Style: May 04, 2018

74 STYLE | luxe travel
FURNITURE
Every April, hundreds of thousands of interior designers,
stylists, architects, makers and creators descend on
Milan from all over the world for the Salone del
Mobile (Milan Furniture Fair). Oh and 5000 journalists.
Founded in 1961 to promote Italian furniture and
furnishing, Salone has become the world’s most eagerly
anticipated design event presenting the cool and
covetable produced by more than 1800 companies
from 34 countries, boosted this year by the biennial
kitchen and bathroom showcases. About a quarter of
exhibitors are now international with New Zealand’s
Fisher & Paykel making its debut this year in the FTK
(Technology For The Kitchen) pavilions, hailed by
Salone for having ‘turned the design of conventional
domestic appliances on its head’. What excites the
crowds today has a huge influence on the styles we’ll
see in homes tomorrow (watch out for orange and
next-generation DishDrawers!).
• This week-long event is restricted to professionals
only Monday to Friday, but the public can register to
attend on the concluding weekend.
RIGHT: Visitors peruse the latest designer collections from titans
of furniture and homewares at Salone del Mobile 2018 in Milan.
Photos Getty Images
Giant horseshoe ring
body piercing by
Romanian artist Daniel
Knorr, part of Art
Basel Miami Beach,
stands outside the
Bass Museum of Art
in Collins Park, South
Beach. Photo Billy H.C.
Kwok/Getty Images
The other big drawcard on the
art calendar is newbie Art Basel,
launched in the 1970s – and you
don’t have to go to the other end
of the world to enjoy a taste of it,
with satellite events Art Basel Hong
Kong (March 29–31, 2019) and Art
Basel Miami Beach (December 6–9,
2018) joining the Switzerland show
(June 14–17, 2018).
ART
For more than 120 years, art lovers have flocked
(600,000 at last count) to the beloved Venice
Biennale, first held in 1895 in the French Garden
that Napoleon gifted to the city, Giardini. Some call
it the Olympics of Art with more than 80 countries
funding purpose-built galleries to present the work of
their nominated contemporary artist to the global art
world. It was here that works from Modigliani, Pollock,
Picasso and Ah Wei Wei (controversially representing
Germany rather than China) were first unveiled.
In 2017, New Zealand exhibited Lisa Reihana’s
Emissaries. Today the art has spilled from the Giardini
into the historic shipyard area of Arsenale and to the
walls and courtyards of splendid palaces and churches.
Decidedly one of the most prestigious cultural
institutions on the planet, associated festivals for Music,
Theatre and Cinema were added in the 1930s, and
more recently Architecture and Dance.
• You have five months (May 11–November 24,
2019) to see the Biennale, but time your visit for
the first week of September and you can also catch
the Venice International Film Festival and the annual
Regata Storica procession of historic boats and
modern-day gondola race along the Grand Canal.