An Evening With Nancy Lorenz and Galerie at Tiffany & Co.’s Landmark

On the balmy summer evening of August 4, an intimate gathering of interior designers, collectors, and creative luminaries convened at Tiffany & Co.’s landmark Fifth Avenue flagship for a champagne toast and guided tour celebrating the work of artist Nancy Lorenz. Galerie editor in chief Jacqueline Terrebonne hosted the evening alongside Lorenz, whose commissions appear throughout the storied building conceived by Peter Marino and OMA. The walkthrough offered guests the rare opportunity to hear firsthand about the inspirations, craftsmanship, and materials behind several of the Queens-based artist’s dazzling site-specific works.

The evening began on the sixth floor, devoted to home furnishings and lifestyle, with Moon Gold Mountain (2022), a composition created with water-gilt moon gold leaf and gilder’s clay on jute. Lorenz, who spent her formative years in Tokyo and trained in the conservation of Japanese decorative arts, discussed how decades of studying the country’s craft traditions continue to inform her practice. She also explained that Moon Gold Mountain drew inspiration from Japan’s lasting influence on Tiffany’s creative history through Elsa Peretti, making its placement alongside the late designer’s lacquer-inspired jewelry especially resonant. Guests then examined Peretti’s lacquer bangles, whose refined surfaces pay homage to the craftsmanship of Kyoto artisans. 

“Nancy has a wonderful way of blurring the lines between art and design, and that extraordinary aspect of her practice is on full display over three floors of the Tiffany landmark,” Terrebonne says. “Her collaboration with Peter Marino on the space has produced mother-of-pearl wall panels as well as a high jewelry private salon completely sheathed in her panels. I also love the integration of her Moon Gold painting into the Elsa Peretti space as there’s such a connection between their Japanese inspirations and use of materials.”

On the seventh floor, dedicated to Tiffany’s masterworks and high jewelry, guests paused before Lorenz’s luminous Night Sky Screen (2022) and the surrounding white gold, silver leaf, mother-of-pearl, resin, and lacquer panels that frame a sitting area overlooking the house’s master jewelers at work. She then spoke about the painstaking craftsmanship behind the commissions, from centuries-old gilding techniques to intricate mother-of-pearl inlay. “I love these opportunities to work large,” Lorenz reflected on the challenges of working at an architectural scale. “When you look at Chinese landscape paintings, there’s often a small figure within this vast landscape. I love that idea of being surrounded by a big environment.”

The tour concluded on the eighth floor, an airy salon and terrace reserved for private clients inside the soaring triple-height volume conceived by OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu. There, amid a seasonal installation inspired by a summer garden, Lorenz presented Small Mountains for Flowers (2018–2025), a group of bronze sculptures that serve as contemplative ikebana arrangements. “All these forms were made with cardboard coated with wax, and then I worked with a foundry in Dobbs Ferry, New York,” Lorenz explained. “I’d always wanted to make tabletop landscapes for flowers. I keep reconfiguring them with different arrangements, so the garden is always changing.” Cast through the lost-wax process from cardboard originals, each sculpture preserves the corrugated texture of the original material in bronze. 

Guests then gathered on the terrace for champagne and light bites beside Claude Lalanne’s monumental bronze New York Apple as the sun dipped behind the Manhattan skyline. Among those in attendance were Victoria Hagan, John and Christine Gachot, Jessica Schuster, Sarina Ogden, Jamie Drake, Josh Greene, and Damian and Britt Zunino.