CULTURAL BULLETIN | HAPPENINGS | CABANA MAGAZINE

A monthly guide to the events and exhibitions on Cabana's Radar: a global cultural bulletin and a must-read for anyone looking to keep their finger on the pulse of art and design.

BY MILA WOLPERT | HAPPENINGS | 1 NOVEMBER 2024

There is a host of incredible art to see this month, from Candida Höfer’s well-respected photographs of striking, empty interiors, to an important 16th-century British painting, soon to be on display at Compton Verney. In other exciting news, for those who have not visited Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild on the French Riviera, a selection of the family’s treasures will be exhibited at FAB Paris in a display by Jacques Garcia, the renowned French interior designer and art collector.  

EXHIBITIONS

LONDON, ENGLAND

Drawing the Italian Renaissance at The King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace

Fra Angelico, The bust of a cleric, c.1447–50, © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

The widest-ranging exhibition of Italian Renaissance drawing ever shown in the UK opens at The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace. The revolutionary period of the Renaissance witnessed a dramatic transformation in the way artists worked, with a newfound openness to individual creativity. Drawing was central to this, a channel for exploring visual ideas, initiating new compositions, and studying the world. The majority of the drawings on display were created as preparation for paintings, architecture, costume, tapestry, and more. Most originate from Italy between 1450 and 1600, including works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian.

November 1, 2024 - March 9, 2025, The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, LONDON, ENGLAND

FLORENCE, ITALY

Future Relics at Palazzo Corsini al Prato 

Kar Studio, Element Chair, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Philia

Galerie Philia chose the 16th-century Palazzo Corsini al Prato to be the backdrop of Future Relics, a new exhibition inspired by the rich cultural heritage of Medici Florence. The show brings together a group of international artists who worked in collaboration with Shifting Vision and researchers and academics specialized in Medici treasures to investigate the concept of a ‘future relic’ across the city’s archives.

The relics of Medici Florence - from precious objects in the Treasury of San Lorenzo to exotic pieces from global contacts - act as a historical reference point for the artists. The contemporary works on show are steeped in the history of local craftsmanship and techniques. The show’s location in the Palazzo Corsini al Prato is a magnificent sight, nestled in an historic garden by the Arno River.

November 1 - 21, 2024, Palazzo Corsini al Prato, FLORENCE, ITALY

HONG KONG

Making It Matters at M+

Ni Haifeng, Detail, Of the Departure and the Arrival, 2005, glazed porcelain © Ni Haifeng, Image courtesy of M+, Hong Kong

M+ largely drew upon its own museum collection to curate its upcoming exhibition, Making It Matters. The museum of contemporary visual culture examines making as a process of creative expression and its long-lasting effect on individual lives, global communities, and fragile ecosystems. The show will include works by artists, designers, and architects like Terunobu Fujimori, John Cage, and John Maeda. The exhibition charts the process of making, from concept and research, to design and fabrication, to emphasize how the act of creation matters in society.

From November 2, 2024, M+, HONG KONG

NEW YORK, USA

Solid Gold at the Brooklyn Museum

Hanging, France or Italy, 17th century. Silk, gilt metal, silver, and linen. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Susan D. Bliss, 51.248.16. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

In commemoration of its 200th Anniversary, the Brooklyn Museum proudly presents Solid Gold, an expansive and immersive exhibition exploring the all-encompassing world of gold throughout history. Over 500 objects spanning fashion, jewelry, luxury objects, painting, sculpture, and film unite to represent gold as a symbol for beauty, joy, ritual, spirituality and success for all of human history. Materials on display include haute couture fashion, Japanese screens, and objects that make 'golden smiles': facial jewelry made in ancient Panama around the first millennium.

November 16, 2024 - July 6, 2025, Brooklyn Museum, NEW YORK, USA

PARIS, FRANCE

FASHION IN THE MAKING. PHOTOGRAPHS OF 1920S AND 1930S DESIGNS

Madeleine Vionnet. Robe du soir. Août 1938. Tirage gélatino-argentique © Les Arts Décoratifs

The Musée des Arts Décoratifs explores the mesmerizing Roaring Twenties from 1917 to 1939 from more than one hundred photographs, drawings, films, and haute couture dresses. The exhibition La mode en modèles focuses on often overlooked images that were critical to the legal protection of fashion houses, giving visitors’ access to a detailed look at the work of major couturiers like Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet, and Jeanne Paquin.

November 6, 2024 - January 26, 2025, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, PARIS, FRANCE

NEW YORK, USA

Park Seo-Bo: The Newspaper Ecritures, 2022-23

Park Seo-Bo, Ecriture No. 02 - 77, 1977, Pencil and oil on Le Monde newspaper © Park Seo - Bo. Photo © White Cube (Kai Schmidt).

In a landmark exhibition, late South Korean artist Park Seo-Bo’s paintings from 2022-2023 will be shown publicly for the first time at White Cube New York. Park Seo-Bo: The Newspaper Ecritures, 2022–23 presents the last iteration of the artist’s “Écriture” series, started in the late 1960s. Park commenced the series using an introspective methodology with origins in Taoist and Buddhist philosophy, as well as the Korean tradition of calligraphy. Creative tastemakers today are inspired by Park’s work and legacy, exemplified by Pharrell Williams’ Louis Vuitton Fall 2024 Men’s capsule collection inspired by Park Seo-Bo.

November 8, 2024 - January 11, 2025, White Cube, NEW YORK, USA

NEW YORK, USA

The Met Fifth Avenue Presents: The American Wing at 100

© The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This month, the American wing of The Met celebrates its 100th anniversary with a reinstallation of its impressive 75 galleries of art and design. They will tell a story that connects the wing’s increasingly hemispheric holdings - from mid-17th to mid-20th-century works with some contemporary pieces. Established in 1924, the wing holds furniture, silver, ceramics, glass, textiles, and architectural fragments, and now a wider array of works by diverse North American makers.

November 8, 2024 - Ongoing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NEW YORK, USA

LONDON, ENGLAND

Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504

Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John (The 'Taddei Tondo') © Royal Academy of Arts; Prudence Cuming Associates Limited.

This show is a chance to immerse yourself in the rivalry between Michelangelo and Leonardo, and to witness the influence the two Italian Renaissance giants had on the young Raphael. The exhibition begins with Michelangelo’s celebrated Taddei Tondo and includes some of the finest examples of Italian Renaissance drawing. 

November 9, 2024 - February 16, 2025, The Royal Academy, LONDON, ENGLAND

PHILADELPHIA, USA

The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure

Danielle Joy Mckinney, After the Dance, 2022 © Danielle Mckinney. Courtesy of the artist, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen. 

The Philadelphia Museum of Art presents a major exhibition, expanded for its US premiere, featuring 28 Black and African diasporic contemporary artists specialized in figurative painting, drawing, and sculpture. It brings to light and celebrates the nuance and richness of Black contemporary life and invites visitors to consider Blackness as a lived experience rather than as a biological fact. Curated by British writer and curator Ekow Eshun, The Time is Always Now is named after an essay on desegregation by American writer and social rights activist, James Baldwin.

November 9, 2024 - February 9, 2025, Philadelphia Museum of Art, PHILADELPHIA, USA

NEW YORK, USA

Ancestral: Ingrid Donat at Carpenters Workshop Gallery

Ingrid Donat, Ooni exhibition view, photography by Nicky Roding, courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.

Highly-acclaimed decorative arts designer, Ingrid Donat, unveils Commode Ooni and Commode Maya in New York for the first time at Carpenters Workshop Gallery. Ancestral follows presentations in Paris and London and will showcase the artist’s skill for integrating sculptural practice into functional pieces of art. Donat draws from her family heritage, and the diverse culture of Réunion Island, to imbue her creations with anthropological, historical, personal, and cultural meaning.

November 14, 2024 - February 14, 2025, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, NEW YORK, USA

PARIS, FRANCE

CHRISTOFLE, A BRILLIANT STORY

Torchère Gourdes et vignes grimpantes © Les Arts Décoratifs / Christophe Dellière.

Paris’ Museum of Decorative Arts opens an exhibition dedicated to Maison Christofle, from its foundation in the 1830s to the present day. Charles Christofle and Henri Bouilhet founded Christofle, transforming the lines and decorations typical of silverware to complement daily life. Their creations are recognized as a part of France’s tangible heritage dating back to the late 19th century. The exhibition features paintings and over 600 pieces of gold and silverwork from the Bouilhet-Christofle Collection and other major national collections.

November 14, 2024 - April 20, 2025, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, PARIS, FRANCE

NEW YORK, USA

Hyun-Sook Song

Hyun-Sook Song, Brushstrokes-Diagram, 2024 © Hyun-Sook Song Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers; Timo Ohler.

Hyun-Sook Song’s first solo exhibition in the US presents luminous, monochrome paintings with recurring motifs of ribbons of cloth tied around wooden posts, gauzy veils, bamboo canes, and clay pots. Tied to memories of her rural upbringing in South Korea, her striking works are realized through a process of absolute physical control and meditative focus. The artist - who uses an ancient medium of egg tempera that stems from East Asian calligraphy - lays her canvas on the floor and places wooden blocks on either side before positioning a plank to form a narrow bridge for her to move along and apply her precise, distinct brushstrokes. Many works are titled according to the number of brushstrokes needed to complete them.

November 15 - December 20, 2024, Sprüth Magers, NEW YORK, USA

LOS ANGELES, USA

Europa / America, Candida Höfer at Sean Kelly

Candida Höfer, Benediktinerstift Altenburg, 2014.

Candida Höfer’s first solo exhibition at Sean Kelly’s LA gallery, Europa / America, showcases 14 photographs of interior spaces primarily intended for entertainment, study, and worship. Renowned architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee curated the show around an exploration of sites that hold social significance in North America and European society. Inspired by a 1929 publication by German-Prussian architect Erich Mendelsohn, it demonstrates Höfer’s interest in portraying how architecture captures the cultural histories of a particular time and place.

November 16, 2024 - January 11, 2025, Sean Kelly, LOS ANGELES, USA

LONDON, ENGLAND

Leighton and Landscape: Impressions from Nature

Frederic Leighton (1830 - 1896), Bay of Cadiz, Moonlight , c. 1866. ©The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC). Image Jaron James.

Frederic Leighton was one of the most distinguished artist of the late 19th century - the only artist to have ever been appointed to the House of Lords, and a host to Queen Victoria at his home in Holland Park. Now, a rediscovered painting of Leighton’s, Bay of Cadiz, Moonlight (1866), will be on display for the first time in 120 years at Leighton House, his former home in London. The once-missing painting depicts the artist’s voyage to Andalusia and is a rarity among his landscapes, with few painted at night. This show of works en plein air captures Leighton at his most experimental, a side of his work that is little known to the public.

November 16, 2024 - April 27, 2025, Leighton House, LONDON, ENGLAND

BEIJING, CHINA

Luc Tuymans: The Past

Luc Tuymans, Bell Boy, 2023, oil on canvas. Collection Museum Voorlinden. Photograph by and courtesy Studio Luc Tuymans.

UCCA presents one of the most significant surveys of Luc Tyumans’ work and the first comprehensive presentation of the artist in China. Tuymans gained recognition in Europe in the 1980s with a distinctive style that entwined aspects of Northern Renaissance painting and the popular culture and media of his youth in post-war Belgium. The 80 works on show are based on preexisting imagery - ordinary objects are imbued with monumental importance, while subjects of enormous consequence are hauntingly reduced to pictorial beings of no consequence.

November 16, 2024 - February 16, 2025, UCCA, BEIJING, CHINA

MÁLAGA, SPAIN

William Kentridge: More Sweetly Play the Dance

William Kentridge, More Sweetly Play the Dance, 2015, Colección Fundació Sorigué © William Kentridge, Hans Wilschut, Courtesy of Lia Rumma Gallery.

A spectacular video installation by South African artist William Kentridge, known for his drawings, films, and theater and opera productions, will be presented at Museo Picasso Málaga this month. The nearly 40m-long piece displays a procession of moving figures carrying belongings or objects to evoke migratory movements from the outbreak of war, the search for utopias, or climate threats. The exhibition brings together two essential aspects of Kentridge’s work: the moving image and groups of people.

November 20, 2024 - April 19, 2025, Museo Picasso Málaga, MÁLAGA, SPAIN

WARWICKSHIRE, ENGLAND

In Focus: Two Women 

Two Women Wearing Cosmetic Patches (c.1655) © Compton Verney Art Gallery & Park

After being saved for the nation in 2023, Two Women Wearing Cosmetic Patches (c.1655) is going on public display in the UK for the first time at its new home, Compton Verney. The UK government placed an export ban on its sale due to the ‘highly unusual’ depiction of a Black female sitter in a painting from this period. Halfway through the 17th century, Britain faced radical political, religious, and social change - it is in this context that this painting came to be. The artist created this remarkable painting to represent the fears and anxieties around a perceived increase in moral laxity, gender transgression, and the influence of foreigners. Although both sitters seem to be portrayed equally in this composition, the disturbing reality is that the artist believed in the ideal of unmarked white skin. This painting will form part of the two-year-long display In Focus: Two Women, which will explore attitudes towards morality and race, the technical analysis of how the painting was created, and the identity of the artist behind the work.

From November 21, 2024, Compton Verney, WARWICKSHIRE, ENGLAND

LONDON, ENGLAND

Keeping Time: Clocks by Boulle at the Wallace Collection

Attributed to André-Charles Boulle, movement by Claude Martinot, Mantel clock (detail), About 1726 © The Trustees of the Wallace Collection

For the first time, the Wallace Collection is shining a spotlight on cabinetmaker to King Louis XIV of France, André Charles Boulle (1642–1732). Praised by his contemporaries as “the most skillful artisan in Paris,” Boulle perfected a marquetry technique using copper and tortoiseshell. The Wallace Collection will explore the art of science and timekeeping by bringing together five clocks by Boulle, telling a story of how the Sun King’s famous cabinetmaker applied scientific discoveries to create unique Baroque style designs. Boulle’s creations were the work of many hands, involving leading artists and craftspeople to finalize the creations whose influence spread across the world and lasted centuries.

November 27, 2024 - March 2, 2025, The Wallace Collection, LONDON, ENGLAND

EVENTS

PARIS, FRANCE

Heritage in Focus at Paris Photo

Victor Zea, The Legacy of the Stone, Portrait of Rita Castillo in the Patihuisinca reservoir. Miraflores, Yauyos, Lima, Perú.

World Monuments Fund (WMF) and Magnum Foundation are excited to debut Heritage in Focus, a special exhibition entwining heritage and photography, at this year’s Paris Photo fair. The exhibition marks a new fellowship led by the two organizations that gives emerging photographers the opportunity to document historic places and their stewards at 11 cultural heritage sites on the 2022 World Monuments Watch. The World Monuments Watch is a biennial, nomination-based program that brings global awareness and action to local heritage preservation efforts. The exhibition will feature selected works from four photographers who each use creative visual storytelling to highlight the role of heritage across diverse communities from Peru, Ghana, Indonesia, and Mexico.

November 7 - 10, 2024, Grand Palais, PARIS, FRANCE

PARIS, FRANCE

FAB Paris at the Grand Palais

Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild © Anthony Lanneretonne for Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild

FAB Paris returns for its highly-anticipated third edition at its permanent venue, the newly-restored Grand Palais. France’s premier fair for fine art and antiques will be host to over 100 internationally-renowned art and antique dealers. Pieces with remarkable provenance will be presented, including an Ancient Egyptian head formerly in the collection of Coco Chanel and furniture that once adorned the salons of the Palace of Versailles. Each year, FAB Paris invites a French institution to exhibit its collection, and this November, Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, the extraordinary palace built by Béatrice de Rothschild on the French Riviera from 1907-12, will be featured. Jacques Garcia, French interior designer and art collector, will direct the mise en scène of the Rothschild treasures. Five young art dealers will also be exhibited in a dedicated stand designed by Victor Bonnivard, a young French interior designer celebrated for his high-profile renovations of historic buildings. Mark your calendars for this unmissable event that brings together the design world’s legends and emerging leaders.

November 22 - 27, 2024, Grand Palais, PARIS, FRANCE