Palmer: "NOMAD Lands in the Hamptons"

One of the design world’s most well-traveled fair just arrived in the United States for the first time. NOMAD Hamptons opened today at the Watermill Center in Water Mill, New York, and will run through June 28th. If you’re heading east this weekend, it should be on your list.

For the uninitiated: NOMAD is a traveling art and design fair with a habit of occupying spaces that are imbued with meaning. Past editions have taken place in a St. Moritz clinic, a historic villa in Monaco, a 15th-century palazzo in Venice, and a decommissioned airport in Abu Dhabi. The formula is the same in every location: site-specific presentations by international galleries, collectible design and contemporary art in conversation with where they’re shown.

The Watermill Center is a worthy debut for its US chapter. Founded in 1992 by playwright and artist Robert Wilson, it is one of the East End’s most significant cultural institutions, built around experimentation and cross-disciplinary work. The galleries presenting here have designed their installations in response to the campus, indoor and outdoor.

Among the fair’s special projects is Giorgio Armani‘s ongoing collaboration with NOMAD, Giorgio Armani / Unveiled, curated by Abby Bangser, which spotlights emerging and mid-career designers alongside new commissions by Ariel Dearie and Jonathan Kline. Sisley Paris presents a new project with Sydney Albertini centered on her Botanical Series, immersive works shaped by memory, travel, and imagined landscapes. French designer Mathieu Lehanneur and Brazilian jeweler Silvia Furmanovich each have dedicated presentations, while Object & Thing, the New York platform known for dissolving the line between art and design, also returns with a special project.

Elsewhere, one of the fair’s most intimate presentations brings together Dominique Nabokov‘s photographs of Robert Wilson’s Manhattan loft with rare chairs from Wilson’s personal collection, curated by French architect Sophie Dries. West Palm Beach’s very own Eric Firestone Gallery, which also has locations in New York and East Hampton, pairs expressive painted ceramics by Danish artist Torben Gammelgaard with figurative paintings by Colombian-born artist Almo Talud, whose domestic scenes explore queer identity and masculine vulnerability. The Future Perfect also returns with a presentation that reflects its longstanding focus on the space between contemporary art and collectible design. Watch this space: if the Hamptons is NOMAD’s East Coast summer chapter, Palm Beach is the natural next move.