The Whistleblowing WifeGaslit, starring Julia Roberts, tells the story of Martha Mitchell, the first and most improbable person to publicly accuse Nixon over Watergate
It’s Complicated
Single middle-aged women of means have been known to rely on matchmakers. But with men in short supply, one high-end fixer-upper is turning to lowlifes
No Roman Holiday
A 32,000-square-foot château on the French Riviera once lived in by Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson is another property that Abramovich can’t access
Channel your inner academic with an Ivy League–inspired shopping list—items for the study, wardrobe, and even tailgate—which will serve you well long after the semester’s over. When it comes to style, we are always delighted to help with your early-decision application
My Favorite Things
Vanessa Barboni Hallik launched Another Tomorrow in 2020 with the intention of making a lasting impact on climate change. Herewith, she pulls back the curtain on her best-loved possessions
War Crimes
Sixty years ago, a Russian poet inspired the creation of a Holocaust memorial at Babi Yar, in Ukraine. This year, a Russian missile strike nearly destroyed it
Landing Gear
Virtual reality undergoes a transformative upgrade; a laser measurer that’s truly spot-on; old 35-mm. projector slides get a second chance; and more
Russian political cartoonist Sergey Elkin fled Russia last week. Over the course of his career at The Moscow Times, Elkin has fearlessly mocked Vladimir Putin and dared to criticize the Russian invasion of Ukraine. New wartime laws in Russia leave people accused of spreading “fake news” vulnerable to arrest and facing up to 15 years in prison. Elkin is now safely in Bulgaria, where he continues to strike back with pen and ink.
Russian political cartoonist Sergey Elkin fled Russia last week. Over the course of his career at The Moscow Times, Elkin has fearlessly mocked Vladimir Putin and dared to criticize the Russian invasion of Ukraine. New wartime laws in Russia leave people accused of spreading “fake news” vulnerable to arrest, facing up to 15 years in prison. Elkin is now safely in Bulgaria, where he continues to strike back with pen and ink.
Russian political cartoonist Sergey Elkin fled Russia last week. Over the course of his career at The Moscow Times, Elkin has fearlessly mocked Vladimir Putin and dared to criticize the Russian invasion of Ukraine. New wartime laws in Russia leave people accused of spreading “fake news” vulnerable to arrest, facing up to 15 years in prison. Elkin is now safely in Bulgaria, where he continues to strike back with pen and ink.
Spires, Squires, and Liars
A contemporary of Boris Johnson’s and Dominic Cummings’s traces Brexit, and the state of politics in Britain today, back to 1980s Oxford
A Grand Tour of Italy, but Make It Modern
The intimate, under-the-radar homes and studios of 20th-century Italian architects, artists, and designers, from Achille Castiglioni and Gae Aulenti to Giorgio Morandi, are as stunning as the country’s ancient and Renaissance treasures. And they’re open to the public
In a quiet section of Rome, behind a perfectly ordinary door, stands Casa Balla, the magical apartment of the futurist artist Giacomo Balla. Though his ingenious designs represent the tradition of functional Italian handicraft, his fanciful universe was also an aesthetic laboratory dedicated to modernity. From the benches that double for characters in his daughter Elica’s favorite fables to the brightly painted walls, to the yellow-and-blue-medallioned tableware, “all these are more pleasing to the eye than a dingy insignificant little picture by a traditional painter hanging on a gray wall,” he once said, adding: “Abolish the wishy washy!”
Balla in his studio with daughter Luce, 1931.
The kitchen in Casa Balla.
In Giorgio and his wife Isa de Chirico’s spacious Roman apartment, atop a trendy hair salon, the revolutionary artist is oddly missing from the bourgeois furnishings and late, less valuable work chockablock on the walls. (De Chirico even began backdating paintings to achieve more robust prices: if anyone was going to make money from de Chirico knockoffs, it would be de Chirico.) Nevertheless, on the top-floor studio (come prepared for lots of stairs), with his gray painting smock laid over a rattan chair near a can of Jolly solvent, one feels for a moment the energy of the much admired young artist, whose metaphysical, mythological work took the art world by storm. Top, the atelier at Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico; above, the salon.
De Chirico at home with his paintbrushes, 1963.
De Chirico’s bedroom.
The Museo Morandi has meticulously reconstructed Casa Morandi, Giorgio Morandi’s humble Bologna apartment above a courtyard, now filled with the bicycles of university students. The treasured bottles, shells, and vases that populate his works are crammed into closets and spill over into the spartan bedroom—evidence of a life devoted to work. Morandi, who taught at the Fine Arts Academy, did not marry and rarely traveled, though celebrity visitors from abroad were in frequent attendance. Doted on by his three sisters, he found instead among these everyday objects and views outside his windows an entire universe. Top, Morandi’s atelier; above, the painter at home, 1959.
The town of Grizzana, outside Bologna, became Morandi’s refuge from the summer heat and visitors, though not from war, as rebels hid throughout its rugged hills. His simple house with sparse furnishings contains a studio where the large windows framed some of his most evocative landscapes. There, the neat rows of paintbrushes he painstakingly customized, his sister’s bottle of Miss Dior, and the Ovomaltina cans he collected from a neighbor’s grandchildren because he liked their shape sit on his worktable. His sisters were ordered not to dust there as it might alter the quality of his precious light. Pictured, the interior and exterior of Casa Museo Morandi.
Gae Aulenti, a rebel against strict modernism, was at home with both pop and handicraft sensibilities mediated by new technologies. Though she designed many lamps and chairs, Aulenti is best known for her conversion of a Paris train station into the Musée d’Orsay. She was the lone woman to be included in the seminal MoMA exhibition “Italy: the New Domestic Landscape,” in 1972, which catapulted Italian design onto the world stage. Her home studio, now the Archivio Gae Aulenti, in the heart of old Milan, is not only an archive of her many commissions but also of her vibrant, eclectic life. The architect and designer is pictured here smoking in a Milan boutique in 1967.
Top, Gae Aulenti Square, in Milan; above, an interior of the Archivio Gae Aulenti.
Franco Albini pushed wood and rattan to their utmost limits in the Luisa chair, created with Franca Helg, one of just a few female designers of the period. The pair also became known for the Rinascente department store in Rome and for Line 1 of the Milan metro, studded with alluring red handrails (a motif they re-purposed from chair arms). At Albini’s studio, now the Fondazione Franco Albini, in Milan’s Magenta district, his granddaughter Paola shares insider memories, while a radical bookshelf seems to levitate the contents. His designs speak to the enduring appeal of the elegant combined with the artisanal. The Italian architect and designer is photographed here by Mario De Biasi and Sergio Del Grande, 1956.
Top, an interior of the Fondazione Franco Albini; above, a folding seat designed by Albini and exhibited at the IX Triennale, in Milan, 1951.
The studio of designer Achille Castiglioni, across from the grand Sforzesco Castle, in Milan, is a playful fun house of designs, many still in production. Chairs collapse into beds, are mounted like tractors, sprout from stepladders, or are even attachable to a belt. A lamp recalls its previous life as a film bobbin; a salad shaker becomes a bracelet; a sleek spoon extracts the last bit of mayonnaise from a jar. At first with his brothers, then on his own, mingling the delicate with the humble, Castiglione proposed that unremarkable objects tell remarkable stories. Top, the designer in 1984; above, an interior of the Fondazione Achille Castiglioni, featuring his signature Arco floor lamp.
From within the diminutive Milan studio of Vico Magistretti, not far from the Duomo, sprang the big ideas of one of the most prolific and influential Italians of the fertile postwar period. Magistretti kept his practice small on the advice of the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, who reminded him that, if his staff grew, he wouldn’t have time to think. Magistretti’s granddaughter Margherita, surrounded by his vibrant sketches, lighting, and a series of chairs—many still in production—tells visitors that, for her grandfather, “being modern [meant] being part of a chain, with one hand in the future and the other in the past.” The foundation’s helpful free guide to Albini’s Milanese projects underscores these dual reverences. Top, the Fondazione Vico Magistretti; above, Magistretti in his studio, 2004.
Elaine May celebrated her 90th birthday on April 21. The Birdcage, Primary Colors, Reds, Tootsie, and dozens more movies, TV shows, and plays couldn’t have happened without this comedienne, actress, playwright, screenwriter, and director. May’s most acclaimed film, 1972’s hilarious and cringe-inducing The Heartbreak Kid, will mark its 50th anniversary later this year. Happy birthday, Elaine!