There are photographers who document New York society, and then there are photographers who become part of the society they document. Annie Watt belongs firmly in the latter category.

Sometimes a photograph does something far more important than document who was in a room. Walking into Watt’s 20th anniversary photography exhibition at The Consulate, hosted by owners Kiril and Miki Mihajlov, one photograph on the wall stopped me. There was Annie with Judy Gilbert and my friend Errol Rappaport, who passed away last year. For a moment, Errol wasn’t someone I was remembering. There he was again, caught in a living moment among friends. That is the peculiar magic of a photograph: it can collapse time. Someone who is gone can suddenly walk back into the room.

Prince Mario-Max

Nearby were photographs of Prince Mario-Max, another familiar figure in New York’s social and philanthropic world, among the many faces Watt has captured during a career chronicling New York—and, during the season, Palm Beach. Taken together, the walls weren’t simply displaying photographs. They held pieces of lives, friendships and celebrations, a social history preserved one shutter click at a time.

Rod and Judy Gilbert

On September 16, Watt turned the camera back on her own remarkable journey with a one-night-only exhibition and fundraiser celebrating 20 years of the Annie Watt Agency, 2006–2026. But the evening wasn’t simply about looking backward. Net proceeds benefited scholarship programs at the School of Visual Arts, helping promising young artists move forward.

For two decades, Watt has been a familiar presence at galas, benefits, openings and celebrations. Her ability to make people comfortable in front of a camera, coupled with her celebrated eye for posing, turned what began as the work of one independent photographer into the far-reaching Annie Watt Agency. As her bookings grew beyond what one photographer could handle, Watt began sharing assignments with other photographers, eventually building an agency whose work now extends from New York and the Hamptons to Palm Beach and beyond.

Highlighting other photographers work

The Consulate proved a natural setting for an exhibition built around people. Guests mingled over wine and delicious hors d’oeuvres while live jazz played and Watt’s photographs transformed the restaurant into a temporary gallery. The people in the room weren’t simply looking at photographs; many were part of the world those photographs preserve.Even better, guests were encouraged to take their portraits off the wall and bring them home, allowing the exhibition itself to disappear piece by piece as the evening progressed. What had been part of the gallery became a personal keepsake.

Under the scaffolding a fantasy blooms upon summer’s edge as the ladies at the helm of One Art Space bring Hunt Slonem and his colony of rabbits quite literally home to 23 Warren.

Renaissance of whimsy: Hunt Slonem at One Art Space

The arc of Slonem’s career itself is a masterworking of the American dream and this, his “Through The Looking Glass” exhibition, is an ebullient celebration that insists upon deliberate optimism, despite life’s grim particulars.

Unique Glass Bunny 2026. Courtesy Hunt Slonem

If NYC (battered, resilient, always game for wonder) is the looking glass, then the reflection here is sunny and, despite the state of the nation at large, spot on with whimsy.

The artist held court on September 10, 2026

Hunt Slonem at One Art Space

Here Hunt takes his ubiquitous bunnies, created with singular frolicking strokes that lop themselves onto an array of colored canvases and sends them multiplied throughout One Art’s bright expanse.

Oval Bunny 2026 oil on wood. Courtesy Hunt Slonem

Hunt Slonem at One Art Space

It’s a much larger experience of Slonem than when we shared gallery space at DTR last year. Now, the bunnies have birthed themselves into twisty glass and bright neon. They shimmer in huge lenticular display. At the far end of the exhibition a towering tea cake of bright pastel lurched stoically, Carroll-like and bunny festooned, natch.

Hunt Slonem at One Art Space

Producer Jamie de Roy

The artist, himself resplendent in a verdant green-patterned blazer, chatted amicably among book signing with press, collectors and fans. One Art Space always puts together a top class affair, and the passed small bites were equally creative. Guests sampled from a clever arancini set with tops cut off, revealing its nest of bedfellows marinara and mozzarella, as well as tiny rafts of thinly sliced rare roast beef on artisanal crackers, tuna tartare and heady truffles cuddled with Telaggio cheese in a tender vol au vent.

Hunt Slonem at One Art Space

Hunt Slonem at One Art Space

I couldn’t stay for cake, Manhattanites have just returned from their far-flung summer places and the season has started on steroids. However I trust that, just like Slonem’s hare harem, it too was an airy delight of soft fluff and — upon reflection — just what our collective needs.

Photography by Teddy Wolff

New York has seen just about everything parade through its streets, but on September 18 and 19, 40 life-sized buffalo will thunder through Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn—without creating so much as a hoofprint.

The extraordinary herd is at the heart of Return of the Buffalo: Tatanka Owe Akupi, a two-day public-art event conceived by Amir Nizar Zuabi in partnership with elders from the Lenape and Lakota communities. Billed as the largest interactive public-art experience in the country this year, the event combines spectacle, history, performance and ceremony while bringing the story of America’s national mammal directly into the streets.

Photography by Teddy Wolff

These are no ordinary puppets. Created by South Africa’s Ukwanda Puppets from recycled materials and assembled locally at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park, the buffalo are remarkably lifelike. More than 150 volunteer puppeteers will bring the 40 animals into motion, transforming downtown New York into something between a migration, a theatrical event and a living work of art.

The creative pedigree should sound familiar. Zuabi and many of the artists involved were behind Little Amal, the unforgettable 12-foot-tall puppet representing a young Syrian refugee who walked through New York City in 2022. Amal turned sidewalks into stages and strangers into participants. This time, instead of one enormous child moving through the city, New Yorkers will encounter an entire herd.

Photography by Ant Strack

Beneath the visual spectacle is a much deeper story. The American buffalo was driven nearly to extinction during the 19th century, its destruction inseparable from the devastation inflicted upon Native communities whose lives and cultures were intimately connected to it. Its survival and restoration—due significantly to Native conservation efforts and their allies—makes the buffalo an unusually potent symbol of resilience, reckoning and repair.

New Yorkers aren’t being asked merely to watch from behind a barricade. The audience is invited to join the herd. As the buffalo move through locations carrying their own layers of American history, parks and plazas will become temporary stages filled with tribal ceremonies, gospel choirs, marching bands and live performance.

The impressive roster includes Rhiannon Giddens, Laurie Anderson, Native Pride Dancers, Pilobolus and the all-women Brazilian percussion band Fogo Azul, joined by First Nations tribal elders, civic leaders and additional performers.

On Friday, September 18, the buffalo take Manhattan, beginning at Bowling Green Park at 5 p.m. and making their way through Lower Manhattan before arriving at Foley Square at 7:30 p.m.

The following afternoon, Saturday, September 19, the herd crosses into Brooklyn. The procession begins at Abolitionist Place at 2 p.m. and travels through Downtown Brooklyn before reaching Brooklyn Bridge Park at 4:30 p.m.

Both events are free and open to the public.

There is something wonderfully audacious about releasing 40 buffalo into the visual chaos of New York City. Yet Return of the Buffalo promises considerably more than an irresistible photograph. It places an animal nearly erased from America back into the center of public life while asking us to remember what disappeared alongside it—and who fought to bring it back.

For two September days, New York won’t simply stop traffic. It will stop for the buffalo.

For four decades, Ken Fallin has been looking at famous faces and seeing what the rest of us miss.

Joan Crawford

A few strokes of ink become a raised eyebrow. A slightly exaggerated jaw becomes an entire personality. A familiar silhouette suddenly tells you everything you need to know about the person inhabiting it. That is the peculiar magic of caricature when it is done brilliantly: exaggeration somehow produces something closer to truth.

Alfred Hitchcock’s website

This fall, Fallin celebrates that remarkable career on two fronts. On Wednesday, October 7, from 5 to 7 p.m., New World Stages will host the opening reception for an exhibition of his work, offering audiences an opportunity to see the drawings beyond the pages and screens where so many first encountered them.

Gregory Peck

At the same time, Fallin is assembling a self-published book featuring selected drawings from his 40 years as an illustrator and caricaturist—and for those who think they know his work primarily through Broadway, the collection may contain a few surprises.

Ethel Merman in London

Because Ken Fallin’s world has always been considerably larger than the theatre district.

Karl Lagerfeld

The proposed book reaches through an astonishing range of subjects and assignments: actors and filmmakers, politicians and journalists, fashion royalty including Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent, architect Jean Nouvel, and hundreds of figures drawn during Fallin’s long association with The Wall Street Journal. Taken together, the images become something more interesting than a conventional career retrospective. They are a visual record of the people who shaped several decades of American culture.

Fallin’s first major break came in 1983 when he began creating the posters and advertising artwork for Gerard Alessandrini’s deliciously wicked Forbidden Broadway. It proved an ideal marriage of artist and subject. Fallin’s ability to lovingly skewer a famous face mirrored exactly what Forbidden Broadway was doing musically to Broadway itself.

Andy Warhol

Those drawings eventually traveled far beyond Manhattan, with Fallin’s Forbidden Broadway artwork appearing as productions reached London, Tokyo and Sydney. His visual language became inseparable from the show: you could recognize Forbidden Broadway before reading its title.

Bassets

By 1987, The Boston Herald had commissioned Fallin to create a weekly celebrity caricature for its Sunday arts and entertainment section. But another chapter of his career would eventually introduce his work to an enormous national readership.

Jean Nouvel

For The Wall Street Journal, Fallin has illustrated roughly 500 notable figures, ranging from presidents to movie stars, cultural figures and newsmakers. His subjects have included Barack Obama and Paul Newman, as well as journalist Tim Russert, whom Fallin drew for Peggy Noonan’s memorial following Russert’s death.

Bernard-Henri Levy

That work reveals something particularly interesting about Fallin’s gift. Caricature can easily become cruelty. Fallin rarely needs cruelty. His drawings can certainly be wicked—and anyone who has followed his theatrical work knows that his pen possesses teeth—but underneath the exaggeration is observation.

Warren Buffett

He isn’t merely drawing what someone looks like. He is drawing what makes us recognize them.

Cole Porter

Sometimes it is posture. Sometimes hair. Sometimes the architecture of a face. Sometimes it is simply attitude. Fallin understands that likeness has surprisingly little to do with photographic accuracy. Capture the right three things about somebody and suddenly there they are.

DOVER Quartet

That ability made him equally valuable outside editorial illustration. His commercial clients have included American Express, HBO, Showtime, CNBC and Walt Disney Productions, while assignments have taken his distinctive line into national advertising campaigns and commissioned work far removed from Broadway.

Patti LuPone

LuPone Carnegie Hall

Then there are the subjects themselves.

Gloria Vanderbilt

Sunset Blvd. Gloria Swamson

Fashion designers. Architects. Movie stars. Presidents. Broadway legends. Journalists. Cultural eccentrics. Fallin has spent forty years quietly assembling an extraordinary paper cocktail party populated by people who, in many cases, would never otherwise have occupied the same room.

John Williams

The forthcoming book promises finally to invite us into that room.

Judge Douglas Ginsburg

What makes the project especially appealing is the possibility of seeing work that even longtime admirers may never have encountered. Editorial illustration is ephemeral by nature. A drawing appears beside an article, advertisement or review and then disappears into an archive. Decades later, an artist can discover that he has created an enormous visual history almost accidentally. Fallin has.

Lani Bell

While the mediums surrounding illustration have transformed dramatically during those forty years—from newspapers and print advertising to digital publishing and social media—the fundamental appeal of his work hasn’t changed. A Ken Fallin drawing remains unmistakably a Ken Fallin drawing.

Robert Glasper

That may be the greatest achievement of all. In an age increasingly dominated by photographic perfection, filters, digital manipulation and now artificial intelligence capable of manufacturing faces that never existed, there is something wonderfully human about the visible intelligence of a hand-drawn line. You can see the decision. You can see the joke. You can almost see the instant when Fallin looked at his subject and thought, Ah. That’s it.

Steve Jobs

The October exhibition at New World Stages brings that line back where so much of Fallin’s story began: the theatre.

Yves Saint Laurent

The book promises something larger.

Vivek Ramaswamy

It reminds us that Ken Fallin hasn’t simply been drawing Broadway for forty years. He has been drawing his time. And what a cast he has had.

Ken Fallin

The mighty Oculus turned ten this weekend, and if you want proof that a building can have main character energy, spend a Saturday afternoon watching tourists forget how to walk while staring up at Santiago Calatrava’s rib cage of a roof.

The Oculus in its first decade delights

Ten years ago the Port Authority handed lower Manhattan an $8-billion stegosaurus with delusions of dove-hood — Calatrava has always insisted the wing-like arches evoke a bird released from a child’s hand, working within Daniel Libeskind’s original master plan for the site — and somehow it earned the sentiment.

Art On The Ave artists were tasked with interpreting The Oculus through a live painting exhibition.

It’s a grave thrill to walk in there, that particular Oculus cocktail of soaring light and a cold hand around your solar plexus. We’ll sit with the cold hand next month, when the roof does the thing it was actually built to do: every September 11th, from 8:46 to 10:28 in the morning, the sun tracks the building’s deliberately skewed axis and lays two blades of light straight down the center of the floor — the “Way of Light,” timed to the exact minutes the towers fell. It is, quite possibly, the only piece of transit infrastructure on Earth engineered to break your heart on schedule.

Embracing art at The Oculus

But Saturday was not for solemnity. Saturday belonged to a fifteen-foot floral “10” doing brisk business as the most photographed object in Lower Manhattan, and to Art On The Ave, who threw the Oculus a party it deserved. Full credit to Westfield Mall for the good sense to keep partnering with Barbara Anderson and her traveling circus of talent — this round decamped to the south wing, where painters pulled in from Art On The Ave studios across the boroughs to enliven storefronts that are otherwise just waiting rooms for retail.

Gustavo Fernández

Gustavo Fernández went full circular abstraction on the architecture, all curves answering curves.

JJ Gonzalez Acosta

 

JJ Gonzalez Acosta

JJ Gonzalez Acosta threw color at the transit-hub chaos like he was personally offended by beige.

Barry Blends

Barry Blends kept the vibe at a tasteful simmer while the crowd —

Elvia Iannaccone observes Art On The Ave artists at work.

including photographer Elvia Iannaccone, clocking it all with tween Sonny, drifted through like they’d wandered into a good kind of ambush.

Here’s my one gripe, and it’s a bold one: gather the live painters center-stage next time, Portrait-of-the-Year style, so the whole atrium can watch the paint hit canvas in real time instead of hunting for the action along the perimeter. Visitors and locals alike deserve a grand moment of creation as they bound through their business among the arches.

Art On The Ave is drawing positive attention to unleased storefronts.

But what gets me, watching all this unfold, is the contrast. This is FiDi — the same FiDi that spent decades as a canyon of shuttered storefronts and unlovely towers, the long hangover from Robert Moses’s particular brand of blood-money urban renewal, where art was something that happened uptown because downtown just processed paperwork.

Gustavo Fernandez

Now the neighborhood is having a moment everybody needed: creators colonizing the empty ground floors. Just across the street from the Oculus itself stands a structure of vibrant, unapologetically multicultural murals that wouldn’t look out of place in Kreuzberg — a genuine slice of modern Berlin Wall energy dropped into the shadow of a $4-billion transit cathedral.

It’s striking against the glass and steel in the best possible way. But it lands harder when you remember who actually shows up to fill the Oculus with life on days like this and who helps fund the memorials that matter most: immigrants, first- and second-generation New Yorkers, the exact population Moses’s bulldozers were never particularly interested in consulting. Ten years on, the building is finally getting the neighborhood it was always symbolically promising — a consciously optimistic, simultaneous experience of both structure and freedom.