What’s Happening: After a two-year renovation, the National Museum for Women in the Arts reopens with more space, more diversity, and a newly urgent mission to make sure no women artists are written out of history.

The Download: Wilhelmina Cole Holladay was traveling abroad with her husband Wallace when they first encountered still life paintings by Clara Peeters at Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and then Madrid’s Museo del Prado. The art-collecting couple was shocked to have never heard of the Flemish painter, who’s remembered as one of the few women artists working professionally in 17th-century Europe. This was the 1970s, and the era’s standard art history textbook, H. W. Janson’s History of Art, made no mention of Peeters—or any other women artists. The Holladays then focused on collecting women artists exclusively and soon amassed more than 500 works by women dating back to the Renaissance.

In 1981, they established the National Museum of Women in the Arts and spent six years transforming a Classical Revival–style building three blocks from the White House into a home for their collection. (It once housed the Masonic Temple of Washington’s Grand Lodge, which women coincidentally were barred from entering.) More than three decades later, the institution’s collection has ballooned to encompass 5,500 artworks. To house everything—and make room for even larger, more ambitious works—the museum recently wrapped up a two-year, $65 million renovation by Baltimore architect Sandra Parsons Vicchio that adds 2,500 square feet of gallery space.

The museum now reopens with the aptly named group show “The Sky’s the Limit,” in which boundary-pushing sculptors peel back the layers of their process. A striking red chandelier by Portuguese talent Joana Vasconcelos greets visitors in the ground-floor rotunda. Alison Saar depicts a blue-black female figure draped in a gauzy white gown. The Indian sculptor Rina Banerjee gathered ostrich eggs, a Victorian fixture, and porcelain doll hands into a show-stopping assemblage unpacking “colonial masculinity.” Thanks to the women involved—from Holladay to deputy director Kathryn Wat—perhaps history is less likely to repeat itself and fewer women will be excluded from the canon.

In Their Own Words: “When a museum is named a ‘Women’s Museum,’ it breaks a skin,” Banerjee tells Cultured. “When a woman decides to make sculpture, and especially large sculpture, she is also breaking skin. These gestures of ambition have associated with them a piercing hyper-visibility that goes against the grain of what a woman is. All other museums are men’s museums and, as my fellow artists have verbalized to me, they welcome women as an afterthought, as compensation, as charity, and as a symbol of their male identity as benevolent leaders. I am fascinated by the dream of having this house that banks the contribution that women have made as artists and as people.”

Surface Says: It’s worth noting that art by women comprises 3.3 percent of auction sales since 2008, according to one study. There’s still a lot of work to do.

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

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

The Taipei-based Yageo Foundation has grown to play a pivotal role in the international art world. Founded by entrepreneur and art collector Pierre Chen, the foundation helped execute the Tate’s current photography and painting exhibition “Capturing the Moment,” which features two seminal works by Andy Warhol and David Hockney from the foundation’s vast collection. With an emphasis on modern, post-war, and contemporary art from around the world, its key pieces include the gunpowder art of Cai Guo-Qiang, Louise Bourgeois’ disquieting Spider, and more.

Frauke Meyer, creative director of French design and interiors firm Liaigre, worked closely with Chen—a longtime client—to create a 5,400-square-foot headquarters to house the collection in Taiwan. The result: a moody, sensual jewel box in the sky, hovering just above—but a world away—from the bustle of the city. Ample warm, rich accents and plush entertaining spaces keep visitors’ focus right where it ought to be: on the art.

Last week, an intimate group of design and media luminaries were invited to Colin King’s newly redecorated Tribeca loft to celebrate the launch of Variations, the acclaimed interior stylist’s new furniture collection in collaboration with The Future Perfect founder David Alhadeff. Guests experienced the collection firsthand, mingling around the graceful Enveloppé Sofa and dance-inspired Position Plinths while enjoying cocktails and conversation.

When was it? Oct. 19

Where was it? Tribeca, New York

Who was there? Nate Berkus, Athena Calderone, Laura Young, Jeremiah Brent, William Jess Laird, Alastair McKimm, Anna Karlin, Alex Tieghi-Walker, Roxanne Assoulin, Nick Cope, and more.

At its heart, the jewelry maison is on a quest to inspire emotion, and what better way than by appealing to the power of olfactory memories? Moonlight Rose, the haute parfumerie’s latest launch, allows fragrance enthusiasts to rediscover the flower that has captivated poets, artists, and noses for centuries. A one-of-a-kind blend of Bulgarian and Taif roses creates an unexpected note of spice, which rounds out the floral profile with top notes of pink peppercorn. An energizing touch of tart raspberry in the base notes livens up accords of patchouli and oakmoss. $250

On the momentous occasion of the Sydney Opera House’s 50th anniversary, the workers who built the performance venue from the ground up are reflecting on what it took to raise the proverbial sails. The odds were stacked against the theater long before the public lamented its modern expressionist interpretation of billowing sails. From its first roadblock—Danish architect Jørn Utzon walked away from the project amid delays and stopped payments—to a non-formulaic design implemented with exacting precision, and an astoundingly dangerous construction process that practically ran 24/7, the challenges grew more complex as the project progressed. Nonetheless, today it stands as a monument to the many hands who made it possible.

Worthless Studios provides space, materials, technical assistance, and resources for aspiring artists of all backgrounds to realize their creative visions. The studio dreams up and executes public art programs with staff, community partners, and resident artists.

Surface Says: Worthless Studios aims to democratize access to resources and studio space within the competitive art market by offering their Brooklyn facility to early-career sculptors who otherwise wouldn’t have access. Their mission is exactly what the industry needs after these past couple years of economic turmoil.

Are you truly Gen Z if you don’t own checkered rugs and tapered candles?

Almost 25 years after her death, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy remains a muse.

This dying convention of French haute cuisine has become a tableside flex.

Anthony Bourdain reoriented one writer’s approach to people and places.