Wallpaper* August 2024: Creative America

Dear readers,

Welcome to our second annual issue dedicated to the creative superpower that is the United States of America. Honouring a country the size of the US through the lens of its creative denizens is a Herculean – you might even suggest Sisyphean – task. But once again we’ve come prepared, asking our US director, Michael Reynolds, to lead the conversation on what currently constitutes its creative heartbeat and, at the same time, offer a commentary on what it takes to shape a nation well versed in entrepreneurship and achievement while remaining alert to the forces that forge its global stature as a crucible of artistic endeavour.

Naturally, it’s no small summary, as evidenced by the epic, 28-page portfolio shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, the New York-based photographic artists whose work has previously appeared in Wallpaper* (as have they), but never, we’d submit, on the scale you will find here.

Their comprehensive compendium of US-domiciled creatives was birthed at Alexander May’s studio space Sized in LA and was completed in New York, resulting in a compilation of 50 sitters united by their own vision of what constitutes creative America. It’s an exemplary audit, and one that adds greatly to the snapshot of leading practitioners that we shared last year as the Wallpaper* USA 300. In 2024, that number has grown to more than 400, testament to the abundance of stellar talent to be found across the continental United States.

This is a landscape, it goes without saying, that is populated by extraordinary architecture, as captured in our stories about the off-grid Earthship community in Taos, New Mexico, and set designer Scott Pask’s striking midcentury Arizona home, as well as incredible artists, such as Olivia Erlanger and Ido Yoshimoto – whose work channels the structures that underpin American life – and cultural icons such as Tory Burch and David Rockwell. In tribute to their peerless contribution to the great American aesthetic, we chose to construct our own ‘dream home’, imagined in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard by acclaimed scenographer Stefan Beckman.

Finally, it gives me great pleasure to welcome back Lauren Ho to Wallpaper* as our first travel director. Formerly our travel editor, Ho has since made it her business to roam the world reporting on luxury travel, architecture and design, and her new role, working with travel editor Sofia de la Cruz, reflects the questing spirit and unstinting curiosity that has established her as one of the leading authorities on the global hospitality industry.

Bill Prince
Editor-in-Chief