home and Studio, Ulla Johnson Infuses the Air With Scent and Artistry, Debuting a Floral Porcelain Incense Holder With Ceramist Jane Yang-D’Haene. By Hannah Martin
At Ulla Johnson’s Brooklyn home, as at her studio, the aroma of fragrant smoke wafts through the air. “It softly shapes the atmosphere,” explains the fashion designer, who recently released a porcelain incense holder in collaboration with New York City–based ceramist Jane Yang-D’Haene. Handcrafted in the shape of a flower, the piece pairs well with Johnson’s new aloeswood incense, made by a 400-year-old Japanese manufacturer for her debut scent collection. “It felt instinctive to incorporate the botanical language of our world,” says Johnson, who has long employed flora in her work, whether as blooming prints or runway scenography. “Jane’s expressive approach to form shaped the piece into something that feels both grounded and evolving—as if it could continue to open over time.” —H.M.
These stories appears in the June issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.