What’s Happening: The Museum of Sex looks back at 25 years of activists moving out of the closets and into the streets—and then into the bathhouses, movie theaters, and public parks.

The Download: The history of the built environment is, in many ways, the history of sex, of humans creating spaces to explore their natures. Queer people are inseparable from these histories, but in the last quarter of the 20th century in America, they became vibrant actors in determining the possibilities of public sexuality. They demanded presence, the end of those strictures that kept them hidden because of whom and how they loved and lusted. They asserted the right to be in public—and they appropriated public space to create more private queer spaces in which they could build cultures outside of the straight gaze.

“Radical Perverts: Ecstasy and Activism in Queer Public Space, 1975-2000” shows what can arise when queer people have architectural and cultural agency. It takes its name from a declaration by San Francisco lesbian S/M organization Samois, and its checklist from many of those most adventurous queer artists of their times: Nayland Blake defines space early in the show with their Workroom 2, a screen that also might function as a series of glory holes for an enviable broad assortment of bodies. Deeper in, photographer Frank Morello’s The Fairoaks Project documents the men who populated a hotel turned gay commune-cum-bathouse in late-’70s San Francisco—and the rooms they found each other in—for a series of Polaroids that vibrate with the erotic charge of interior design.

Christian Walker’s early-‘80s The Theater Project transforms the decidedly grungy Pilgrim Theater into a dreamscape in which bodies penetrate the blurred balconies of one of the notorious “porn palaces” littering the Combat Zone neighborhood in Boston. This kind of site-specific glamorizing transforms architecture into activism, asserting queer potentiality that seems drained from the public bathrooms Dean Sameshima photographs in his South Bay Tearooms series. And yet, here there are ghosts, or at least ghostly phallic shadows of worlds both natural (palm trunks) and man-made (plumbing, trash cans), darkening the walls queer people once made into furtive sexual playgrounds.

That sense of play radiates from the revelers in Phyllis Christopher’s Klitz Sex Club, San Francisco, CA, 1991, a very welcome reminder that people of all genders found freedom in nightlife—in this case, a lesbian sex club that made itself at home in San Francisco’s Night Gallery on Folsom Street. Imagine if Manhattan art spaces made that their work instead of glorifying past efforts.

In Their Own Words: “As feminists, we oppose all forms of social hierarchy based on gender,” wrote Samois in its 1979 statement of purpose. “As radical perverts, we oppose all social hierarchies based on sexual preference.”

Surface Says: At a time when the built environment seems stacked against queer people, “Radical Perverts” offers an alternate history: one in which they make the world their own.

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Just 30 minutes from Porto and into the vineyards of Minha, where the grape for the region’s signature vino verde grows, a late 19th-century villa is the new home to Solar de Vila Meã. Joana Aranha restored the Manor House and a main building into a hotel with the best of Portuguese craft traditions: wicker accessories, embroidered textiles, and clay pottery. Such terracotta—formed into pots and strung like beads from rope, or hung like dripping wall sconces—create a backdrop for the Barro Restaurant, whose Spanish-inflected menu takes its cues equally from haute cuisine and seasonal bounties. Buffet tables are clad in Todobarro terracotta tiles, while the tables are the Joana Aranha Signature designers, with iron feet and tops of chestnut, crisped up with Pierre Frey fabrics.

The 29 suites are split between the two original structures. In the Modern Building, 22 of them include six duplexes, each sporting its own color scheme and fleet of antiques complimenting material palettes of lush velvets and linens. But the Manor House is the ultimate destination: just past an opulent Honesty Bar and lounge, seven suites offer their own kind of intoxication via one-of-a-kind panoramic murals of vistas inspired by the area’s rolling, romantic landscapes. For a glimpse of the real thing, guests can detox in the spa’s outdoor pool and lounge, rooms for massage and skincare treatments, and dips in the indoor pool and jacuzzi, all before once again returning to the restaurant for another glass or two of the local specialities.

The chair is where form and function meet. But just because the story of contemporary design can be told through the seat—from, say, the WC1 to the Ghost to the Roly-Poly—doesn’t mean it’s only a contemporary story. Or an American one. The Denver Art Museum’s new exhibition “Have a Seat: Mexican Chair Design Today,” despite its title, both looks back to the intersection of European colonialism on Mexican and Indigenous chairs and looks ahead to the Mexican designers who are challenging and changing the way we sit now.

The show tracks the way ancient backless seating became the modern stool, the international travel of the butaque lounge, and how Mexican artists and designers are interpreting European styles today, all while gathering fine examples from the museum’s permanent collection, including work by Andrés Lhima, Cecilia Léon de la Barra, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, and many others. Mexican artist Daniel Valero pulls up a chair with his “Immersive Gallery,” in which he joins traditional materials and artisanal techniques with an eye on the future.

Design Miami is building momentum. After being acquired by online marketplace Basic.Space and launching a successful edition in Paris this past October, the collectible design platform will stage its first-ever Los Angeles fair in May. Expect a dynamic slate of global galleries offering hand-selected displays of contemporary furniture and objets d’art that have distinguished Design Miami in the past, but situated in a private, three-acre Holmby Hills estate designed by late architect Paul Williams. The platform also announced Mirage Magazine founder Henrik Purienne as global creative director for the 2024 fair program and collectible design market advisor Ashlee Harrison as curatorial director for the Los Angeles edition.

In other people news, Jack Shainman announced the representation of Charisse Pearlina Weston, the Brooklyn-based conceptual artist whose sculptures and photography posits Black interior life as a central site of Black resistance. Enrique Vela has joined V Starr Interiors, the South Florida–based design firm owned by Venus Williams, as director of strategy. The Hispanic Society Museum and Library, which is dedicated to the preservation of art from Spanish and Portuguese–speaking countries, named Mark Rosenberg as its new chairman, succeeding Philippe de Montebello. The director of Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, Christophe Leribault, has been named chair of the Château de Versailles.

Before the award-winning American composer Angelo Badalamenti died in 2022, he was cooking up a partnership with Balenciaga as part of the label’s ongoing music series. It’s now being released as a tribute with his alma mater, the Manhattan School of Music, where his daughter Danielle also attended. Balenciaga is streaming a Badalamenti-curated playlist on its website, where limited-edition T-shirts and crewneck sweatshirts featuring a graphic based on his hand-scripted score “Torch Theme” are available. The label will also partner with Manhattan School of Music composition department head Dr. Reiko Fueting on a free master class that invites students to compose original works to continue Badalamenti’s legacy.

Most Hermès hype goes to the French fashion house’s Birkins and Kellys, but why should handbags have all the fun? With its latest launch of Tressages Equestres porcelain, which recently launched at Paris Design Week, the brand has injected color, texture, and merriment to a traditionally fussy category of tableware. The collection nods to Hermès’ equestrian roots with rich geometric depictions of woven equine halters, lead ropes, and other accessories.

Phillip Jividen’s works are about creating timeless pieces that feel familiar yet unexpected. Using intuitive forms that are a balance between practicality and playfulness, his design process is an exploration of material and composition as a means to create objects that instills a sense of permanence.

Surface Says: Jividen achieves the unlikely by bringing texture, warmth, and personality to stone, wood, glass, and aluminum through his explorations of form and composition.

For the first time since 2019, the tooth fairy is shelling out less for lost teeth.

The V&A Museum is seeking the ultimate Swiftie for an advisory role.

OpenAI’s new text-to-video technology is ruffling some feathers in Hollywood.

Neil Gaiman is selling original comic book art and collectibles he has amassed.