What’s Happening: Musée D’Orsay’s landmark exhibition, “Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism,” opened to great anticipation earlier this spring and will travel to the National Gallery of Art in the fall. It’s just one example of how the international market is embracing the movement’s sesquicentennial—in ways that may be less-than-obvious to anyone unaccustomed to scrutinizing its interconnectedness.

The Download: Stateside art enthusiasts will recall this past September’s blockbuster “Manet/Degas” show at the Met, which was organized together with Musées d’Orsay and de l’Orangerie. It examined the title artists’ work in the context of their turbulent friendship and rivalry: born just two years apart in Paris, they were polar opposites right down to Edgar Degas’ pivotal role in organizing the 1874 exhibition that would go on to create the Impressionist movement—which Musée d’Orsay has faithfully recreated on Paris’s Left Bank with its current show “Paris 1874.” (Edouard Manet, on the other hand, sought the approval of the École des Beaux-Arts, whose establishment principals Degas, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, and Claude Monet set out to subvert).

Monet is, of course, widely considered to be the godfather of the Impressionist movement for his leadership of the artists whose ingenuity was immortalized in that daring “Première Exposition.” A visit to the artist’s Water Lilies galleries at the Musée de l’Orangerie is a must for any 20th-century art buff. Those making a pilgrimage to the City of Light would do well to note that Le Meurice, the grand dame of Paris’s palace hotels and a favorite of Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso, is toasting Impressionism’s 150th anniversary with art historian-hosted private walking tours of the landmarks immortalized in Monet’s oeuvre.

As anyone fortuitous enough to have been in Paris this spring well knows, the 2024 Summer Olympic Games are already wreaking havoc on public access to the jardin; but that’s no matter for the bonafide Les Clefs d’Or concierges of Le Meurice, who can help keep your tour on track. In addition to a primer on the artist’s favorite vantage points and subjects—many of them hiding in plain sight outside—the tour culminates in a visit to l’Orangerie, complete with skip-the-line privileges. These editors can vouch for making a real occasion of such a trip and taking in clear sightlines of the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, and four of Paris’s major museums from one of the hotel’s Prestige suites, which just so happen to overlook a favorite Monet muse: the Jardin des Tuileries.

It’s fitting, then, that beginning in March and set to run through May, Sotheby’s unveiled a lineup of Impressionism programming across four key markets: London, Paris, New York, and Hong Kong. Highlights span art talks led by several descendants of the movement’s key artists like Charlotte Hellman Cachin and Joachim Pissarro. And, if the impulse strikes, those in the market for a Monet, Manet, Pissarro, or Renoir can try their hand at acquiring one from several 20th-century lots going live tomorrow.

In Their Own Words: Impressionism affords viewers an undeniable degree of escapism, something “Manet/Degas” notably offered to galleries packed with world-weary visitors. Whether at Musée d’Orsay or the National Gallery, visitors will find that too in “Paris 1874”: “The country wanted to forget defeat and civil war, and these themes were absent from the Impressionists’ work,” co-curator Sylvie Patry recently told the Guardian.

Surface Says: If Christie’s $28 million in proceeds from its Paris Impressionist and Modern Art Week is anything to go off of, this market has yet to reach its peak.

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Studios with the most soul and staying power realize that community is what imbues design with magic and memory. That seems to be the raison d’être of Brooklyn lighting studio In Common With, whose founders, Nick Ozemba and Felicia Hung, incorporate community throughout their entire practice. Besides emphasizing how their serene, often earth-toned fixtures reflect the contribution of sundry invisible hands, the six-year-old studio strives to create experiences their peers won’t forget. At last year’s Milan Design Week, the duo eschewed antiseptic showrooms to instead take over a Città Studi bar by installing a series of billowing glass fixtures created with Sophie Lou Jacobsen. With good company and a spritz in tow, the takeover endures as a favored Fuorisalone outing by virtue of easing the stress of a frenetic week.

In that respect, In Common With’s latest outing makes perfect sense. Yesterday, the duo officially unveiled Quarters, a multifaceted concept shop and community space where the power of collaborative design is felt deeply throughout. Occupying more than 8,000 square feet of a historic 19th-century loft in the heart of Tribeca, Quarters serves as both an elegant showroom for In Common With’s latest lighting experiments and a refuge where anyone, regardless of design know-how, can walk in and enjoy themselves. Each space is well-appointed, yet the relaxed ambience charts a refreshing detour from uptight galleries where it’s unclear whether you’re allowed to interact with the design. Instead, Quarters feels lived in. “It represents our imagination, values, and ambitions in a tangible form,” Ozemba says. “It’s an open invitation for others to find inspiration in our world.”

A trained window dresser and art director who spent a decade assisting Urs Fischer at his Berlin studio, Carmen D’Apollonio truly found her calling with pushing clay to extremes. Now based in Los Angeles and enmeshed in California’s rich ceramics tradition, the self-taught sculptor has freed herself to approach her craft with no boundaries. Whether her pieces slump, wiggle, or stand tall, each ceramic lamp is imbued with its own unforgettable narrative that’s purely the result of a designer mastering her medium while not losing sight of her sense of humor.

When: Until Sept. 29

Where: Houghton Hall, Norfolk, U.K.

What: Odundo juxtaposes her ceramic and glass works against a backdrop of 18th- and 19th-century English heritage, embedding her pieces seamlessly within Houghton Hall’s lavish Palladian interiors. Her terracotta vessels and narrative pieces, which include complex ceramic works critiquing colonialism and slavery, interact thoughtfully with the mansion’s historical elements. She employs traditional techniques like terra sigillata to craft forms that symbolize both human features while nodding to ancient artistry, integrating symbols such as noses or nipples to anthropomorphize her vessels. The centerpiece will be a large-scale ceramic sculpture created using historic Wedgwood molds that address themes of slavery and activism.

Earlier this month, Museum Mile happened to host a veritable it-crowd of artists, models, and fashion designers for the VIP preview of “Cuerpo,” Carlos Martiel’s debut solo exhibition, at El Museo Del Barrio. Martiel was announced as the inaugural Maestro Dobel Latinx Art Prize recipient this past fall, with a September art month lunch at the Polo Bar, so it’s apt that his accompanying exhibition was unveiled during Frieze New York. Guests were treated to a first look at the exhibition before its official unveiling on May 2, with Maestro Dobel Black Diamond Margaritas and Ace Palomas in hand.

When was it? May 1

Where was it? El Museo Del Barrio, New York

Who was there? Marina Abramović, Carly Cushnie, Coco Fusco, Miles Greenberg, Hiandra Martinez, Lineisy Montero, and more.

Ross Gardam is a team of designers, engineers, and makers who work collaboratively from ideation to realization. The Ross Gardam studio focuses on producing contemporary furniture, lighting, and objects working across a variety of innovative mediums. Merging traditional craft with modern techniques is paramount to Gardam’s methodology and informs each design. All Ross Gardam products are designed and produced in Melbourne, Australia.

Surface Says: Ross Gardam’s eponymous design studio goes beyond the oft-touted virtues of materiality and craft, bringing a focus on inspiring joy and defying convention with creations that span lighting, furniture, and beyond.

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