Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/934095
A r a f t o f n e w showrooms and r e t a i l s h o p s h a s o p e n e d in the Dallas Design District, including Dallas Luxury Beds, which carries luxury mattresses from Naturepedic, Vispring, and Swedish- made Hästens, which has its own 2,4000-square-foot shop-in-shop … Modern Forms has moved into new 15,000-square-foot digs at the Trade Mart, with 220 new lighting designs. Arteriors also opens a lighting showroom at the Trade Mart, on the third level … Ambella Home, founded by Greg Moussa, has a second trade-only showroom inside the charming former East & Orient space on Slocum Street … Cantoni Trade's freestanding showroom at the far southern end of Dragon Street is slated to open in late spring or early summer. Stay tuned for all the stylish details. Rebecca Sherman ART + DECORATION PITCH ( FORK ) DESIGN BUZZ NOBLE CAUSE It takes six months to a year for artisans from Nigeria's Yoruba tribe to create a single nobility chair from thousands of hand-sewn beads. Historically created for the tribe's chief, the beautiful, intricate work keeps artisans and their craft thriving, says Ceylon et Cie's Michelle Nussbaumer, who works with a group of mostly female artisans to translate her Otami fabric designs into beaded textiles. The chairs can be customized in any color and almost any pattern. Otami nobility chair $6,500, at Ceylon et Cie, 1319 Dragon St., celyonetcie.com. Rebecca Sherman PERFECT Grant Wood's American Gothic, 1930, at the Whitney Museum of American Art O ne of the most beloved yet least understood canvases of American art serves as the subject for a re-exploration of its maker's career. When "Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables" opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art next month, it marks only the third survey of the painter's work outside the Midwest since 1935. Billed as the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to Wood (1891–1942), it revolves around the seminal American Gothic, a painting that rocked audiences when it captured third prize at a competition held by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930. Painted in a style mimicking the tight detail and airless atmosphere of European Renaissance painting, the canvas depicts a farmer and his daughter, cast as hermetic emblems of the Midwest. Wood, reared in rural Iowa until the age of 10, then thereafter largely in Cedar Rapids, embarked on a European tour during his 30s, only to return home to paint the common folk of small- town Iowa. The house in American Gothic is based on a real one in Eldon, Iowa, while the models were Wood's dentist and his sister, Nan. More than 100 works, including decorative arts such as the droll Corn Cob Chandelier (1925), murals, magazine covers, book illustrations, and canvases convey a portrait of Wood that goes beyond his regionalist label to reveal a complicated artist who painted the simple, yet often claustrophobic world in which he lived. March 2 – June 10, whitney.org. Catherine D. Anspon Ellsworth Kelly's Austin, 2015 (exterior rendering), at Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin BOTTOM LEFT: COURTESY BLANTON MUSEUM OF ART, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN. BOTTOM RIGHT: COLLECTION ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO. © FIGGE ART MUSEUM / LICENSED BY VAGA, NYC. PHOTO COURTESY ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO / ART RESOURCE, NYC. Grant Wood's American Gothic, 1930, at the Whitney Museum of American Art V ence, France, has Matisse's Rosary Chapel, and Houston the Rothko Chapel. Now Austin gets into the act. Unveiling this month, The University of Texas' Blanton Museum of Art becomes a pilgrimage site for late contemporary master Ellsworth Kelly's magnum opus. The chapel-like space, christened Austin, is one of Kelly's final creations. With stained-glass windows across three facades, the 2,700-square-foot building echoes a church basilica. The handsome, stone-clad structure — its $23 million ELLSWORTH KELLY'S LAST STAND construction campaign now completed — adjoins the Blanton Museum of Art. Inside, visitors will encounter the artist's totemic wood sculpture, a wall of black- and-white marble panels rendered in minimalist shapes, and glorious panes of color in linear and rectangular forms, each a singular pigment. Considered a work of art unto itself — the artist said it is "without a religious purpose" — Austin is a destination for those seeking contemplation and inspiration. Ellsworth Kelly's Austin, opening Sunday, February 18, at the Blanton Museum of Art, blantonmuseum.org. Catherine D. Anspon Otami nobility chair at Ceylon et Cie