Made in Tension Exhibition at the Solow Building

In New York, you can experience art almost anywhere: on the streets (the city is full of public art), in museums (there are more than 200 of them), in galleries (more than 1,000), and even in unexpected places such as the United Nations. But there is another category that feels uniquely New York:

Billionaires open galleries inside their own buildings to exhibit works from their private collections. Completely free of charge.

That is how I finally got to visit one of my favorite buildings in the city — the one with the most beautiful address number.

The Soloviev Foundation Gallery, also known as “New York City’s most exclusive museum,” houses a collection of paintings and sculptures worth more than half a billion dollars. For nearly fifty years, the collection remained hidden from the general public.

The building itself is called the Solow Building. It was developed by the well-known New York billionaire, real estate developer, and art collector Sheldon Solow, who died in 2020, leaving his fortune to his rather unconventional son, Stefan, who changed his surname from Solow to Soloviev about fifteen years ago to emphasize his family’s Eastern European heritage.

In May 2023, the gallery finally opened to the public. Admission is free, but visits are available by advance reservation only.

To give you an idea of the scale and significance of the collection, two works from it have set auction records:

Sandro Botticelli’s Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel became the second most expensive Old Master painting ever sold at auction when it fetched $92 million in 2021. The first place still belongs to Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi — although its attribution continues to be debated.
Alberto Giacometti’s Pointing Man remains the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction. It was purchased for $141 million in 2015.

That said, the gallery’s reputation was, to put it mildly, rather controversial. For decades, it officially existed on the ground floor of the skyscraper, yet it was almost impossible for ordinary visitors to gain access. The arrangement allowed it to qualify for the tax benefits granted to public museums.

Today through December, the gallery is presenting Made in Tension: Historic Textiles.

Personally, I loved the exhibition. It is a one-hour guided tour, and every work is discussed in depth with engaging historical context.

Among the highlights are a screenprint by Henri Matisse (yes, Matisse experimented with screen printing), works by Pablo Picasso, and a marble sculpture by Henry Moore. The contemporary artists are every bit as striking as the modern masters.

Curator Angela Brown built the exhibition around textiles and the concept of “tension,” both physical and social. As a result, works by modernist artists are displayed alongside Peruvian Chimu ceremonial textiles woven centuries before the rise of the Inca Empire.