Located in a historic landmark and spanning six floors, the freshly opened New York outpost of Stockholm’s celebrated Fotografiska museum is set to become a cornerstone in the city’s cultural landscape. New York architecture firm CetraRuddy led the redesign of the Swedish institution’s first stateside location, in close collaboration with Fotografiska co-founders and brothers Jan and Per Broman.
While the ground floor offers a perfectly appointed café alongside a curated selection of books, prints and other wares, the second level is home to Verōnika, an elegant restaurant and bar helmed by Stephen Starr and designed by Roman and Williams. At the top of the Renaissance revival building lies a cosy living room-like space, home to rotating installations that will serve as backdrops for talks, concerts, and more. Sandwiched in the middle is the raison d’être of the museum, with three storeys dedicated to contemporary photography exhibitions. The inaugural shows are solo presentations of Ellen von Unwerth, Tawny Chatmon, Adi Nes, Helene Schmitz and Anastasia Taylor-Lind.
The curated art book and gift store.
The largest show, ‘Devotion! 30 Years of Photographing Women’, explores von Unwerth’s iconic fashion images – the German photographer and director was a model herself once. The playful and provocative photographs, often depicting celebrities, are arranged in seven chapters, among them Love, Power, and Passion. We see Rihanna staring straight into the camera, lips crimson and wrapped in barbed wire (Rated R, 2009); transgender model Andreja Pejić perched on a bathroom counter in a sparkling robe (Houpette, 2013); and David Bowie and Kate Moss clinging to each other (Kate and David, 2003). A selection of von Unwerth’s short films, shot mostly in black-and-white also feature, while Lana del Rey can be heard in the backdrop of the show’s Lust section.
Soundtracks carry through many of the exhibitions, including Schmitz’s ‘Thinking Like a Mountain’, with its calming instrumental score, and Taylor-Lind’s ‘Other People’s Children’, which features mumbled conversations between kids and adults. Elsewhere at Chatmon’s survey, ‘Inheritance’, a documentary provides a behind-the-scenes look at her empowering portraits of African-American women and youth, atop of which she adds regal elements with acrylic paint and 24-karat gold-leaf in a style reminiscent of Gustav Klimt.
Much more than a photography museum, Fotografiska is a place ripe for discovery – for emerging and established talents, for connections between unsuspected pairings, and for new ways to engage with a contemporary institution. With institution set to open a London gallery in 2020, keep an eye on its forthcoming programming, which is sure to surprise and delight.
The façade of the landmarked Church Missions House on Park Avenue South.
Untitled, 2019, by Anastasia Taylor-Lind, Rachel nurses her 16-month-old daughter Michaela while her nanny, Annie, clips the child’s toenails in Brooklyn.
Installation view of ‘Adi Nes: Inheritance’.
Untitled, 1996, © The artist. Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery
Untitled (Last Supper), 1996, © The artist. Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery
Installation view of ‘Helene Schmitz: Thinking Like a Mountain’.
Aesthetics of Violence, 2017, from the series Thinking Like a Mountain. © The artist
A versatile event venue with vaulted ceilings and skylights will host programming for Fotografiska members.
INFORMATION
ADDRESS
Fotografiska New York
281 Park Avenue South
New York
-
First look: Western Mongolia meets Kew Gardens in John Pawson and Oyuna Tserendorj’s cashmere throwsArchitectural designer John Pawson and cashmere designer Oyuna Tserendor have collaborated on a cashmere throw collection inspired by Pawson’s 70m Lake Crossing in the Royal Botanical Gardens
-
How to buy art: the accessible new marketThanks to a growing pool of art advisers, digital intelligence and collector groups, buyers are better equipped than ever
-
The coolest design-led coffee shops in SeoulSeoul counts more coffee shops per capita than any other city in the world – cut straight to our six must-visit spots
-
Brutalism in film: the beautiful house that forms the backdrop to The Room Next DoorThe Room Next Door's production designer discusses mood-boarding and scene-setting for a moving film about friendship, fragility and the final curtain
-
'There’s an anxiety under all of it': Violet Dennison in New YorkViolet Dennison debuts abstract paintings with new show 'Damaged Self' at Tara Downs Gallery
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
-
Mark Armijo McKnight’s bodily landscapes capture the tactile serenity of the American WestThe artist’s new exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which is organised by the museum curator Drew Sawyer, offers a succinct window into his contemplative suggestion of queering a landscape
-
Dark, glamorous and hedonistic: a photography book captures New York in the 1990sNew York: High Life, Low Life, by Dafydd Jones, goes behind the scenes of New York society
-
Derrick Alexis Coard’s portraits are a sensitive, positive testimony to Black menThe late artist Derrick Alexis Coard’s retrospective ‘I Am That I Am’, at New York’s Salon 94, honours his ‘symbolic expression for possible change for the African-American male community’
-
Intimacy, violence and the uncanny: Joanna Piotrowska in PhiladelphiaArtist and photographer Joanna Piotrowska stages surreal scenes at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
-
First look: Sphere’s new exterior artwork draws on a need for human connectionWallpaper* talks to Tom Hingston about his latest large-scale project – designing for the Exosphere
