What’s Happening: With works by Glenn Ligon and Mika Tajima, a new exhibition at the Fabric Workshop and Museum explores the materiality of sound and its multisensory reach.

The Download: Sound waves weave—through the air, around each other, into your ears, throughout your memories. The warp and weft of cotton or linen is better associated with Philadelphia’s Fabric Workshop and Museum, but “Sonic Presence (or Absence),” its new show curated by Alec Unkovic (until Jan. 7), listens for what happens when artists approach sound as something not only to play, but play with.

Unkovic explored the institution’s vast archives, securing a few loaned works along the way. “We’re looking for pieces that are not just objects as sound works,” he says, “but also ones that imply or evoke sound.” Glenn Ligon sets the tone: Skin Tight (1995/2003) hangs from chains eight punching bags, their fabric printed with portraits of Ice Cube and quotes from Muhammad Ali, in a space defined by bespoke wallcovering. It’s almost impossible not to hear the sound of fists.

Undeniably audible are recordings of instruments made by Guillermo Galindo from objects discarded by migrants—and government officials—on the Mexico-U.S. border. The instruments, echoing both Harry Partch’s itinerant musical craft and the repurposing grandeur of El Anatsui, are humble wonders. “They’re created from the traces of people left behind,” Unkovic says. “The objects are not precious, but as individual components speak to the lived experience of those who didn’t have the luxury of discarding them with intention.”

A towering Sound Suit (2009) of stuffed animals from Nick Cave is precious, as are some final works by late hometown hero Terry Adkins, whose Aviarium (2014) freezes bird vocalizations into wall sculptures of cymbals and aluminum rods. Other works tackle the conceptual, like Janine Antoni and Stephen Petronio’s Swallow (2016), in which viewers sit on a prototype conjoined chair and listen to a description of a dance the pair made involving the quaffing and regurgitating of a ten-foot piece of fabric.

The show’s most fascinating work encompasses all the above strategies. In her series Negative Entropy (2012), Mika Tajima made audio recordings of nearby factories like the Caledonian Dye Works textile mill. She translated the sound waves into buzzy textiles, then built acoustic panels from fabric. Sound becomes sight, touch, a buffer of its original source—and a building product perfect for a museum auditorium.

In Their Own Words: “Sound can be an ephemeral experience,” Unkovic says, “but the artists here capture it in a permanent way.”

Surface Says: In “Sonic Presence,” the Fabric Workshop’s curatorial vision is loud and clear.

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Opening Shot is a column that peeks inside new hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops with dreamy interiors.

Name: Hotel Genevieve

Location: Louisville, KY

Designer: ROHE Creative

On Offer: After making itself at home in Mexico City’s La Condesa neighborhood, Austin’s Bunkhouse group has also arrived in NuLu. “Hotel Genevieve is our largest hotel at 122 rooms,” says executive chairman Amar Lalvani. “It’s our first hotel in Kentucky, our first ground-up construction in the U.S. outside of Texas, and our first collaboration with ROHE Creative, a very talented firm out of Philly.” It’s also the neighborhood’s first boutique hotel.

The collaboration with Mountain Shore Properties offers a cool blue King Suite facing Market street and a larger, sunny Suite Genevieve. That option, like the hotel itself, is named after the patron saint of Pairs and the limestone enriching the water that makes good Kentucky Bourbon. Sip a glass of the local’s finest on Bunkhouse’s first rooftop bar, with fine views of the Ohio River, while nibbling on street food inspired by the region’s French settlers. Or taste a single-barrel bourbon crafted by locals Rabbit Hole Distillery after an art walk curated by the Olmsted Parks Conservancy.

In 1970, ceramicist Doyle Lane, brilliant in both technique and hue, was the highlight of two major shows: the nomadic “Objects: USA,” in which he showed a vibrant ocher and turquoise tile mural, and “California Black Craftsmen,” likely the first exhibition devoted entirely to its titular category of makers. The next decades weren’t entirely kind; art institutions, then and still too often now, ignored art and design that didn’t fit into their ideas of what Black makers should do. Lane carried on, devoting much of his practice to the creation of astoundingly elegant “weed pots,” circular and squat and swelling vessels for a single, straggly piece of nature, each coated in a glaze devised by Lane to suit their contours.

Lane built a remarkable community of architects and Black networks to support himself, best he could, until he died in 2002. And then, as with Alvin Baltrop and Sylvester and so many other Black innovators, the world began to catch up to his work when he was gone. In 2020, the artist Ricky Swallow curated a show of the weed pots at David Kordansky Gallery’s L.A. outpost. This summer, the show arrives in New York. Lane’s pots, arranged lined up seemingly without pattern but in almost infinite variety of crackle and form, are not to be missed. They demonstrate what a persistence of vision can make.

When: Until Jan. 14, 2024

Where: Villa Noailles, France

What: The French interior designer’s affinity for intermingling vintage furnishings with museum-worthy contemporary art stuns again, this time at Villa Noailles, the serene summer residence of Charles and Marie Laure de Noailles that’s celebrating its centenary anniversary. He pays homage to the couple’s immense impact on the 20th-century art landscape and Madame de Noailles’s storied spirit with narrative-based vignettes that take visitors, room by room, through the creative minds and daily lives of the illustrious owners, all backdropped by the pristine architecture of Robert Mallet-Stevens.

Our new weekly scoop on industry players moving onwards and upwards.

Shayne Oliver is forgoing design duties at Hood By Air, the label he founded in 2006 that propelled luxury streetwear to the fore. While he remains a shareholder, he recently relocated to Berlin to focus on the nascent Shayne Oliver Group’s projects, including multiple new fashion lines.

Johanna Agerman Ross, a curator at the V&A, has been named chief curator of London’s Design Museum. She succeeds writer Justin McGuirk, who will stay on board to lead the institution’s climate crisis–focused Future Observatory program.

Public Art Fund has appointed Melanie Kress to senior curator; she previously served as the curator of High Line Art, where she commissioned projects by the likes of Maria Thereza Alves, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Zoe Leonard.

Parisians have scorned the hulking Tour Montparnasse for exactly 50 years now, and it’s hard to blame them. The 690-foot-tall chocolate-brown skyscraper sticks out like a sore thumb in an elegant cityscape defined by harmonious 19th-century architecture. It even sparked legislation banning buildings over seven stories from the city center—efforts that were successful until 2021, when Herzog & de Meuron’s similarly hulking Tour Triangle was approved to rise nearby. Attitudes toward Parisian landmarks in newfangled architectural styles (see: Centre Pompidou) may have softened over time, but something tells us Tour Montparnasse will remain the butt of jokes for years to come.

Original BTC began as an Oxford-based lighting manufacturer in 1990. Quality, detail, and an interesting mix of materials are integral. From using traditional techniques to the latest technology, all lights are hand-crafted in the UK.

Surface Says: The lighting across Original BTC’s collections celebrate British craftsmanship. From nautical Ship’s Well Glass lights to the factory-inspired Titan Pendant fixtures, the brand’s products carry on a tradition of well-machined style.

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