Shoppers ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Kanye West have popped into the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), which runs through Sunday in the Dutch town of Maastricht. No word on Kanye’s haul, but the Met scored “Virgil’s Tomb in Moonlight” (1779) by Joseph Wright of Derby (a poster version is yours for $19.99), Ronald Lauder picked up Picasso‘s “Homme au Chapeau” (1964) for $8 million, and the soon-to-reopen Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has enriched its collection with works including an 1809 Nicolaas Bauer canvas and Antoine Vechte‘s silver “Galathea” vase, created in 1843 for a French nobleman. Meanwhile, 26-year-old TEFAF is looking eastward: the fair’s organizers announced this week that they’re in talks with Sotheby’s to develop an art fair in China, so stay tuned for updates on “TEFAF Beijing 2014.” We’ve still got plenty to show from you from this year’s artstravaganza in Maastricht–check out 25 more must-sees:

Gagosian gallery positioned this 1946 Picasso nearby Rudolf Stingel‘s 2012 photo-realist painting of the artist as young man. At right, L’Arc de Seine’s jaw-dropping stand featured a circa 1930 shagreen-covered desk and chair by Jean-Michel Frank.

The secret to eternal youth? Multiple suitors and frequent ski trips, suggests this first edition from Shapero Rare Books.

Didier Ltd’s assortment of jewelry by artists included this one-of-a-kind silver brooch made by Harry Bertoia during his time at Cranbrook in the ’40s. And what do you get when you combine a fishing float painted black and a gilded beer can? Louise Nevelson‘s 1984 pendant necklace.
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Armory Week has come and gone in New Amsterdam, but the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) is just beginning in the Dutch town of Maastricht. Gluttons for masterpieces, we decided to take a field trip. With some 265 exhibiting art and antiques dealers, the 26th edition of the fair opened to the public today after a vernissage that, in the words of a colleague, “makes Art Basel look like a slum”–all savvy lighting, high ceilings, and spacious aisles bursting with tulips, thanks to fair designer Tom Postma.

TEFAF has long been a must for collectors of Old Masters and antiques, and in recent years has boosted its offerings in modern and contemporary art, design, and photography. Were the fair crass enough to have a slogan, it would be “where the museums shop.” We arrived in Maastricht and, fortfied with stroopwafels, set out to see works spanning 6,000 years of history. Let’s just say it’s a good thing that the fair runs through March 24. Here are 25 of our early favorites.

The multilayered stand of Axel Vervoodt. We couldn’t muster the courage to ask him whether he receives a monthly royalty check from Restoration Hardware.

Wartski of London offers (for six figures) the shot that almost killed Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Fired–maybe accidentally, maybe as an assassination attempt–in 1906, the lead pellet was mounted in gold by Carl Fabergé and presented to the tsar as a creepy souvenir.

Among the standouts in the design section of the fair: a 1921 Wiener Werkstatte table lamp by Dagobert Peche (at Bel Etage, Wolfgang Bauer, Vienna) and a preppy combination of works by Gerrit Thomas Rietveld (at Galerie Ulrich Fiedler).

Claude Lalanne‘s “Grand Lapin de Victoire” (2001) stands sentry at the Ben Brown Fine Arts stand and keeps an eye on the 1984 Basquiat across the way, at Tornabuoni Arte.

At the stand of Robert Hall, bottles, bottles everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
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‘Tis the season for pop-up emporiums and “best of” lists. Wired combines the two with a concept store stocked with the magazine’s picks for the most innovative products and technologies of the year. To get its annual NYC retail showcase to look as good as the covetable merchandise–think GPS Navigation Shoes, a stool made of recycled bicycle inner tubes, and a Makerbot desktop 3D printer–Wired tapped Mother New York to mastermind the shopping experience. The creative agency delivered a sleek space filled with custom furniture and fixtures as well as wall-sized interactive elements. The store design is unified by graphics inspired by the magazine’s “What’s Inside” features and the work of product-dissecting photographer Todd McClellan, Mother creative director Piers North tells us. Pay a virtual visit to the store, which is open Tuesday through Sunday ’til December 24, by scrolling through the below photos. This being a Wired production, the stuff–who doesn’t need a pair of caped Superman socks?–is also available to purchase online.

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With the ballots counted and the electoral votes tallied, the world can stop referring to Ohio using battle metaphors and take notice of what’s really swinging in the Buckeye State: art museums. There’s the reliably stellar Wexner Center (the first major public building designed by Peter Eisenman) in Columbus, Zaha Hadid‘s Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, and the Akron Art Museum, which in 2007 gained a soaring glass and steel structure by Coop Himmelb(l)au. But the big news is in Cleveland, where a Rafael Viñoly-designed expansion project is in full swing at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland is now welcoming visitors to its new $27.2 million home (above) by Farshid Moussavi. We paid a visit to MOCA Cleveland and have returned to offer these five informational morsels about the sleek and surprising new building–and what’s inside.

5. With six irregularly faceted sides clad primarily in mirror-finish black stainless steel, the 34,000-square-foot building’s striking exterior never looks the same twice. Moussavi happened upon the dusky Rimex paneling after her first choice (anodized gold aluminum) was nixed by the museum’s board of directors. “We discovered that this black steel acquired different dynamics when applied to our shape, with its surfaces that are tilted to different orientations and that catch the light differently,” said Moussavi during the museum’s opening weekend festivities. “It started playing with time.”

4. Visitors step inside to the “urban living room,” an airy ground floor space that includes the museum cafe and shop. Linger as long as you want: admission is only charged for those who ascend the craggy white central staircase to the exhibitions. First up, in the cozy second floor gallery, is David Altmejd’s largest vitrine piece to date, “The Orbit” (2012), a labyrinth of tumbling fruit, furry hands, and disembodied eyeballs. This marks the first time the artist has incorporated architectural elements into one of his Plexiglas-enclosed worlds. “I always deal with structures and of course I’m always confronted with their limitations,” the artist said in an interview with chief curator David Norr. “But I like the idea of constantly breaking that limitation.”

3. MOCA Cleveland director Jill Snyder had three main goals for the non-collecting institution’s new home. “What we strived for was flexibility, transparency, and sustainability,” she told us. Among the features of the soon-to-be-LEED-Silver-certified building are floors stacked to offer glimpses of usually behind-closed-doors museum functions (admin offices, the wood workshop, the loading dock), enclosed fire stairs that double as a sound gallery, and, underneath the adjoining public plaza, geothermal wells.
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From left, AIGA medalists Ralph Caplan, Robert Vogele, and Elaine Lustig Cohen with AIGA executive director Richard Grefé; reveling designers strike a pose in the urbane photo booth. (Photos: Angela Jimenez for AIGA; Denise Ginley and Steven Robinson)

Much like the return of migrating birds and an elevated pollen count, spring brings with it the design industry’s very own prom, the annual AIGA Awards. Last week’s event, entitled Bright Lights Big City and held in Manhattan at the Altman Building, didn’t make use of the pastel ubiquity of April, but instead opted for a deco-inspired architectural theme, where the entire event was set in black-and-white, referencing the Beaux Arts Ball of 1931 in which architects dressed in costumes of buildings they had designed. This year’s guests were invited to design and create hats in the shape of their favorite buildings, bringing some unexpected wit and levity set against the relative severity of black cocktail attire.

However, the focus of the evening isn’t fashion, it is to honor the newest recipients of the prestigious AIGA medal. This year’s honorees were not simply accomplished design professionals in their own right, but together represent four of the essential archetypes of design. Ralph Caplan represents The Observer, following his career as a design author and having gained the unique ability to find perspective and turn that into something informative and enticing. Elaine Lustig Cohen comes to us as The Artist, creating groundbreaking work in typography and illustration, and raising the status of the designer and of design as a whole. Armin Hoffmann is The Mentor, demonstrated by the generations of design students he taught directly, and the enduring popularity of the Swiss style so closely linked to him. Finally, Robert Vogele embodies The Entrepreneur, demonstrating that classic American story of a regular Joe who created a scrappy upstart that became a thriving business and influential design practice. To the younger designers in the audience, it was inspirational—our challenge is how to embrace these qualities in our careers and become the next archetypes of design.
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Photos: Steve Hall/HedrichBlessing

Most narratives of current state of things in Las Vegas include “overbuilt” or “downturn” in the very first sentence. Indeed, since roughly 2006 the fortunes of the legendary desert oasis have changed for the worse. Visitor spending in the destination city is on the decline, the housing market remains troubled, and MGM’s shining new star City Center, a 72-acre sprawling complex of hotels, gaming, condos, and high-end retail at the heart of the Strip, posted an operating loss of $45 million in the fourth quarter of last year. So this might seem a strange moment to be celebrating the construction of a new $470 million cultural center on the outskirts of the (still more beleaguered) downtown area. But then again Las Vegas—that ultimate paean to pastiche and panache—is not known for its introverted ways.

The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, a lavish art deco-influenced, multi-purpose complex that features music, visual art, theater, and education opened earlier this month. It dominates a 61-acre site in a former rail yard that is now called Symphony Park. “All of the budgeting was done in the old economy,” according to architect David M. Schwarz, “the Center was built in the new.” As a result, the architects were able to utilize high-end materials and avoid troublesome cost-cutting concerns when creating Las Vegas’s newest addition. A 170-foot tall bell tower with 47 imported bronze bells is just one opulent feature of the inviting collection of buildings.
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David Stark has applied his artist’s eye and bricoleur’s ingenuity to the retail scene with Wood Shop, a temporary takeover of fellow RISD alum Nina Freudenberger‘s Haus Interior in New York. As you may recall from our recent interview with the event designer, his “surprise ambush” has filled the cozy homegoods emporium with limited-edition goodies inspired by a woodworker’s studio, from hand-crocheted saw pillows and rugged Carhartt-brown canvas placemats to a tool box worth of delicate gold pendants and hand-turned poplar vases that suggest a collaboration between Giorgio Morandi and Bob Vila. The woodstravaganza lasts through Monday, February 27.

The idea for Wood Shop stemmed from a previous project for which Stark and his team created an entire house out of SmartPly, which provided a cheeky backdrop for showcasing the client company’s new collection of homegoods. “Some of the things that we made for that were so fun that we thought, wow, these could be great products,” said Stark the other day, as he guided us through Wood Shop and ended up in front of a delicious-looking dessert, made entirely of SmartPly. “The cake really came out of that kind of thing. I have a weird sense of humor, so if I walked into a store, that would be the first thing I would be drawn toward.”

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First the turkey, then the art and design. Today Art Basel Miami Beach opened its doors to the public. Now in its tenth year, the ever-expanding fair is showcasing works from a eye-watering 2,000 artists represented by approximately 260 galleries worldwide. Based on the champagne-swilling VIPs at yesterday’s preview (we spotted Morley Safer lounging with a cigarette and intially mistook him for a highly realistic sculpture), Erwin Wurm is gaining a lot of new fans, thanks in part to crowd-pleasing works on view at the booth of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Drawn in by the Vienna-based artist’s disembodied pink hoodie (above), few fairgoers can resist standing under the neighboring giant, wall-mounted police officer’s cap. Wurm was also feted last night at the Bass Museum of Art, where an exhibition of his genre-bending work opened today.

Right around the corner from the Convention Center, Design Miami got a headstart on things with its opening yesterday, complete with a Veuve Clicquot-sponsored food truck and champagne lounge. In addition to works from 23 galleries, this year’s fair features “Craft Alchemy,” a performance project in which designer Elisa Strozyk and artist Sebastian Neeb work their magic on Fendi’s leather scraps. Meanwhile, architect David Adjaye gets his close-up as designer of the year, while Bjarke Ingels has teamed up with Audi on a “digital street” environment. And what’s that floral aroma wafting through the tent? Belle-Ile, a fragrance created by olfactive branding company 12.29 especially for Design Miami.

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When Bingo Bango, an inflatable character who resembles a cheerful mitotic cell, waves his red-mittened hand at you, it is impossible not to smile. And so it was a grinning group that gathered on Tuesday evening to celebrate the opening of Section 2 of the High Line, New York’s elevated freight rail turned sky park. Installed in the shadow of the new section, which runs from West 20th Street to West 30th Street on Manhattan’s West Side, is Rainbow City. The 16,000-square-foot wonderland of 40 inflatable structures—including a mushroom-shaped bouncey house, a 40-foot-tall figure who occassionally emits a puff of steam from his cylindrical nose, and massive striped orbs that several of the youngest partygoers declared the “funnest punching bags ever”—is the colorful creation of FriendsWithYou, the Miami-based art and design team of Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III (pictured below), and is presented by AOL as part of its ongoing creativity-boosting initiatives. Borkson and Sandoval were inspired by Holi, the Hindu spring festival during which revelers throw colored water and powder at one another, to create what they describe as “a vibrant landscape of responsive, air-filled sculptures that addresses the potency of interaction, ritual, and play.” Think Tinkertoys meets Candyland crossed with a whole lot of hot air. The installation is open to the public through July 5, and those who want to take home more than memories (and a photo with Bingo Bango and friends) can pick up Rainbow City merch at the on-site shop designed by New York-based architecture firm HWKN.

(Photos from left: Billy Farrell Agency and Erika Velazquez)

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Pictured above, the lenticular cover image of the exhibition catalogue. (Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, photograph by Gary James McQueen)

The title gallery features two dresses from Alexander McQueen’s spring 2001 “VOSS” collection, one a fiery combination of ostrich feathers and painted microscope slides and the other a white column of stripped and varnished razor clam shells. (Photo courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art)

“With ‘Plato’s Atlantis’ [the spring 2010 collection], Lee mastered how to weave, engineer, and print any digital image onto a garment so that all the pattern pieces matched up with the design on every seam,” says Sarah Burton in an interview in the exhibition catalogue. “That was the difficulty with the collection that followed. Where do you take it? How do you move forward?” (Photos: UnBeige)

One gallery has been transformed into a charred cabinet of curiosities, in which garments and accessories are interspersed with monitors playing footage of McQueen’s runway spectacles. Here, a balsa wood skirt from spring 1999, a headdress of metal coins from spring 2000, Shaun Leane’s “Thorn” armpiece from fall 1996, and a flutter of butterflies created by Philip Treacy out of turkey feathers for spring 2008. (Photos: UnBeige)

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For the past couple of nights, New York’s Guggenheim Museum has been hosting the same charity gala—an elegant affair for the apparent benefit of the “International Fund for the Arts.” The formally attired guests mingle and sip champagne for hours on end, while a more casually dressed group scurries around purposefully. They’ll be back tonight for round three. It’s not a new work by Carsten Holler but the filming of pivotal scenes in Mr. Popper’s Penguins, an upscale adaptation of the 1938 book by Richard and Florence Atwater. Directed by Mark Waters (Mean Girls), the film stars Jim Carrey as Thomas Popper, a jaded real estate dealmaker who suddenly finds himself in possession of a parcel of penguins…on Park Avenue.

We adore the dramatic stylings of the rubber-faced Carrey, but it was the prospect of penguins that beckoned us to the (closed) set this week. Faux snow blanketed the Guggenheim’s 88th Street side entrance, and in the rotunda, the pseudogala was in full swing, but there wasn’t a flightless bird in sight. “They’re adding the penguins with CGI,” said our on-set spy. “The museum didn’t want to risk it.” One unit of the production crew consists of “a bunch of guys with MacBooks.” Armed with SLRs and a lot of patience, they capture digital images of each scene from multiple angles to ensure that the addition of virtual penguins is seamless, with the shadows aligned perfectly.

Much of the filming, however, includes the real thing. The production ponied up around $25,000 each for a trained team of gentoo penguins, a crew member told us. Between scenes, they retire to a spacious frozen home at Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And Carrey reportedly has “amazing chemistry” with his avian costars.

Meanwhile, the film’s Guggenheim gala scenes sound like reason enough to see Mr. Popper’s Penguins, which Twentieth Century Fox is slated to release in August 2011. A scheming Popper attends the benefit to ingratiate himself to one Selma Van Gundy (Angela Lansbury), a Brooke Astor type who owns the Manhattan property he covets. We hear that the pair pauses to contemplate Ad Reinhardt‘s “Black Painting” of 1960–66 (or at least a facsimile of it) on an upper level of the museum before penguin pandemonium ensues when the six birds use Frank Lloyd Wright‘s famed ramp as a waterslide. The chaos continues as, according to production call sheets obtained by UnBeige, “Popper is chased by penguins as he leaves the Guggenheim and crosses Fifth Avenue.”

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Should Michael Kors ever want to abdicate his burgeoning fashion empire, he could ace a screen test at the Food Network—and probably start a craze for black cashmere aprons (so basic, luxurious, and modern that wearers will gladly forgo all recipes involving flour). The prospect of the dapper designer joining the one and only Martha Stewart in her TV kitchen was all the convincing we neeeded to throw on a Kors-designed ensemble, hop in the UnBeigemobile, and join the bright-eyed studio audience for yesterday’s taping of The Martha Stewart Show (the episode will re-air today at 1 p.m. EST on the Hallmark Channel).

For even a veteran chef, the combination of Monday morning, live television, and the eagle eye of Martha Stewart could be a recipe for disaster, but Kors expertly walked viewers through the preparation of the pineapple upside-down cake perfected by his Grandma Bea, a junior high school principal and fashionista who “always wore a lot of jewelry when she cooked.” Kors divulged that he had spent Sunday in the kitchen whipping up a practice cake. “I wanted to make sure that I was going to be Martha-ready,” he told Stewart, who was dressed in a moss green Michael Kors ensemble. “Unfortunately, I had an I Love Lucy moment. Sugar flying everywhere, it was crazy.” No such problems on set. After Kors inverted the pan to reveal an immaculate glistening ring, Stewart pronounced his cake a delicious success.

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A penthouse terrace in a brownstone on East 17th Street overlooking Stuyvesant Park was the starting point of the FIAF tour. Chris Myers, the terrace’s exterior designer and principal of Just Terraces described the theme as “a low-maintenance bachelor rooftop spa, accessible year-round.” For Mark Hass, the terrace owner, “The design maximizes the space, over 900 square feet, and the roof deck reflects the footprint of the apartment below.” The amenities included a hot tub, full kitchen with bar and grill, lounge chairs, coffee table, couch, and skylight to his apartment downstairs. Sycamore trees, cherry laurel, and liriope plants added to the casual setting.

The next stop was uptown on East 75th Street, where Christine Guelton owns a ground floor garden terrace. “The Zen theme was inspired by my garden when I lived in Japan,” she explained. “The terrace is an extension of my living room, and at night when we turn on the lights we see the garden through the picture window.” Myers was also the designer here, and Guelton said, “He worked with the original landscape, which was sloped, and he re-used the existing materials.” Crushed marble pebbles were added to create tiered steps and white planters make the area appear lighter. In the winter, snow provides more illumination, while the maple tree forms an umbrella of shade during the rest of the year.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This week found us back at Manhattan’s sprawling Jacobs Javits Center for the New York International Gift Fair, a bi-annual wonderland of gizmos, stuff, and really good homegoods that always makes us consider abandoning this whole words business to start a forward-looking gift hut in say, Bora Bora. Of the show’s 2,900 exhibitors, we focused on those in the juried Accent on Design division as one of five judges for the “Bloggers’ Choice Awards.” Our top product pick—based on the criteria of “creativity, functionality, and originality, urgent, odd, and delightful design”—is the Boskke Sky Planter, designed by Central Saint Martins Grad Patrick Morris and on offer from Brooklyn-based neo-utility. Suspended from a ceiling or wall-mount, the ceramic planter locks the plant and soil into place, where it is watered gradually from a reservoir hidden in the top. An elegant solution to fussy orchid pins and an innovative way to use plants as design elements, particularly in small spaces.

Previously on UnBeige: