Now that tickets to the Museum of Modern Art are priced at a staggering $30 each, you could be forgiven for timing your visits carefully, making sure they count.
So, let’s say you’re in midtown Manhattan with an hour or two to spare and you’re craving some culture. Maybe you’ve already seen MoMA’s latest exhibitions, or maybe you’re just not in the mood to spend that kind of money. May I suggest going to the Tiffany & Co. flagship store instead. on Fifth Avenue?
No there are not “Demoiselles d’Avignon” there, and not “Starry Night”, but what The milestone (as it’s called) the offering is a heady mix of contemporary art and luxury retail that’s as relevant and disruptive as anything you could hope to find in a museum.
After a renovation by leather-clad architect Peter Marino that debuted last April, 58 pieces handpicked by major artists—many of them blue, or silver, or both—now fill the 84-year-old building. A color-changing James Turrell oval is built into a wall near a set of elevator doors. Hanging from another glossy Damien Hirst cabinet filled with rows of cubic zirconias. Hovering alongside the engagement rings is one of Anish Kapoor’s striking eyes mirror discs. On the ground floor, 14 arched windows shine with a state-of-the-art animation of Oyoram Visual Composer, of the Manhattan skyline and Central Park — the city is flawless, no people, just birds.
And that giant, fake wearing Venus of Arles with a Tiffany Blue patina? This comes from his mind Daniel Arsham, who has devoted his career to such banal corporate partnerships. He has planned a limited edition bracelet and sculpture for the brand, as well as, and I quote, “exclusive Pokémon-inspired jewelry.”
The key work here is Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting ‘Equals Pi’, from 1982, his landmark year. (MoMA, for the record, doesn’t have a Basque painting.) It sits high on a ground-floor wall, covered by a translucent shield, and looks a little forlorn. It has Basquiat’s classic crowns and handwritten text, and its turquoise ground is eerily close to Tiffany’s trademark color. When Tiffany executive Alexandre Arnault used it in an ad campaign featuring Beyoncé and Jay-Z in 2021, he suggested the artist might be paying “homage” to the brand. Some who actually knew Basquiat were quick to dismiss it.
But let’s not dwell on the conflict. Almost everything in this 10-story palace is bright, polished, antiseptic, and right where it should be. There are stunning flower arrangements, stacks of art books and spacious public toilets. The sellers are unreservedly kind. “I’m just fooling around,” I told someone who asked to help. “Pull away,” he replied. The atmosphere is subtly disorienting, a little disturbing, like a casino or an elite art exhibition in the wee hours of the morning. There is money at stake here.
Shoppers sip sparkling wine or iced water as they try on jewelry. Two are ushered into a private room, where pastel-colored macarons may await. Behind a discreet blue velvet rope is a corridor of paintings Hans Hartung and Jules de Balincourt (blue and blue).
It’s tempting to wring one’s hands for this instrumentalization of high art to sell high-tech accessories, but it’s been decades since Mark Rothko canceled his commission for the luxury Four Seasons Restaurant, is quoted as saying that “anyone who will eat such food at such prices will never look at a painting of mine.” Ideas about the purity of art and the stigma of selling out have less currency today.
In any case, Marino’s Tiffany work follows a rich tradition. In the 1950s, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg collaborated on window displays for Bergdorf Goodman, across from Tiffany’s, and Bonwit Teller, one block south. They used a pseudonym, but Rauschenberg later had a job at Bonwit Teller. (The couple also collaborated with Gene Moore at Tiffany; the designer’s pieces are on display at the Landmark.)
Andy Warhol appeared in Bonwit Teller’s windows, too, in 1963, just as he was becoming a star. Risk-taker Robert Irwin created a spectral sculpture for a California mall in 1970, and Takashi Murakami infamously incorporated a Louis Vuitton pop-up into his traveling museum retrospective in 2007-08. (Vuitton’s parent company, LVMH, which is controlled by France’s art-loving Arnault family, acquired Tiffany in 2021.)
The works at Tiffany, unfortunately, are not for sale – they have been bought, commissioned or loaned by the company – but there is a strong history of department stores dealing with art. In the 1960s, she became involved with the actor and art historian Vincent Price art sales at Searsand in Minneapolis at the time, Dayton’s department store (which spawned Target) had a gallery of material from top artists, some through famous New York dealer Leo Castelli;
In China, developer Adrian Cheng has filled his K11 malls with modern art, and in Seoul, where I lived until recently, a Frank Gehry-designed Vuitton store hosted solid shows of Cindy Sherman, Alex Katz and Warhol from Fondation Louis Vuitton’s holdings. (Marino handled the interiors.) Last year, the gallery of the Shinsegae department store, a high-end clothing offshoot called Boon the Shop, had a Rirkrit Tiravanija show that included free t-shirts from the artist, just like his recent survey at MoMA PS1 did.
In 1970, the Collectors Bulletin mocked that “being a ‘department gallery’ is a dubious distinction. not quite an insult, but certainly not a compliment either,” calling the field “middlebrow art.” As it happens, much of the art at Tiffany’s is mediocre—the kind of adequate, professional stuff one might find in day sales at auction houses or uninspired booths at art fairs anywhere in the world. A brand this rich could have been much more ambitious and daring.
Anyway, for the next two months, you can get a closer look at Marino’s taste by booking a free ticket to “Culture of Creativity: An Exhibition from the Peter Marino Art Foundation”, located in the Tiffany Gallery — an airy space high up in the building with excellent views of Billionaire’s Row (the interiors were by Marino and the exterior facade by OMA Shohei Shigematsu). You’ll find nearly 70 more pieces, including intricate, witty 19th-century Tiffany silver, bronze sheep (from François-Xavier Lalanne) over artificial grass, repairable pieces by artists represented elsewhere in the store (Francesco Clemente, Vik Muniz, Sarah Sze), and several portraits of Marino: painted on a Michelangelo Pistoletto mirror, in Roe Ethridge Photosand painted top broken plates to Julian Schnabel.
There’s a very dark moment that surprised me in Marino’s show: a large photograph of Sarah Charlesworth from 1980, an appropriated image of a man falling from a building. It curiously echoes two large wall pieces that Rashid Johnson created for the store as part of it “Falling Man” series. Johnson’s depictions of pixelated, upside-down men (Tiffany Blue) are reminiscent of 8-bit video game characters. They are surrounded by mirrors that are partially scratched and cracked, as if broken by a hammer.
These works are meant to be “existential investigations, meaning the idea of man falling into space, finding himself,” Johnson said. said an interviewer last year. Fair enough. But you could also see them as portraits of a culture bent on self-destruction (or contours corpses at a crime scene). spend time with them and you may find that their hints of violence stick with you.
You’ll want to relax after this dizzying experience. The $30 you’ve saved won’t go very far at Daniel Boulud’s Blue Box Café on the sixth floor, where the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” menu is $59 per person (before tax and tip), but at least you can enjoy a glass champagne as you reflect. Why not order a second or a third? This moment won’t last forever.
Tiffany & Co. — The Landmark, 727 Fifth Avenue, tiffany.com.
The art throughout the building exists indefinitely. “Culture of Creativity: An Exhibition from the Peter Marino Art Foundation” is on view at the Tiffany Gallery through May 20 and requires a free ticket: www.tiffany.com/stories/events/the-landmark-culture-of-creativity-exhibition .