For those who don’t remember, humanity likes to rewrite history every now and again. There are long periods when we tell ourselves everything is fine when it’s not fine. Then there are episodes where we face hard truths and realign with reality. These reality checks are hard. They happen fast. We veered from the era of Marie Antoinette, with its high finery and extreme poverty, to almost twenty years of revolution that leveled the elite and gave the proletariat a voice. During the time of the Soviet Union, we saw massive famines and day-to-day life defined by fear of the secret police and the struggle to buy a loaf of bread before they were all gone. Many people ended up in gulags or became silenced by the fear of ending up in one. The entire social structure was built on denial of reality. The Head of Gosplan, The Soviet Economic Planning Agency, issued orders for production, knowing there wasn’t enough steel or food to meet the fabricated target. The principal purpose of the state was to manufacture enough fear to keep control. So, when Mr. Gorbachev came along and said “glasnost,” it was the beginning of an irreversible reality check. Glasnost means openness and transparency. It meant people could examine the state and criticize the state. And they did. All of the denials suddenly gave way to a multitude of angry opinions. Today, America is having a glasnost moment. It is as radical a revolution. Except, the goal is not to permit criticism. It is to get the raw data, put it in the hands of the most sophisticated data analysis experts in history (Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, etc), package the evidence in a way no judge or jury could deny, and commence a prosecutorial process. Republicans call this accountability. Democrats call it revenge.
So, we are not witnessing the usual passing of the baton back and forth between the left and the right. This is the Tech Bros storming the ramparts. Their goal is to shine a bright light into the darkest corners of government. The cameras will now be trained on the state instead of on the citizens. If you think Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are going to be running a new, yet uncreated, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), ...
November 10, 2024In 2018, Douglas Gold’s parents were moving house in Bellmore, New York, and decided to have a tag sale. Among the items they’d hoped to unload were a few exceptional paintings, so they hired an expert to choose the best ones to advertise.
Eli Sterngass saw the ad, and he had one free day between ending his job at Questroyal Fine Art, a gallery specializing in 19th- and 20th-century American paintings, and starting a new one at the art-appraisal firm Gurr Johns. He took the Long Island Rail Road from New York City to Bellmore to check out the Golds’ sale.
When Sterngass, then 24, met the couple’s son, who was 22 at the time, he recognized a kindred spirit. “I was shocked to find someone my age who was equally or more knowledgeable about early American paintings,” he recalls. “We became fast friends socially, and I brokered a painting by George Condo for Doug.”
Over the next few years, Sterngass worked his way up from associate researcher to fine-art appraiser at Gurr Johns, and Gold became director of the gallery Graham Shay 1857, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
By 2022, the two men felt seasoned enough to launch their own space, Lincoln Glenn gallery, in the town of Larchmont, following a wave of New Yorkers to the suburbs and exurbs during COVID.
Calvert Coggeshall, who painted this Color Field canvas around 1975, is representative of the kind of under-known talents that Lincoln Glenn gallery showcases. Top: Lincoln Glenn founders, Eli Sterngass (left) and Douglas Gold, hang the painting Polynesian Image, 1960, by Edward Zutrau, in their flagship space in New York’s Chelsea gallery district. Photo by Alexandra Rowley
Lincoln Glenn quickly gained a reputation as a place to discover exciting works by lesser-known American talents — like Abstract Expressionist Sherron Francis, Color Field painter Calvert Coggeshall, Surrealist Gerome Kamrowski and landscape painter Georgina Klitgaard — who had shown their creations alongside the biggest names of their day but who vanished from the limelight for one reason or another.
In May of last year, Lincoln Glenn opened a second location, inside Graham Shay 1857, to showcase its more traditional paintings by American Impressionists, Hudson River School painters and Ashcan School artists. Six months later, Sterngass and Gold relocated their flagship from Larchmont to New York’s Chelsea gallery district, focusing on abstract works by postwar painters.
Asked about the moniker Lincoln Glenn, the founders explain that they preferred it to one composed of their own names. “Gold Sterngass does not have a ring to it and may sound more like a law firm,” says Sterngass, who hails from Saratoga Springs, in Upstate New York. “We opted to combine our hometown streets.”
Introspective caught up with the young gallerists to find out more about their adventures in art dealing.
An installation view of “Gerome Kamrowski: An American Surrealist”at Lincoln Glenn. Photo by Alexandra Rowley
What’s the rarest or most unusual object you’ve ever handled?
He painted this work in 1864, when he was a member of the Seventh Regiment of the Union Army, and then exhibited it in 1872 at the Parisian vendor Goupil & Cie, where it was purchased and lost for 150 years.
It’s certainly well-painted, but I especially love that it’s a female artist painting a female subject for a female author. And the antique automobile is awesome!
How do you go about finding lost art treasures from the past century or two?
Gold: We pore through old exhibition catalogues of museum group shows, as well as major galleries, searching for names we aren’t familiar with. The work of the artist has to be of quality and match the interesting bios.
Artistic innovation is always something we seek out. We recently purchased the research library of legendary dealer Joan Washburn, of Washburn Gallery fame, and that has been an amazing resource.
Except for the artist estates that we represent, we own most of what we’re selling, as we’re both collectors at heart and like to actively participate in the market. Because we like to buy, we have a network of “pickers,” collectors and dealers who offer us new material each week.
Calvert Coggeshall was an interior designer and furniture maker turned abstract painter between nineteen fifty and nineteen eighty. He was close with Bradley Walker Tomlin, Grace Hartigan, Dorothy Miller, Walker Evans and dealer Betty Parsons but hadn’t had a solo exhibition in twenty years. Many of these paintings were in a barn in Upstate New York and still wrapped since the artist’s retrospective at Bowdoin College in 1977.
Gold: We have a policy to keep collectors confidential, but we have sold to celebrities, politicians and billionaires, and some of these sales have been on 1stDibs. We also do a lot of business with interior designers and art advisers.
Are you seeing an increase in the popularity of certain styles, eras or artists?
Gold: Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting have risen to the top of popularity.
Also, collectors and museums have been intrigued by Black artists, Asian American artists and female artists. A lot of museums have been rehanging to more accurately represent the tremendous diversity of our country, and this has trickled down to galleries and collectors as a result. We have tried to be ahead of the curve when we can!
Sterngass and Gold outside their Chelsea gallery. Photo by Alexandra Rowley
Can you tell us a bit about your current shows, “Gerome Kamrowski: An American Surrealist” and “Georgina Klitgaard: America Through Her Eyes”?
He moved out of New York in 1946 to take a professorship at the University of Michigan, and as a result, his contributions to both Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism are not as recognized as they should be. We are presenting his nineteen-forties works right now and will present nineteen-fifties and -sixties works in an exhibition next year.
More forgotten is Georgina Klitgaard, a Woodstock-based modernist who exhibited at the same gallery as Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh and Charles Burchfield. Her paintings from the late nineteen twenties through the nineteen forties are great examples of American Scene Painting. Our exhibition explores her travels throughout the nation.
Gold: The next exhibition at our Chelsea gallery is of Color Field painter Edward Zutrau. In early 2025, we’re exhibiting the work of female Surrealist Juanita Guccione, who is one to look out for, especially after a recent record auction price of over $200,000. Perhaps, she’s the next Leonora Carrington?
On the Upper East Side, we will have a group exhibition beginning in January on historical instructors of the Arts Students League, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary next year. It will be a wide array of artists, styles, media and prices.
What’s your favorite American art movement?
Sterngass: Ashcan School from nineteen hundred to nineteen twenty, or the WPA era, nineteen thirties to early forties.
Gold: New York School abstraction, nineteen forties to fifties.
More psychedelic paintings in “Gerome Kamrowski: An American Surrealist.” Photo by Alexandra Rowley
What item do you love too much to sell and why?
Sterngass: The first painting I ever bought, and thus the beginning of a journey — it is a panel by Andreas Jawlensky that reminded me of my time in college studying abroad in Central Europe.
What item do you regret having sold and why?
Sterngass: A watercolor on silk by Chiura Obata. I have become extremely interested in early Japanese American artists. This was a fantastic and rare example that I sold for far too cheap.
What would be your dream artwork to own and why?
Sterngass: The Icebergs, 1861, by Frederic Church. It’s a masterpiece showing the natural wonders of this planet and the artistic abilities of humans. [END]
Scoring an Architectural Breakthrough in Denver’s RiNo District
With its fractured facade and biophilic design, MAD Architects’ One River North evokes the canyons of the Rockies in one of Denver’s fastest-growing neighborhoods.
Just north of downtown Denver, a wave of artist studios and craft breweries is drawing young professionals to a formerly industrial area known as the River North Arts District, or RiNo. The region grew by nearly 500,000 people between 2010 and 2020.
Apartment developers are right on their heels. RiNo is situated in an Opportunity Zone — a designated metropolitan census tract where average income is 80% or less of a state’s median family income — meaning real estate investors can avoid capital gains taxes if they hold onto their investments for at least 10 years.
This combination of hip murals and tax deferrals made RiNo the perfect environment for One River North. This new residential mid-rise looks nothing like any other building in Denver — or anywhere, really. Ma Yansong, founder of MAD Architects, hopes the fractured facade and exposed “canyon” of One River North is just the start of a better way to design buildings in the city. “It’s a statement,” Ma says. “It’s cracking modern architecture.”
The showstopping project was developed by Max Collaborative, a second act of sorts for Jon and Kevin Ratner. They’re brothers from the family behind Forest City Realty Trust, the REIT that turned the former Stapleton International Airport into what is now Denver’s Central Park neighborhood. The Ratners’ new company, formed after the nearly century-old family business was sold to Brookfield Properties in 2018, focuses on multifamily housing in Los Angeles and Denver.
“We like up-and-coming neighborhoods,” says Kevin Ratner, managing partner at Max Collaborative. “Where are the art galleries and the restaurants? Because what comes right after is apartment buildings for young professionals.”
Credit: Iwan Baan/Sarah Schumacher for Bloomberg
One River North stands out from its competition in its appearance as well as its height. The 187-unit building opened in May with rents ranging from $1,800 to $16,000. Its 14 income-restricted units were set aside in order to meet city requirements for a density bonus: a height increase from 12 to 16 stories.
Replacing a one-story warehouse facility on a site that brushes up against a river of freight and light rail tracks, Ma saw an opportunity to shake up the expectations of urban residential architecture in one of the fastest-growing areas of the US. “We’ve done many projects around the theme of nature, but most of them are public buildings like museums or an opera house,” says Ma, also the architect behind Haikou’s Wormhole Library and Los Angeles’s Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. “You can play with a lot of spatial language in public buildings, but in residential architecture everyone focuses on efficiency and function.”
MAD had already designed multiple residential projects in North America, including a pair of curvy glass towers just outside Toronto and a low-rise complex with a living green wall facade in Beverly Hills. The firm also recently completed a major social housing complex in Beijing. In Denver, the architect took inspiration from the Rocky Mountains — a direction that he describes as “something different, something more contextual.” Ma is known for his biophilic designs, which draw on shapes and materials found in nature; decrying the lack of spirituality in modern architecture, he says that his firm prefers to create places that are “in-between futuristic and organic.”
Credit: Iwan Baan/Sarah Schumacher for Bloomberg
Most Denverites will only experience One River North from the outside, where they’ll see its northwest-facing glass facade appearing to crack open across floors 6 through 10 and up the middle to its top floor. Tenants, however, can walk along the facade’s ravine, which functions as an external courtyard with plantings, a multi-level water feature and common areas. Units from floor 9 through 16 contain private balconies built into the exposed facade. Ma said that the firm aimed to make these canyon views available to the public, but there are no current plans by the property to provide access.
Curving walls meant to resemble rock formations exist throughout the building’s shared indoor spaces as well. Made from a custom fabricated mesh plaster “chip” system — in which each chip was individually molded, attached to the structure and laser-scanned — the resulting formations were then covered in stucco and painted. “I didn’t want any columns,” Ma says. “When you see a column, you realize it’s a building. We found a middle ground, hiding the columns with landscape, so people are more focused on the undulating curves on the ceilings and the floor.”
Credit: Iwan Baan/Sarah Schumacher for Bloomberg
This treatment is also found along the building’s first floor roofline as well, creating a dramatic separation from the glass curtain wall that breaks up again from floors six through nine. Individual units facing the canyon were also designed to flow seamlessly into the building’s signature feature. “It’s so cool and spectacular and unusual,” says Ratner. (The project team would not disclose how much One River North cost to build.)
Designed out of MAD’s Los Angeles office, One River North seems like a natural fit for the Denver region, where tourists and residents alike flock to its forests, mountains and rivers. And biophilia seems to be the word of the year in the city’s design community. A summer exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, “Biophilia: Nature Reimagined,” featured examples of humanity’s intertwining with nature through design, including buildings such as Studio Gang’s Populus (which opened this fall in downtown Denver), as well as Ma’s Nanjing Himalayas Center in China.
Multifamily residential projects continue to sprout in RiNo, and Ma sees One River North’s organic design as a suggestion to its future neighbors. “If every building has this they can be connected, the city of the future can really become three dimensional with nature,” says the architect. “This is more like a starting project.”
