Venetian plaster is most likely popping up everywhere on your Instagram feed, but for Kim Collins and Amy Morgenstern—the founders of bicoastal plaster firm Kamp Studios—it’s much more than the material du jour. The duo first fell in love with the sought-after surface more than 15 years ago when their fledgling firm launched as an architectural wall finishing company that strictly offered gliding, faux bois, glazing, and other painterly finishes. At the time, they never anticipated plaster’s meteoric rise among the interiors industry’s most preeminent designers, or that their growing clientele would lean on them to “inspire choices that help inform a space,” they explain, “but we can come to the table with something people haven’t seen before.”

Hence their desire to launch and curate an art gallery. “It only seemed natural to expand from finishing walls to curating what’s hung on the walls,” they say, noting how their clients were frequently asking them to commission artworks. “The idea of marrying architecture and fine art was becoming a very obvious path for us to take.” Opening in both Los Angeles and Brooklyn, Galerie Ground will uplift the duo’s favorite artists (they’ve become acquainted with a great many over the course of their career) while putting the power of plaster on full display not only through finishes, but their own never-before-seen custom furnishings. The two cavernous spaces lend themselves well to the venture—in Brooklyn, they’re taking over an erstwhile chandelier factory in Red Hook a stone’s throw from Pioneer Works; in Los Angeles, a former casting studio that they’ve revamped to evoke a farmhouse.

Likewise, the artists on Galerie Ground’s roster pair seamlessly with plaster finishes. They encompass new discoveries like Madrid-based painter Armando Mesías to the architect and longtime Kamp Studios client Chris Baas, whose artistic prowess the pair realized when visiting his TriBeCa loft for a commission. “Our hope is that we can truly express our point of view in the most integral way, collaborating with those who we work with and those who want to work with us by creating stories and always bringing something new to the forefront.” We caught up with the duo, who divulges how they’re making that happen.

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Upon waking up on New Year’s Day 2020, Keith Taillon, a historian and writer by trade, decided to walk every New York City block that year, if for no other reason than he loved being outside. Then Covid hit. "It became my coping mechanism and a way for me to keep my finger on the pulse of the city as it went through such an unprecedented trauma, he says. “I watched stores close, outdoor dining appear, crowds ebb and flow with the local infection rates. In the end, I feel like the project kept me grounded and sane during a particularly difficult year. As a bonus, I got to explore corners of Manhattan I’d never otherwise visit. I learned so much and got to share that sense of discovery with my followers.”

Taillon’s Instagram account has become essential viewing for anyone interested in New York’s heritage, the effects of gentrification on cities, period architecture, American history, and what the past can tell us about the future. On any given day his followers might discover an exposé on a tree in Madison Square Park that is older than the Revolutionary War, an account of the great blizzard of 1888, stories about indelible city characters and erstwhile landmarks, or retrospectives on profound cultural moments such as the 1959 arrival of the groundbreaking Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Guggenheim Museum and the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade almost a century ago.

Each post is a time capsule to the past, complete with historical photos, maps, and newspaper clippings sourced from the New York Public Library and the New York Times, informational overlays, and deep journalistic captions. It’s a remarkable record of New York, retrofitted for digital consumption. We spoke to Taillon about the destruction of the city’s architectural heritage, his favorite landmarks still standing, and storytelling on Instagram.

When: Until March 21

Where: Larrie, New York

What: Kristen Wentrcek and Andrew Zebulon have always turned the unseen inside out. For their inaugural solo exhibition, the enigmatic duo suspends primarily American-made industrial materials such as aluminum tube, sod, grease, cast urethane rubber, and cellophane easter grass in hermetically sealed bags that hang in sculptural formation. Captured and preserved in various states of physical decay, the viscerally uncomfortable works become metaphors for both the resilience of the American spirit and the darker undercurrents of the American psyche, unafraid to venture into the unseen places that exist just inches away from our everyday reckoning.

Global design firm Populus, who specializes in sports arenas, has earned a sterling reputation for leading blockbuster projects such as Yankee Stadium in New York and the 2012 London Olympic Stadium. Its latest proposal is both familiar and new: a multipurpose structure whose undulating roof resembles a turtle shell and whose central purpose is electronic sports—competitive video games, in layman’s terms. The new 7,000-seat stadium in Toronto, slated for completion in 2025, will also host events such as concerts and performances, but its core function as a place for spectators to view live esport competitions is a signal of the video game industry’s tremendous popularity in contemporary culture.

Apparatus is a New York–based design studio that explores the relationship between lighting, furniture, and objects in immersive environments. Sensual materials such as marble, suede, horsehair, lacquer, and porcelain are combined with patinated brass to create sculptural pieces.

Surface Says: Apparatus’s rich materials and inventive forms give its lighting, furniture, and objects a feeling of depth and surprise. Carefully considering each piece’s visual balance, Apparatus creates objects that will continue to resonate over time.

The artist Anita Yan Wong uses coffee to paint detailed figurative portraits.

Cosmetea creates an immersive “time tunnel” on the streets of Shanghai.

Buy the Brooklyn townhouse from the 1987 rom-com classic Moonstruck.

Using NFTs, Grimes sells $6 million worth of digital art on Nifty Gateway.