Your secret art venue when you seek peace and quiet

I’ve recently discovered Storm King Art Center. It’s amazing how just an hour drive from New York City can take you to such a quiet, isolated, peaceful place. Perfect combination of nature and site-specific art. Alexander Calder’s, Louise Bourgeois’s, Nam Jun Paik’s sculptures inhabit vast fields and picturesque woods of upstate New York. Roy Lichtenstien’s Mermaid is floating in a pond together with couple of dozens wild geese. Even in good weather it rarely gets too crowded here – the territory is immense, definitely worth coming back over and over again.

The best food experience in an art space

Surprisingly, art doesn’t make me hungry, so I’m not a frequent visitor of restaurants in the museums. Though during the art fairs held in Grand Palais in Paris it’s very nice to take a break and enjoy wild cod or pear in red wine in a little restaurant Mini Palais. If the weather allows – terrace there is just spectacular.

A museum gift shop that you never leave empty handed

Definitely MOMA Design store. Even given the fact that the experience of being there is not as unique as it used to be a few years ago (there’s one more store now in Soho in NYC, a little MOMA corner was discovered by me in BHV in Paris, I’m sure there are many more of these all over the world), the selection of items fascinates me every time I go there. My number one destination is search of gifts (especially for kids).

Your museum with a wow-factor

May be it’s because it’s brand new, but I’m still pretty impressed with the new Whitney Museum. It impressed me even more because, to be honest, I never liked this museum in its old building. Gloomy, dark, inconvenient – this was my impression of it. Now with huge windows overlooking the Hudson and villages of Manhattan, with terraces that beat those of Pompidou or the Met – it’s a must to visit for anyone who comes to New York. Not to mention the fantastic inaugural show of the best pieces American art has to offer. Hope the rest of the program will also suit this beautiful building.

Please share with us a special personal memory related to a museum experience

A museum visit that I’ll probably remember till the rest of my life was in 2013 in PS1, in New York City. My favorite music band, the National was doing a performance dedicated to a piece of Icelandic artist which was on display at the museum at this time. For 6 hours straight, without a single stop, in a rather small space, they performed a song Sorrow. 118 times in total. Everyone there, including me, was in a state of trance, not able to move, not noticing time passing, not wanting this to end. Like any great art piece (and I believe this is what it was), it made me understand a lot of things about love, time and, well, sorrow.