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A Cultural Compendium: 7 Things We’re Into Right Now

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Credit...From left: Frank Lloyd Wright (American, 1867-1959). Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. 1955-61. Stained glass design by Eugene Masselink. Pastel and pencil on paper. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York); Frank Lloyd Wright (American, 1867-1959). March Balloons. 1955. Drawing based on A.C. 1926 design for Liberty Magazine. Colored pencil on paper. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York)

Frank Lloyd Wright was funny about his birthday, occasionally fudging the year in favor of youth, but 2017 marks his actual sesquicentennial — to be celebrated with various exhibitions across the country. Here in New York, Wright aficionados who might otherwise be straining their necks at the Guggenheim will head to MoMA for “Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive,” not your typical retrospective of the architect’s masterpieces. Curator Barry Bergdoll invited a handpicked group of scholars to explore the vast Wright archive that the museum comanages with Columbia’s Avery Library, then organized the show around the objects they found most compelling. The historian Jennifer Gray used a little-known Wright-designed logo for a conservation group to examine his ideas about the prairie. Ken Tadashi Oshima, a specialist on East-West influences in design, found an old book of images of the Imperial Hotel, with rickshaws and automobiles pictured out front. “It’s not some big statement,” Bergdoll says. “More a kaleidoscope of facets meant to open new lines of inquiry.” — KATE GUADAGNINO


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Credit...Jay Carroll (2)

With its sweeping vistas of creosote bushes and lunar-like geology, Wonder Valley, Calif., hugging the border of Joshua Tree National Park, has come to rival Marfa, Tex., as the preferred desert destination among artistic-minded travelers. In 2015, local tastemakers Jay and Alison Carroll moved to the area and launched their own olive oil label, called Wonder Valley, a grassy blend in a handsome matte-black bottle that’s stocked at indie outposts Heath Ceramics and Marlow & Daughters. The couple has since expanded the brand to offer interior design and creative consulting.

Now they’re opening their own gallery-cum-shop — an updated ’50s cabin that sits on the photographer Jack Pierson’s compound — carrying what Jay calls “tools of genuine purpose” (brightly striped Turkish towels, Mexican terra-cotta dishware) alongside potted cactuses and art objects and installations. You’ll find brass and cane bookends by Carl Auböck, prints from David Black’s latest show and Jay’s own landscape photography. Also available will be the Carrolls’ first foray into furniture, a utilitarian steel and leather stool made in, well, Marfa. In the evenings, the multipurpose space might serve as a venue for chef collaborations (tacos and tequila seem inevitable). When asked about its hours, Alison Carroll cites desert time: “By luck or appointment.” — KATE DONNELLY


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Credit...Peter Bohler (3)

The up-and-coming L.A. designer Elyse Graham remembers the first thing she made: a clay mask she brought home from school air-dried (unfired) and promptly dropped while presenting to her parents. “It exploded into a pile of dust. I was inconsolable, thinking this is the best thing I’ll ever make,” she says. Nowadays, Graham has a successful range of homewares for which she relies on chance or, as she puts it, a planned loss of control. Her new collection of multicolored resin vessels nods to the Italian architect Gaetano Pesce in its blurring of the line between mold and object. Once Graham pours the resin in different pigments and thicknesses, she sands down the outside layer to reveal what’s underneath. Even after nearly a decade of working with the material, the final swoops and splotches are always a surprise. — HILARY MOSS


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Credit...Illustrations by Konstantin Kakanias

For spring showers and beyond, designers this season have opted for variations on the classic raincoat. Some are quite literal (the Marni and Gucci options above) while others introduce a more modern sensibility (with more tailored silhouettes for a sleeker look).

From left: Marni x Stutterheim, $990, marni.com. Gucci, $2,780, gucci.com. Lou Dalton, about $870, loudalton.com. Dries Van Noten, $2,025, barneys.com.


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Tomas Maier Bag, $790, Bikini, $265, Hat, $250, and Towel, $195, tomasmaier.com.Credit...Joshua Scott

Tomas Maier debuts a new capsule collection of just the essentials — including suits for him and her, terry-cloth towels and a roomy bag to carry them, plus an especially broad-brimmed hat.


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Credit...Courtesy of Talitha

Down a side street in leafy Notting Hill, the women’s clothing line Talitha, best known for the sort of silk caftans and tasseled blouses you might cover up with in Belize or Formenterra, has opened its first store. Founders Kim Hersov and Shon Randhawa have outfitted it to look like the richly textured home of an eclectic globe-trotter, with furniture and knickknacks collected from all over the world, plus a four-poster ash bed by their interior designer, Hubert Zandberg. These days, a cozy, impeccably curated space is a must for a brick-and-mortar boutique, but the pair have more than aesthetics in mind: Everything from the Madagascan raffia blind on the back window to the painting of a woman in profile hanging on the peacock-blue wall is for sale. This should keep them roaming for replacements, even if clothing will remain at the heart of the operation. “Talitha” is the name of Hersov and Randhawa’s fantasy muse, a woman apt to change her closet and home according to what she’s seen. Maybe she just got back from safari; next season things might lean “retro Palm Beach,” Hersov says. The eye has to travel, after all. — HATTIE CRISELL


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Credit...Magdalena Kmiecik

The interior designer Kelly Behun stumbled on the delightfully strange, skittering work of the ceramist Monty J. Mattison, who goes by the moniker Monty J, the way most discoveries happen these days: on a trip down the Instagram rabbit hole. Behun spied a photo of one of his pieces on a flier for a group show that someone had posted; it took her nearly a month of Googling and cold-calling to figure out the identity of the artist. Raised in Detroit, Mattison still buses tables in a Manhattan restaurant while crafting his mythical-creature-like vessels, planted with cactuses and other succulents, at a studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Behun introduced the soft-spoken Mattison to David Alhadeff of the design store the Future Perfect, who has given him his first show. Clockwise from left: Sally, $1,650, Quinby, $2,640, and Mariah, $660. — NANCY HASS

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