This Painter Viewed Power and Society Through a Sartorial Lens

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This Painter Viewed Power and Society Through a Sartorial Lens
At the recently revamped Frick Collection, a new exhibition reframes eighteenth-century portraiture through the lens of style. Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture (Feb. 12 – May 25) is the first New York exhibition devoted entirely to Thomas Gainsborough’s portraits, bringing together more than two dozen works drawn from the Frick’s holdings and major collections in the U.S. and U.K. Rather than treating clothing as mere embellishment, the exhibition positions fashion as central to Gainsborough’s art—an expression of class, craft, labor, and identity. His canvases document silk, lace, and tailoring with virtuoso precision, while also revealing how portraiture shaped social aspiration and self-image in Georgian England. Recent technical research further illuminates the artist’s process, tracing links between paint, textiles, and the broader material culture of the period. On view through May 25, the exhibition offers a timely meditation on how style operates—then as now—as both image and influence. frick.org

A New Collection by Christofle is Ready for Summer
This April, French silver house Christofle will introduce Malmaison Riviera, a sunlit reimagining of its historic Malmaison tableware. Drawing on the Empire-style motifs that have defined the collection for more than a century, the new line will infuse classic porcelain with a warm, Mediterranean palette—most notably a watercolor-like yellow meant to echo coastal light. Designed for relaxed, everyday use, Malmaison Riviera will include plates, serving pieces, and table accessories that balance ornament with ease. Hand-drawn palmettes and rosettes create rhythmic compositions across the table, while silver-plated accents add a subtle gleam. The result is a collection that will feel timeless and seasonal at the same time. christofle.com

A Show Explores Our Favorite Director’s Wild Imagination
At Onassis Stegi in Athens, acclaimed Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos—best known for his surreal, rigorously composed films such as The Favourite (2018), Poor Things (2023), and Kinds of Kindness (2024)—turns his gaze from motion picture to still image. Yorgos Lanthimos: Photographs (Mar. 7 – May 17) brings together 182 photographs made over the past five years, drawn from sets and moments around his recent body of work, including his forthcoming Bugonia (2025). Installed in a layout inspired by a classical Greek temple, the exhibition unfolds from the outer perimeter—three series made on the margins of Lanthimos’s film sets in New Orleans, Atlanta, Henley-on-Thames, and Budapest—toward a central, altar-like core of 110 new images. Across these quiet, unsettling photographs, the director’s signature gaze lingers on the banal and the uncanny, transforming everyday spaces into meditations on time, solitude, and the strange poetry of the familiar. onassis.org

Go Easy on the Eyes With This 70s Sofa
After half a century, Ligne Roset is reintroducing Sandra, the all-foam sofa designed in 1975 by Annie Hiéronimus. Conceived at a moment dominated by sharp angles and rigid forms, Sandra offered a softer proposition—curved, enveloping, and unapologetically focused on comfort. Hiéronimus, then the only woman in Ligne Roset’s design studio, championed a more human approach to modern seating, one that prioritized the body as much as the eye. The newly released edition remains faithful to the original silhouette while benefiting from contemporary construction. Multi-density foams improve support, a built-in lumbar cushion enhances comfort, and the lightweight structure allows the sofa to move easily between spaces. Flexible, plush, and quietly radical, Sandra returns at a moment when interiors once again value softness, adaptability, and emotional ease. ligne-roset.com

Wild Materials and Fluids Forms Fill a Design Exhibit at Nina Johnson
At Nina Johnson gallery in Miami, the group exhibition Dripped (Feb. 12 – April 4) brings sculpture, design, and painting into fluid dialogue. On view from, the show unites the Athens-based collective made by Astronauts, artist Hilliary Gabryel, and Paris-based painter Oh de Laval in a meditation on water, mythology, and aspirational luxury. Anchoring the exhibition is made by Astronauts’ most expansive body of work to date: hydroformed steel and stainless-steel furnishings whose softened, liquid silhouettes recall ancient myth refracted through industrial process. Gabryel’s latex-skinned wall sculptures, assembled from salvaged bedroom furniture, probe intimacy and consumer desire, while de Laval’s self-portraits draw on Greek mythology to explore vulnerability and connection. Together, the works move between ornament and structure, solidity and flow—objects that seem to absorb cultural longing as much as they reflect it. ninajohnson.com