At a time when many Russian private museums are struggling for survival and some have been forced to close, a billionaire couple from St. Petersburg have nonetheless founded a new one, scheduled to open in Moscow on 2 December. Called Zilart, the museum was conceived to show the collection of its founders, Andrey and Yelizaveta Molchanov. The owner of the St. Petersburg property developer LSR, Andrey Molchanov, 54, was a member of the Federation Council, Russia's upper chamber of parliament, from 2008 to 2013.
The head of the British Council has this week proposed transferring the organisation's vast art collection to the UK government in a bid to offset debts of almost £200m. The collection comprises almost 9,000 British art works of the 20th and 21st centuries by artists including Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Tomma Abts and John Akomfrah. The works have no permanent gallery, with around a fifth of on display at any one time in the UK and internationally.
The top loft of the 1903 cast-iron Soho building hadn't been touched in three decades. The renovation would need to be significant. But there was one feature designer Maurizio Bianchi Mattioli intended to preserve: a 30-foot-long south-facing ­window installed by the previous owner. "We were very lucky to have the lot-line windows," ­Mattioli says. "You don't typically see them from the sidewalk." A young couple, Josephine and Alex de Pfyffer, an art dealer and an ­entrepreneur, respectively, hired Mattioli, the founder of Studio MBM,
The St. Regis Venice, named among the best hotels in Venice in Travel + Leisure's 2025 World's Best Awards, originally opened as the Grand Hotel Britannia in 1895, in concert with the city's inaugural Biennale cultural festival. In 2019, following a two-year renovation and restoration of the five 17th-century Venetian palaces that comprise the property, it joined the St. Regis brand.
When we moved into our four-bedroom apartment last year, I knew I had to do something to personalize the walls. Since we had already splurged on two large paintings, I decided to finally tackle creating a gallery wall. Given our collection of watercolors and drawings - we love to buy art when we travel, and my husband's a diplomat by day and artist by night - it would've been a waste not to hang the pieces we've accumulated.
the bar has a decanter of what might just be the oldest whisky in the world, first bottled in 1841 and discovered at Blair Castle in 2022. During a recent visit to Bertie's, I was told an unnamed client flew in to the hotel from the continent and back, without even a stop off for dinner, specifically to taste a single dram of this rare spirit.
"We are deeply grateful to Arthur and Marny Solomon for their careful stewardship of these artworks over many years, and for their generous impulse to share them with the Harvard Art Museums..."
The process of collecting art started off with the idea that at one point in our time, we [knew we wanted] to tell a beautiful story of our universal love for culture and art.
