Never Mind the West Village Girls, Meet the Next Generation of Upper East Siders
Are the institutions and old-timers at risk of being aged out? While turnover is synonymous with New York life, the UES has for now struck a balance between continuity and reinvention. Playwright and UES denizen Matthew Gasda admits to having witnessed an influx of young people in recent years, but asserts that “you actually interact with people of all ages here, unlike other neighborhoods, which can feel like playgrounds for 28-year-old marketing directors.”
Benicio del Toro Opens Up to Scarlett Johansson About On-Set Isolation and Press-Tour Logorrhea
Over the past three decades, Wes Anderson has cultivated a highly eclectic and faithful stable of actors. When the director calls, a motley crew comes running—spanning ages, career phases, and box office favorabilities. It’s like summer camp, but for really successful adults. One recent addition to the menagerie is Academy Award winner Benicio del Toro, who first entered the fray in 2021’s The French Dispatch before returning to star in last month’s The Phoenician Scheme as Zsa-zsa Korda—“international businessman, maverick in the fields of armaments and aviation, among the richest men in Europe.” Here, the actor and his costar, Scarlett Johansson, hash out their feelings around the modern-day movie-making machine—from on-set angst and press-tour hiccups to confronting themselves on the big screen.
Leslie Bibb isn’t quite sure how to slow down. “As actors, we’re always trying to get the next job,” she says. “I don’t like downtime much because I love what I do.” But when she speaks to writer Esther Zuckerman a few days after her cover shoot for this issue—a joyride in the eternally estival East Hampton—Bibb is taking something of a break. She’s in Upstate New York now, at the home of a “very fancy interior designer” friend, her dog Gus wrapped around her feet. From her perch, she has a view of some Canada geese and a pond. She’s taking a moment to relax.
Introducing CULTURED’s Inaugural Young Dealers List
To select the group of gallerists comprising CULTURED’s first Young Dealers List, we reached out to more than 40 collectors, advisors, and curators to find out where they look to discover new talent. From over 100 recommendations, we narrowed our first edition to 23 galleries, all younger than five years old. They represent a broad (although in no way exhaustive) range of geographies, a distinct point of view, and a shared commitment to elevate artists they believe in.
Yes, that Adrien Brody. And yes, he’s earnest about this. The two-time Academy Award winner has opened “Made in America,” a solo show running through June 28 at Eden on Madison Avenue. It’s a sometimes-perplexing, always sentimental ode to the New York of Brody’s youth—part collage, part catharsis, and wholly committed. The presentation features a gum wall installation, a “Vermin” painting series, and some surprisingly dark musical beats composed by the artist. There are nods to fast food, childhood gun violence, and industrial decay, rendered with layers of paint smears, spliced cardboard sheets, and surfaces that intentionally disrupt their own polish.
Andrew Scott and Josh O’Connor, who developed a close friendship over the years, share a penchant for independent films about the monsters in our minds that never fail to whip festival audiences into a frenzy. But last year, they departed from those roots to shoot the destined-to-be blockbuster Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. Early glimpses of the film reveal O’Connor putting his own spin on one of Scott’s most infamous roles: a hot priest. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but Scott and O’Connor don’t waste time on that. Instead, their relationship is defined by a whole lot of teasing—so much so that when the pair sat down for Scott’s CULTURED cover feature, they had to promise to behave themselves.
Larry Gagosian may be known as the world’s most famous art dealer, but he recently took on another title: bookseller. The longtime Amagansett resident swooped in to purchase Bookhampton in May. He says he plans to stay the course and maintain the establishment’s vibrancy as a community hub, though he can’t resist expanding its art and design offerings. To inaugurate “My Required Reading,” CULTURED’s new column in which influential tastemakers reveal what’s on their nightstands, Gagosian shared his literary habits—and his surprising personal connection to one of the hottest novels about Hamptons life.
What Does It Feel Like to Be Called an Emerging Artist at 72? Ask Takako Yamaguchi
“She really needs a museum retrospective to kind of put all these pieces together,” Mike Egan, founder of the gallery Ramiken told Artnews last year of Takako Yamaguchi. The art world will have to wait for a comprehensive survey of the 72-year-old’s work, but the painter is got her first solo museum show in Los Angeles, which she’s called home since 1987, this summer in MOCA’s Grand Avenue space. Ahead of the opening, she sat down with CULTURED for a debrief about ambivalence, abundance, and the next paintings.
On Feb. 6, Annabelle Dexter-Jones sat down to pose for a portrait by the legendary Francesco Clemente—a birthday gift from her partner and the painter’s close friend, Daniel Humm. She didn’t know she’d walk out engaged. The year-long whirlwind that has consumed the Michelin-starred Swiss chef and British-American actor began at a wedding—their mutual friend Vito Schnabel’s—in the spring of 2024. They’ve been joined at the hip ever since. “I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to get married again,” Humm says, “but when I met Annabelle, I knew immediately that I did.”
Rodrigo Padilla was introduced to the art world the way most important information is passed around in New York: by chatting and gossiping at the hair salon. The stylist got his start at the salon of Sally Hershberger, architect of the Upper West Side-defining shag popularized by Meg Ryan, before striking out on his own, where he amassed a clientele including the likes of Uma Thurman, Diane Guerrero, and Emily Sundberg. One of his early clients was Whitney Museum trustee Brooke Garber Neidich, who offered Padilla one bit of advice about entering the art world: “See everything.”
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