Season Highlights
Winter Edition 2026
About
9th November, 2026
As winter unfolds, New York's art season comes fully alive. I move through it slowly, along the townhouses and avenues of the Upper East Side, pausing where something holds me. This edition brings a new essay from the Journal, on Thea Djordjadze's A well of night at the Sprüth Magers gallery, and my highlights of early November.
THE EDIT
My highlights of early november in New York
@VI, New York. Photos by Venetia Kapernekas
Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany.
The Met, through February 7, 2027
Nearly 120 luminous watercolours reveal the hands behind the Gilded Age,
among them Agnes Northrop, the studio's leading designer, and other
women whose names history nearly forgot.
@VI, New York. Photos by Venetia Kapernekas
Jannis Kounellis
Gladstone 64, New York. November 6 to December 19, 2026
Born in Piraeus, Kounellis grew up through the war and the Greek civil war, then moved to Rome in 1956, where he joined the artists who would become Arte Povera. At Gladstone 64, his early works from 1965 to 1969, several never before shown in a US gallery: coal in an iron bin, fire against
iron, a stitched rose, wool dipped in pink.
The evening continued in Harlem, at the home of Gavin Brown and Hope Atherton, whose private gallery presents his tar paintings for the first time in the United States. It ended with a lovely open-seated dinner, guests mingling freely through their beautiful townhouse.
@VI, New York. Photos by Venetia Kapernekas
James Ensor / Calvin Marcus
Rodder Gallery, through January 23rd, 2026
A century apart, Ensor and Marcus share a taste for the absurd and the uncanny. Ensor's crowds meet Marcus's solitary figures, and the grotesque becomes strangely tender.
Le Monde Béryl, New York, space by Tutto Bene Studio in collaboration with Silka Rittson-Thomas.
Photo: Venetia Kapernekas
Le Monde Béryl
23 East 67th Street, at Madison Avenue
A wonderful evening last week marked the opening of Le Monde Béryl’s first New York boutique, hosted by Lily Atherton Hanbury and Hope Atherton. The space, by architects Tutto Bene Studio with art advisor Silka Rittson-Thomas, feels like a collector’s home, holding shoes handmade by artisans in Italy’s Veneto region. It all began in 2016, on a bench in Berkeley Square in London’s Mayfair, when Lily (creative director) and Katya Shyfrin (CEO) agreed to start a brand together. Ten years on, this boutique marks their anniversary.
Cora Sheibani at Salon Art + Design, with mirrors by Greg Bogin. Photo: Venetia Kapernekas
Salon Art + Design
Park Avenue Armory, New York - November 4th to 8th 2026
New York's fair for collectible design and fine art returned to the Armory for its fifteenth edition. My highlight: the jewels of London-based Cora Sheibani, playful, colourful and quietly sculptural, each one a small work of art, set beneath the undulating mirrors of artist Greg Bogin, which framed her booth like a stage.
THE JOURNAL
"the hands behind the line"
On Thea Djordjadze, A well of night, Sprüth Magers, New York
BY Venetia Kapernekas
@Installation view, A well of night, Sprüth Magers, New York, September 18–December 19, 2026.
©Thea Djordjadze. Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers. Photo: Genevieve Hanson.
The title, A well of night, speaks of darkness, a well so deep that no light reaches it. Yet the rooms of Thea Djordjadze's first solo exhibition at Sprüth Magers New York are full of light.