9 Collectible Design Shows to See in December
From stylish furnishings inspired by painter Roberto Ruspoli’s resplendent Mediterranean frescoes to Nifemi Marcus-Bello’s thought-provoking inquiries into culturally significant materials
December brings a perceptible shift as the year winds down and the creative world steadies itself before a fresh cycle begins. Shorter days sharpen our senses, and the bustle of the holidays encourages a more instinctive pull toward warmth and engagement. It turns out that galleries and museums are leaning into work that mirrors the season’s contemplative cadence, offering welcome moments of pause before the calendar resets. From the Haas Brothers’ uncanny menagerie of fuzzy creatures at Cranbrook Art Museum to Danish weaver Marie Holst’s woven tapestries that capture our complicated relationship with nature, below are the collectible design exhibitions not to be missed in December.
1. “Vincenzo de Cotiis: Je Marchais Pieds Nus Dans L’Étang” at Carpenters Workshop Gallery | New York
Claude Monet’s resplendent paintings of water lilies have lately entranced Vincenzo de Cotiis, who transformed Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s soaring Midtown penthouse into a halcyon landscape outfitted with rippling tables in cast white bronze and hand-painted, sculpted Murano glass. Taken together, the 50 unique works evoke the sensation of wading through a pond at Giverny. Light dances across pooled surfaces and glass inlays to create shifting depths that evoke drifting forms; organic contours stretch and dissolve as one advances. “The suggestion of stems, elongated and fluid, wading through this imagined pond, anchors the installation in movement,” says de Cotiis, who curated a peaceful soundtrack to complement the ambiance.
Until February 14, 2026
2. “Villa Giulia” at David Gill Gallery | London
When interior designer Francis Sultana reimagined Hotel La Palma in Capri, he commissioned painter Roberto Ruspoli to create whimsical frescoes in a vaulted foyer. “Roberto’s drawings are so timeless, with an innate sense of romance and whimsy that I so love,” Sultana says. That jump-started a creative partnership that now comes into full bloom with the launch of furniture and accessories conceived by the duo. Channeling the elegance of Mediterranean villa interiors and the drawings on Matisse’s studio near Nice, the collection of tables, mirrors, and boxes features fluid inlaid drawings of Ruspoli’s graceful silhouettes of young men and androgynous figures inspired by Ancient Greece and Rome in azure blue, turquoise, and oxblood colorways.
Until December 22
3. “Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley” at Cranbrook Art Museum | Bloomfield Hills, MI
A magical menagerie of fuzzy creatures has convened at the Cranbrook Art Museum to celebrate the first mid-career survey of twins Nikolai and Simon Haas, who have fashioned wildly imaginative surrealist sculptures as the Haas Brothers since 2010. This show gathers around 100 works that seductively traverse the uncanny valley, highlighting series such as Beasts—personality-rich zoomorphic sculptures—and Accretion ceramics, whose coral-like appearance is created through applying thousands of layers of porcelain slip. Accompanying the show is a Phaidon monograph that forays even deeper into the brothers’ imaginative world.
Until February 22, 2026
4. “Marie Holst: The Garden” at Etage Projects | Copenhagen
From Edenic innocence to breathtaking English topiaries and the monotony of suburban lawns, gardens have long captured mankind’s fraught relationship with nature. Danish weaver Marie Holst channeled these notions into a series of woven tapestries where garden motifs shift into the surreal: flowers morph into bodies, snails blossom, and plants emerge from everyday objects. These uncanny mutations transcend the strictly geometric order inherent to woven craft—and remind us that we share more with plants inhabiting our gardens than we realize.
Until January 3, 2026
5. “Re-form” at Wexler Gallery | Philadelphia
To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Wexler Gallery is looking ahead, mounting a landmark exhibition that spotlights a compelling new generation of talents redefining material, form, and meaning within 21st-century design. Among the most exciting newly represented voices on the Philadelphia gallery’s roster are Erin Sullivan, whose functional bronze sculptures channel the primordial forces of nature; Nick Missel, who employs industrial processes to plumb the tension between synthetic and organic materials; and Marcus Vinicius De Paula, whose monolithic, relic-like forms bridge ancient materiality with a cosmic sense of time and space.
Until December 19
6. “Unearthing Nature and Brutalism” at Miminat Designs | London
A thought-provoking new exhibition at British-Nigerian designer Miminat Shodeinde’s namesake London atelier is complementing her signature “soft-brutalist” furnishings with photographic works that capture nature’s raw, monumental power. The show, realized in partnership with Atlas Gallery, brings together renowned documentarian Sebastião Salgado’s majestic landscapes, architect Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs of serene seascapes, and photographer Kacper Kowalski’s aerial views, all of which deepen the impact of Shodeinde’s sculptural pieces. In particular, her aviation-inspired Howard Daybed was reimagined with special upholstery crafted from animal hide traditionally used in the making of Calabar drums from her Yoruba heritage.
Until February 28, 2026
7. “Hamza Kadiri: Paradox” at Les Ateliers Courbet | New York
Hamza Kadiri draws from generations of Moroccan woodcraft to shape sculpted forms that carry both ancestral knowledge and a contemporary edge. He continues to refine marquetry and cabinetry traditions into commanding objects that feel carved from longstanding cultural lore. Here, earlier works appear alongside newer pieces that reflect his deepening engagement with wood and his recent foray into solid charcoal. The armoire stands out: its intricate, puzzle-like exterior grew from months of experimenting with charcoal, a material he selected for its ability to reveal subtle shifts within a single dark tone. Kadiri follows the grain and temperament of each board as he carves, imparting each work a grounded intensity and an expressive presence.
Until January 24, 2026
8. “Nifemi Marcus-Bello: Material Affirmations – Oríkì Acts I–III” at Tiwani Contemporary | Lagos
Much of Nigerian designer Nifemi Marcus-Bello’s work incorporates culturally meaningful materials across Africa, but has never been shown on the continent. That changes at Lagos gallery Tiwani Contemporary, which is presenting sculptural benches in polished bronze using traditional lost-wax techniques, seating and objects forged in sand-cast aluminum sourced from the Nigerian capital’s secondhand auto industry, and copper tables and lighting emblematic of African historic typologies. “Each material tells a story,” explains Marcus-Bello, “from the sacred bronzes of Benin, to aluminum that sustains everyday life in the city, to copper whose extraction and refinement reveal hidden currents of global trade.”
Until January 10, 2026
9. “Lars Nilsson: Botanical Stripes” at Carling Dalenson Gallery | Stockholm
Lars Nilsson left Paris after years inside the ateliers of Chanel and Dior, and now works in rural Sweden, where he draws on nature and regional craft traditions for a vivid body of hand-drawn patterns, collages, and ceramics. His latest group of sculptural candleholders, shaped at the Nittsjö ceramic workshop, incorporates hand-shaped oak, felted wool from sheep near Lake Siljan, porphyry and quartzite from Wasasten, and bronze cast at Morell’s Metal Foundry. He introduces glass for the first time, adding a fresh shimmer to his rhythmic study of stripes. A suite of finely layered watercolor collages accompanies the sculptures, influenced by English topiary gardens and 17th-century Dutch still lifes.
Until December 17