What’s Happening: Taking over the empty niches along the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Fifth Avenue facade are the Iranian-born sculptor’s meticulous mishmash of abstract shapes, a timely probing of what museums obscure behind their constructed images.

The Download: On a recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Iranian-born artist Nairy Baghramian strolled the galleries with associate curator Akili Tommasino. Baghramian was focused on what the museum wasn’t showing—in this case, the backsides of classical sculpture. Many such works, she said, have rougher posteriors because they were intended for niches and only viewed from the front. “No care, no love, no detail,” she told the New York Times. “It’s a painful abstraction.”

So when the museum selected Baghramian for its annual Facade Commission, in which an artist creates sculptures to temporarily animate the empty niches along its Fifth Avenue exterior, she sought to cheekily subvert the polished image institutions present to the world. (Designed by Richard Morris Hunt and completed in 1902, the facade has four niches that were intended to house freestanding sculptures but laid empty until the program launched in 2019.) From her Berlin studio, she fabricated sculptures made of cast aluminum polychrome forms that evoke flotsam snagged on steel lattice yet appear frozen in time, teetering on the verge of tumbling down from the niches.

She calls her series “Scratching the Back”—a distortion of the idiom “scratching the surface” that elucidates the messier details museums obscure in favor of the fragments they choose to highlight. Not only do her works confront ideals of what should take up space in a world-class museum, but they arrive at a time when such institutions are grappling with the troubling provenance of their collections. The Met is no exception—a damning report recently laid bare the dodgy details about how its ancient relics have ties to known smugglers, prompting them to publish a blog post detailing their acquisition process.

In Their Own Words: “[It’s] my homage to New York,” Baghramian says. “It’s dedicated to the passersby and commuters heading to work on the bus who might only catch a glimpse.”

Surface Says: Beyond the message, they’re also simply fun to look at.

Have a news story our readers need to see? Submit it here.

As a space dedicated to restoring makers’ spaces and providing fabrication resources to artists and designers, Brooklyn’s Powerhouse Arts is a fitting setting for Authorne: a new collection of one-of-a-kind fine jewelry created by Rachel Bu. In 2022, she transformed her visual arts studio into a fine jewelry practice, laying the groundwork for Authorne and blurring the lines between accessory design and wearable sculpture. On September 19, from 5PM to 9PM, Powerhouse Arts (322 3rd Ave, Brooklyn) will host Authorne’s debut exhibition of fine jewelry, concept sketches, and renderings realized in gemstones and precious metals that commemorate life in the form of the collection’s otherworldly motifs.

Has Claridge’s entered its reinvention era? First, the legendary London hotel debuted the Painter’s Room, an ornate cocktail nook awash in Art Deco flourishes. Next up was ArtSpace, the first designed—by John Pawson, no less—contemporary art gallery within a high-end hotel, which kicked off with a lively showcase of Damien Hirst’s pipe cleaner animals. Pawson now lends his signature polished minimalism to the refurbished gallery’s accompanying cafe, which sits upstairs on the ground floor facing Mayfair’s quaint Brook’s Mews.

Pawson may seem a curious choice given the lavish hotel’s history of unrestrained hedonism, but his restrained touch serves up a welcome dose of calm that goes hand-in-hand with the gallery and its art bookshop. Snaking around glimmering white walls are supple banquettes in caramel leather, a shade echoed on the pads of rotund stools and sculptural custom solid ash dining chairs. (His first chair design, it’s now in production with Italian manufacturer Passoni.) Carrara marble clads tables and the counter, where visitors can eye pastry chef Thibault Hauchard’s patisserie, with options ranging from pistachio Paris-Brest and classic croque madame to Claridge’s Crest Cake, a chocolatey replica of the hotel’s iconic coat of arms.

Samuel Boakye is a born-and-bred New Yorker, but his family instilled a deep appreciation for the language and culture of his Ghanaian heritage early on. His emerging fashion label, named Kwasi Paul after his parents, aims to bridge the dynamic “in-betweens” he experiences with his own identity, manifesting an empathic universe where a fervent sense of individuality—frictions and all—is brought to life through his clothing.

Over the weekend, the museum and research center hosted more than 700 guests on its bucolic grounds in Cold Spring, New York, to celebrate the opening of its long-awaited Robert Olnick Pavillion. Named after founder Nancy Olnick’s late father, the gallery bolsters Magazzino’s footprint by an additional 13,000 square feet of exhibition and education space, along with a café helmed by celebrated Lodigiani chef Luca Galli. Guests beat the late-summer heatwave with Aperol and Campari spritzes and enjoyed a first look at the pavilion’s three special exhibitions of works by Mario Schifano, Ettore Spalletti, and Carlo Scarpa.

When was it? Sep. 10

Where was it? Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring

Who was there? Giorgio Spanu, Adam Weinberg, Miguel Quismondo, Nazy Nazhand, Martin Margulies, Patrizia Leonelli Spalletti, Stefania Bortolami, Vittorio Calabrese, and more.

We can now quantify the natural resources consumed by the onslaught of questions that seem to be making ChatGPT dumber. It, ahem, boils down to the fact that enormous amounts of power are needed to build, train, and use large language models like the one that powers the internet’s favorite AI chatbot.

Depending on factors like where the server farms are located and the time of year, it can take 500 mL, or around 16 ounces, of water to cool the hardware that powers such technology. According to Microsoft, which has had a commercial partnership with OpenAI since 2019, its water consumption in 2022 totaled more than 1.7 billion gallons, or as AP puts it, 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Microsoft said it’s “working on ways to make large systems more efficient, in both training and application” and “investing in research to measure AI’s energy and carbon footprint.”

Reach the design world every morning. Find out more about advertising in the Design Dispatch.

Established in 1586 in the forest of Moselle, France, Saint-Louis escapes the ephemeral with more than 430 years of mouth-blown and handmade creations, ranging from tableware and decoration to lighting and beyond.

Surface Says: One of France’s most venerated crystal manufacturers, Saint-Louis skillfully reconciles 19th-century artisan know-how with contemporary style. Some of our favorite designers—Paola Navone, Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, Kiki van Eijk—have created unforgettable pieces for the company.

Tibetan habitats are being torn apart to collect a mysterious type of fungus.

Dewsbury in Yorkshire is crowned as England’s greenest 19th-century city.

This book celebrates the most memorable Brutalist architecture across Italy.

Can Mansur Gavriel’s signature bestselling handbags win over Gen Z-ers?