What’s Happening: Through a series of breathtaking works at Tate Modern’s soaring Turbine Hall, the Ghanaian sculptor’s signature bottle-cap weavings suspend injustice and desolation—and amble toward lightness through it all.

The Download: London may offer a world-class helping of contemporary art all year round, but a multitude of marquee shows—Marina Abramović’s Royal Academy retrospective and the ambitious 1-54 Contemporary Art Fair, to name a couple—attracted hordes of deep-pocketed collectors to the British capital during Frieze Week. (Perhaps that’s not always positive.) Nevertheless, few were as staggering in scale and scope as El Anatsui’s monumental textile-style sculptures undulating within Tate Modern’s soaring Turbine Hall, a vast industrial space the museum activates for the annual Hyundai Commission. Previous recipients stunned—Anicka Yi’s “aerobe” machines sculpted the air while Kara Walker’s somber fountain exposed chilling injustice—but the 79-year-old Anatsui turns trash into artistic treasure.

Anatsui, who splits time between Nigeria and Ghana, sculpts with thousands of recycled bottle caps stitched together to create expansive mosaics meditating on human history and the natural world’s elemental power. His Tate commission, the largest of his career, unfolds in three acts, beginning with a “blood moon” resembling a ship’s sail billowing out in the wind as it journeys across the Atlantic. The second one layers human figures, suspended restlessly, that unite into a singular Earth-like form. The final piece stretches black metal cloth from floor to ceiling, signifying waves cascading onto rocky peaks and echoing the collision of global cultures and hybrid identities stemming from migration. They take advantage of the hall’s profusion of natural light to create dazzling color play inside as the day progresses.

Sculpting with bottle caps, which Anatsui began in the 1970s to reclaim industry detritus, meditates on human waste and slyly references the Transatlantic slave trade. His prior works made use of rum, a drink made by African slaves in the Americas and exported to Europe, linking all three continents. It’s easy to overlook such details when confronted with the overwhelming gestalt in Turbine Hall, but Anatsui rewards close looking. Climbing the hall’s central bridge brings viewers close enough to decipher human-like shapes in a golden mobile. “They are massed close together, like refugees on a raft, trying to help each other, swaying in a stately, anguished dance,” writes critic Jonathan Jones. “Like Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, these fragile human souls only have each other. We only have each other. We are scrap with a soul.”

In Their Own Words: “I didn’t quite find the freedom in [metal sheets] until I started working with bottle caps, which were far lighter, and with which I could create bigger and more versatile sheets,” Anatsui wrote in a 2020 op-ed for The Guardian. “I kept discovering new things about the material, and 20 years on it’s still yielding new ideas. The bottle cap hasn’t reached the end of its run yet. I doubt it can have an end because it keeps coming up with new properties. People can work in painting for a whole career, but this has more versatility than canvas and oil. It could be a medium to occupy a whole lifetime, easily.”

Surface Says: With the Hyundai commission potentially ending in 2025, we’re curious if Anatsui might be one-upped by whoever comes next.

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There are brands identified by logos, and then there are those pinpointed for their craft. Bottega Veneta’s leather intrecciato motif falls into the latter as one of the most recognizable signatures of a fashion house. Since the ’70s, strips of materials have been hand-braided into a pattern seen on the Italian label’s bags, wallets, and even ready-to-wear garments and housewares. Students can now get an inside look at the house’s commitment to artisanal craft with the opening of Accademia Labor et Ingenium, a school based between the house’s atelier in Montebello Vicentino and nearby Povolaro Dueville in Veneto, Italy.

The school will admit 50 students per year and guarantee employment upon completion. Master artisans from Bottega Veneta will lead classes, aiming to impart time-honored skills and traditions while collaborating with local partners to celebrate Italy’s rich craft heritage. “Exceptional craft and creativity are essential to our brand and to the heritage of our home region in Veneto,” Leo Rongone, the label’s CEO, said in a statement. “With the Accademia, we take the collective ethos at the heart of Bottega Veneta to a new level, building on our rich history of skill-sharing and innovation to nurture the artisans of the future.” The program kicks off this week with a seven-week masterclass “The Artisanal Creative Process: Training Course in Bag Design & Product Development” in partnership with University IUAV in Venice.

Matthew McCormick’s namesake lighting house feels unbound by typical design conventions. From his tight-knit Vancouver studio, he and his artisans leverage cutting-edge technologies to craft dazzling sculptural installations and decorative luminaires that first captivated the industry a decade ago with his Halo Series. The studio now reveals Ova, a pendant collection whose womb-like translucent inner body exudes an ethereal luminescence and whose imperfections embrace chance and experimentation—a departure for a designer otherwise noted for pursuing perfection.

The legendary venue may be better known for the performing arts, but on a weekend in early October, the Brooklyn-based artist took over the David Rubenstein atrium to host his first art symposium. Through a series of panels and performances featuring a number of notable artist-peers, Olujimi expanded on the conversation he started with his exhibition “North Star: Meditations on Weightlessness,” in which he explored a singular question: “What does the Black body, devoid of the ‘inescapable’ gravity of oppression, look like?”

When was it? Oct. 7–8

Where was it? Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York

Who was there? Hank Willis Thomas, Naomi Beckwith, Nayland Blake, and Sandra Jackson-Dumont.

When: Until Nov. 10

Where: Verso, New York

What: The second exhibition from Black Folks in Design takes over Verso with an array of furniture curated by Little Wing Lee that collectively embody the range, scale, and perspective of its members. Featuring works by Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Norman Teague, Mabeo Furniture, Jerome Harris, and Garth Roberts, the works speak their own aesthetic language driven by narrative, story, and process uniquely expressed by each designer. “As I built this show, it was inspiring to see the common threads between these pieces reveal themselves over time,” Little Wing Lee says. “Most heartening, perhaps, was to discover and build the community between so many of us, which is ultimately the goal of Black Folks in Design as a collective.”

Pumpkin Spice is dead, long live Pumpkin Spice. As the latest economic market to take a downturn, all signs are pointing to peak pumpkin saturation. According to MarketWatch, unit sales of pumpkin-flavored products are down for the second year in a row. In other words, Americans are slowly phasing out the former favorite. It’s worth noting that while unit sales are down, dollar sales are up by 15 percent for a total of $803 million—a 15 percent increase from the previous year. Inflation bites.

Since 1872, Fritz Hansen has been crafting extraordinary design. Fritz Hansen’s highly distinguished Classic Collection comprises a number of the most iconic pieces of furniture from renowned Danish designers, including Arne Jacobsen’s Egg, Swan, and Series 7 chairs, and Poul Kjærholm’s PK22 chair and PK80 daybed. The Contemporary Collection features new furniture and accessories from some of today’s most inspiring, globally recognized modern designers, including Jaime Hayon, Piero Lissoni, and Cecilie Manz.

Surface Says: One of Denmark’s oldest and most revered furniture producers, Fritz Hansen is known for its Arne Jacobsen and Poul Kjærholm designs. In recent years, the brand’s smartly appointed pieces designed by Jaime Hayon have kept things exciting.

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