Daniele Marin’s current exhibition, Ground Line, at Noho Gallery explores how women in art and society have evolved over time. By using iconic imagery along with the mundane, Marin recontextualizes these images to create nonlinear narratives. Doing this makes the historical information seem fresh. Marin also uses fabric in the acrylic paintings, creating texture and delineating space.

As Marin said, “The incorporation of fabric shifts the expectation about traditional feminine arts.” It also serves as an anchor point for the eye, a place of return.

Marin considers the painting surface a stage where different techniques communicate with each other. In fact, the paintings themselves seem to speak to each other. The color of each painting works within the bigger concept of the show. Marin is particularly interested in “the ground line,” the foundation for this exhibit, which is the horizontal plane on which objects sit. She weaves this into all of the works, establishing unity while referencing “still” images from the past, thereby reclaiming and redefining their roles as ‘feminine.’ The result is a new way of viewing traditional materials.

Marin was born in Paris but lives in the United States. She has an MFA from the Pratt Institute and has won two painting awards from the Visual Arts Center in New Jersey. She has been featured in Art in America and Woman’s Art Journal (Rutgers), among other publications. Some of her works are in the collection of the Newark Museum, the Montclair museum and Merrill Lynch, as well as private collections.

This show runs through Feb. 4. While visiting the exhibition, I had the eerie feeling of walking through a different state of being; somehow becoming a part of the ground line myself, as if I was inside the paintings.

Daniele Marvin: Ground Line
Noho Gallery, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 212-367-7063, www.danielemarin.com.
Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

By Marsha McCreadie

One high aesthetic compliment is to call an artist ahead of his time. Yet, the real trick is to be both of your time and ahead of it. Cecil Beaton—photographer, illustrator, set and costume designer, even author—turned that trick, and nicely, too.

The fabulous results and even a hint at his motivation are currently exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York.
Why there, why now? Well, it’s Beaton’s “New York Years,” the 1920s through the 1960s—the fun decades, at least for him and his crowd. Beaton was a soigné mover in the top artistic and social tiers in both his native England and his semipermanent residence of elegant Manhattan hotel suites.

There’s already something gemülichkeit about the approachable museum portico, so the “Beaton Rose,” his cozy 1940s fabric design papering the entrance hall, is a needed transition into a glittery world presented with a clever structure, both chronological and thematic. Let’s face it: We don’t really go to this exhibit to get a career history, though it’s there if you want it—from his early surprisingly “romantic” painting and drawing through his magazine photography years and costumes for the Metropolitan Opera.

Subsections are devoted to his pictures of Marilyn Monroe, Wallis Simpson, Greta Garbo (one of Beaton’s heartfelt but rare heterosexual love quests and the only “candid” image of her laughing I’ve ever seen), Elsie de Wolfe, Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali. Also view a sweet-looking young Marlon Brando and a cheery Mick Jagger; both Hepburns—Kate and Audrey, separately; and a sprinkling of socialites.

Decorator de Wolfe got Beaton social access and he flattered, cunningly: “I only photograph those I like and admire.” (Summation-type Beaton quotes are posted throughout.) From a wealthy but not aristocratic background, he was clearly more comfortable in a Manhattan filled with other arrivistes than in class-fixed old England.

When the stylistic tide turned against his lush Vogue and Vanity Fair painterly tableaux, shifting to the informal action photography of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, Beaton didn’t wail, he moved on—to sets and costumes for Broadway and Hollywood, though he resented time spent in L.A.

The show highlights details of the Ascot Race set from My Fair Lady, famously imitated by Truman Capote’s Plaza Hotel Black and White Ball.

Peek at Beaton’s letters and other writing for an ironic self-view. See a handsome-looking woman in a shiny dress and bob, shot from behind, glancing over her shoulder. It’s Beaton in drag, clever enough to omit pearls thrown carelessly down the back to tip you off.

Is there a discernable Beaton style? Was he the Picasso of the photography and design world—with a clear signature, even when using multiple modes? No and no. Who cares? He caught various zeitgeists and their emblematic people, made viewers want to look and dress like them and unapologetically took bits and pieces from every genre. You could call it artistic shoplifting (some did)—or, eventually, homage.

Cecil Beaton: The New York Years
Through Feb. 20, Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Ave., 212-534-1672, www.mcny.org.

By Mark Peikert

In the pantheon of New Yorkers—Dorothy Parker, Andy Warhol, the Ramones—photographer Weegee may not be the first to spring to mind, but he may symbolize the contradictions of New York City better than anyone else. Driven, self-mythologizing and morbidly curious about the curiously morbid, Weegee spent a decade, from 1936 to 1947, chronicling the violence and urban beauty of life in the Big Apple.

Currently on display at the International Center of Photography, Weegee: Murder Is My Business (running through Sept. 2) collects some of the best of Weegee’s mostly nighttime work, from a body stuffed in a trunk to the crowds at Coney Island. What strikes the viewer almost immediately isn’t just the classic, violent aspects of these photos—bodies splayed awkwardly on sidewalks, pools of blood congealing—but the flipside, the almost embarrassingly sentimental glimpses at beachgoers or the melancholy of a Santa balloon being inflated for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

That Santa photograph is indicative of why Weegee’s work still exerts such a magnetic pull; these images are frozen in time, capturing a New York City that is long gone and still mourned (there are only a few stragglers surrounding that balloon, unlike the hordes who descend upon the Upper West Side the night before Thanksgiving now). From a distance, the gangland killings that Weegee followed so avidly thanks to his police scanner have a glamour that we can’t assign the random acts of violence we live through today.

What Murder Is My Business reveals, however, is that the famously gruesome Weegee wasn’t always interested in the details of the deaths he covered. Sometimes his photographs were of gawping onlookers, the body an indistinct detail. ICP has helpfully put these seemingly atypical shots in context, surrounding them with photos by police officers of the same scene that are more insistent on the corpse than Weegee’s. As it turns out, crime wasn’t necessarily Weegee’s business, but the business of capturing the filthy, rain-slicked city he loved in all its rubbernecking glory was.

For more of Weegee’s ceaselessly fascinating work, Chelsea’s Steven Kasher Gallery is holding its own exhibit, Weegee: Naked City, through Feb. 25 at 521 W. 23rd St.

Weegee: Murder Is My Business
ICP, 1133 6th Ave. (at 43rd St.), 212-857-0000, www.icp.org.

By Penny Gray

The Howard Greenberg Gallery has just opened an exhibition of the photographic works of Vivian Maier (1926–2009) from the Maloof Collection. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because Maier’s work is a recent discovery.

Vivian Maier, “Untitled, Self-portrait, n.d.” © Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, NYC

A career nanny, Maier lived a life of anonymity, caring for children and traveling with wealthy families around the world—all the while, it seems, taking pictures. While working on a definitive history of the Portage Park neighborhood in Chicago, John Maloof discovered her work at a local auction house in 2007, and so began his collection.

In her lifetime, Maier generated more than 2,000 rolls of film, 3,000 prints and more than 100,000 negatives of her work with the help of a trusty Rolleiflex she carried at all times. She shared the images with no one. The photos range in subject from candid images of women and children to snapshots of insurrection capturing the unseen lives of the downtrodden and destitute.

Of Maier and her work, Howard Greenberg reflected, “It is such an unusual story with no resolution. At first, her images are extremely well-seen, quality photographs of life on the street, in New York City and Chicago. But as one looks at the body of her work, she reveals deeper interests. Then one tries to imagine who she was, what motivated her, her personality.”

The exhibition represents the wide scope of Maier’s body of work but fails to delve into a consolidation of her essential output. Mediocre and amateurish prints of city architecture are displayed alongside well-composed and affecting images of homely humanity existing in geometric space. In one print, a newspaper vendor sleeps standing up in the midst of rows and rows of magazines, perfectly boxed in by his occupation. Maier had an astounding ability to frame displacement, and this gift has been underexplored in the Greenberg exhibition.

Indeed, the most successful of her images are the most personal. Maier’s series of self-portraits visually manifest Emily Dickinson’s meditation on invisibility: “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” In each image, Maier cleverly employs an inanimate object to diffuse her identity: a reflective window returns Maier’s distorted and ghostly image to herself, a mirror in an antique shop reveals her miniature reflection, the head of a sprinkler bounces back a minuscule version of herself next to her looming, faceless shadow. Not unlike Dickinson, Maier plays a game in her self-portraits, enjoying the intellectual conceit of un-becoming.

These are meditations on the disappearing act of existence, and they come closest to the essential spirit of Maier’s work. As she herself said, “We have to make room for other people. It’s a wheel—you get on, you go to the end and someone else has the same opportunity to go to the end, and so on, and somebody else takes their place. There’s nothing new under the sun.”

One has the sense that the world has just made a place for Maier and her work in a day-late-dollar-short sort of way. It’s a bittersweet recognition. And while Maier is correct that there’s nothing new under the sun—and there’s certainly nothing new about a female artist’s anonymity due to a lack of confidence—there is something wistful and true in Maier’s work. It’s worth a visit.

Vivian Maier: Photographs from the Maloof Collection

Through Jan. 28, 2012, Howard Greenberg Gallery, 41 E. 57th St., Ste. 1406, 212-334-0010, www.howardgreenberg.com.

By Regan Hofmann

Midtown at Christmas is an exercise in sensory overload. From the tourist-trapping mayhem of the windows at Macy’s to the OCD-inducing antiquariana of Bergdorf’s displays, from the scrum for skates at the Rockefeller Center rink to the desperate jingle of the carriage horses at Central Park, it can be easy to flag in the face of so much glitter and sound. Sometimes, simplicity is all you need—no bells, whistles or strobe lights, just creativity, humor and good old-fashioned craftsmanship.

Oh, and cookies. Did we mention cookies?

On view in the atrium of Le Parker Meridien (119 W. 56th St., betw. 6th & 7th Aves.) through Jan. 6 is the hotel’s third annual gingerbread house contest to benefit City Harvest. This year, seven New York City bakeries and restaurants have contributed their take on the candy-coated childhood favorite brought to new architectural heights.

What better way to raise awareness and cash for a nonprofit organization that rescues unused food from restaurants, grocery stores and manufacturers and distributes it to the hungry across the five boroughs than with more food? While the display is free to view, $1 will get you a ballot to vote for your favorite, a highly contested title for the chefs and bakers participating. As one might imagine, the organization has seen need rise over the last 12 months and are especially hopeful this year’s contest will top last year’s draw of over $16,000. Since every dollar allows the organization to bring in four pounds of food, ballot-stuffing is highly encouraged.

Last year’s winner was, suspiciously enough, Norma’s Restaurant at Le Parker Meridien. Home field advantage? We’ll see if their streak continues with this year’s “Mini Parker,” a replica of the hotel itself complete with reception desk, restaurant and guest rooms. Don’t worry, they didn’t go so far as to put a mini gingerbread house contest in the lobby, so you won’t get sucked into an M.C. Escher-esque recursive nightmare, tracking tinier upon tinier versions of yourself looking at the model looking at yourself looking at the model.

A strong challenger is first-time participant BLT Steak/Casa Nonna pastry chef Julie Elkind, whose replica of the Central Park boathouse could easily pass for the real thing. OK, so the pillars are peppermint sticks rather than white stone, and the soft green patina on the roof is from the 700 pieces of Orbit sweet mint gum that act as shingles, rather than aged copper. Aside from those slight details, you’d never know the difference. Also in the running is Gramercy Tavern’s Nancy Olson, whose Olson Manor uses gold-leafed pretzel twists as unexpectedly beautiful, delicate crenellation on its gothic roof.

But the creations don’t stay strictly within the realm of the architectural. Unlike in previous years, bakers weren’t given any thematic constraints when they received their instructions earlier this year and were free to build any kind of structure they wanted. Of these, Baked Ideas’ typewriter, strung with a rice paper ribbon and spewing forth a sugar cookie alphabet, takes the concept to new creative heights.

The longer you spend looking at the entries, the more delicious details you’ll uncover. Just don’t try to eat them; while the structures are all technically edible (one of the contest rules), the construction material is doctored to make it stronger and less perishable than your average gingerbread man. Thankfully, they still smell just as good, and the hotel’s lobby espresso bar is helpfully selling a number of gingerbread-themed treats to ease your pain. And while you’re in the lobby, pick up a ballot or three from the concierge desk to help bring hungry New Yorkers their own holiday treats.

The award-winning illustrator Ed Young will celebrate his 80th birthday this fall with the release of two new books and the launch of a one-man show about his work on countless children’s books over the years.

Young, who came to the United States from China 60 years ago, recently released the picture book, The House Baba Built, a memoir of his childhood in wartime China.

Trying to shield his family from the horrors of World War II, Young’s father, Baba, built a house to safeguard his wife and children. Soon, four other families were staying in the house with them, including one Jewish family that had escaped Nazi Germany.

Ed Young, children’s book illustrator.

Though the harsh realities of war surrounded them, laughter and games often filled the house, which Baba, a structural engineer, had designed in a creative and complex way with “floors between floors,” Young said.

“My father made it so we had an enjoyable childhood despite the chaos outside,” he said.

The idea to write The House Baba Built (Little, Brown, 2011) came to Young over 20 years ago, when he visited Shanghai for the first time since he left in 1951. He began writing notes then and when he visited again in 2004, he decided the book needed to be written.

“I realized I was the only one still alive who remembered the stories from that house and I wanted to put them together in a book that could be read,” he said.

Young illustrated the book in several different media, with torn and cut paper, pencil, chalk, pastel, ink, paint and photographs.

“It’s almost like a journal written in scrapbook form,” he said. “It was really a cleansing experience for me. Through writing it, I got to know myself in ways I never had before.”

Also this fall, Young’s illustrations can be seen in the new book, The Masterwork of a Painting Elephant, by Michelle Cuevas (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011). This chapter book for kids ages 6-12 is about a boy named Pigeon and an artistically gifted white elephant who set out in search of fame and a lost love.

Young has written and/or illustrated over 85 books and has received numerous awards for his work. Young won the Caldecott Medal for Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China and has twice been the U.S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. A three-time winner of both the Boston Globe Horn Book Award and the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year, his other honors include five School Library Journal Best Books and five Booklist Editors’ choices.

Young will celebrate his 80th birthday at the end of November and shows no sign of slowing down. Currently working on another book, he will launch a one-man traveling show in Texas at the end of the month that will feature 15 of his latest books.

“I’m going to keep doing what I love doing,” he said. “I want to continue to explore different media, the possibility of telling stories in new ways. The future is about the unknown. I want to find new ways to grow and become a more proficient artist.”

Among the upholsterers, gilders and other artisans of the Upper East Side is the Isabel O’Neil Studio Workshop at 315 East 91st Street. Since 1955, the studio has offered weekly instruction in the art of painted finish to an eager and devoted following of students. The studio stresses that no prior art experience is needed to create the many beautiful finishes that O’Neil invented herself. We recently visited with Executive Director Beth Mahaffey and board member Elizabeth Paul to discuss O’Neil’s influence and the art of the painted finish.

Our Town: Who was Isabel O’Neil?

Beth Mahaffey: Isabel O’Neil was an artist who studied at Skidmore and Yale. At that time, in the 1940s, there was nothing about the painted finish published in the United States, so she went to Europe and did lots of research on the topic. Eventually, she developed her own finishing techniques. When she came back to New York, she worked for James Amster, who convinced her to start teaching. So she began the Isabel O’Neil Studio in 1955.

Elizabeth Paul, left, and Beth Mahaffey. Photo by Daniel S. Burnstein.

Elizabeth Paul: When she published all of her research in her book [The Art of the Painted Finish] it became a sort of bible on the painted finish. I don’t think she expected the studio to continue after her death; she didn’t choose any successors when she passed away in 1981.  But a group of students banded together and continued the school through the Isabel O’Neil Foundation.

What is the art of the painted finish?

Paul: Humans seem to have a need to decorate their surroundings, and so various forms of finishes have emerged throughout time and become more and more popular. The painted finish dates back to Mycenaean and Egyptian times. In China, it goes back to the beginning of lacquer work, and in medieval times it was used mainly in churches. During the Renaissance, it became popular for people who couldn’t afford furniture made of real precious stones. They began to paint finishes to imitate them. That’s how it started and it spread throughout Europe.

How does Isabel O’Neil’s legacy live on?

Mahaffey: We still work with all of the unique finishes that Isabel O’Neil created herself, and we still use all of her notes and techniques. And we use the Renaissance guild system, which she implemented.

Paul: You start as an Artisan, and after you take about 12 beginner classes and exhibit 8 pieces, our committee promotes you to the position of Journeyman. To become a Master, you must study for several more years and create your own finish.

Mahaffey: We’ve had only 30 masters since 1964. The idea is that each course builds on the next; it’s all in sequence. You bring all that you’ve learned in each class with you. We’re part of the “slow movement”—we don’t offer instant gratification. But what we make is gratifying for years.

What do students walk away with?

Mahaffey: Other than the technical skills that they learn, discipline. You have to be disciplined and very neat because you’re developing a craft, becoming an artisan. And patience.

Paul: And perseverance. You don’t need to be an artist to do this, but if you work hard and follow the steps, you can create these beautiful finishes. And everyone finds a finish that they love. There was a student who fell in love with gilding. Having done it, she went home and gilded everything—including the toilet seat. (laughs)

What do you find most fulfilling about the art of the painted finish?

Mahaffey: For me it’s just so satisfying to do this work. It’s very meditative—you sand and sand and sand and you’re quiet and it’s time to be still. It’s a place to come, turn off your cell phone, get lost for three hours and expand your mind and your creative being.

Paul: Once you’re here, you’re hooked. I’ve been here for 31 years. There’s something about the camaraderie, about the sense of achievement, the encouragement. All of our teachers are volunteers who have come through our programs and classes, so there’s a special feeling about this place, where people are willing to give up their time to come here.

For more information, visit www.isabeloneil.org.

In the late 1960s, a young woman sought the help of a lawyer. That’s how former art director Joan Niborg first met trial lawyer and photographer Len Speier.

“It was love at first sight,” Speier said.

Len Speier and Joan Niborg with his photo.

For the first time, Speier’s 4-foot by 6-foot portrait of Niborg is on public display as part of Photography and Imaging’s annual photography exhibit at the National Arts Club, after decades of hanging in his Upper West Side apartment. The exhibit brings together 150 prints by more than 60 photographers who are members of the organization.

“It’s a very touching photograph,” said Randy Duchaine, vice president of Photography and Imaging, a New York-based photographers group. “It’s a tribute to their relationship, and it’s a very nice, endearing thing.”

Speier and Niborg never married, but they are still the best of friends, Speier said. The portrait is one of four photos of Speier’s on exhibit at The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park. The free event runs through Jan. 28.

At 83 years old, Speier’s resumé is five pages long and keeps growing.

He was born and raised in the Bronx. He attended Dewitt Clinton High School and City College before being drafted into the army to serve on occupation duty in Japan. After he returned, Speier earned his law degree at NYU.

“Sometime in the late 1960s or early ’70s, the photography bug bit me,” Speier said. “I was very unhappy being a trial lawyer, I didn’t like corporate stuff, my marriage was breaking up and someone recommended a photo workshop at the Educational Alliance downtown.”

Speier recalls taking photos in Japan, but once he started shooting in the 1970s, he never stopped.

“I loved the idea of immediate contact with people,” he said, having discovered the satisfaction of shooting on the street. And to this day, Speier loves photographing people. His “Bus Series” captures every kind of New Yorker on buses and subways at seemingly random moments.

“I like the thrill of the spontaneity of shooting,” he said. “It’s a challenge to put all of the elements together in an instantaneous moment.”

But one of Speier’s most famous photographs is of a person he can’t really describe. One morning, during a snowstorm in the 1980s, Speier looked out the park-facing window of his Riverside Drive apartment and spotted a mysterious, hooded figure dressed in a black cloak standing in the middle of wintery whiteness.

He ran for his camera, snapped a picture and never saw the figure again. The photo, which he titled “Hooded Figure in the Snow,” was eventually picked up by a publishing company in Australia and was used on the cover of several versions of The Book Thief.

Jon Niborg Speier, Speier’s youngest son, said his father has always carried at least one camera with him for as long as he can remember.

“He can’t help himself if he sees something that needs to be photographed,” Niborg Speier said, recalling the story of when Speier traveled to China in 1986 with his oldest son for a bicycle trip. Trailing along with the group of cyclists, Speier would stop to take a photo, and the rest of the group would have to come get him.

Though Speier’s passion for photography transformed his life, he never quit law. Speier frequently lectures on copyright laws and photographers’ legal rights. He was also an associate professor of photography and artists’ legal rights at F.I.T. for more than 20 years before retiring in 2006.

He has had works displayed at the International Center of Photography, Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Museum of the City of New York and the Photo Archive of the New York Public Library.

Despite his success, Speier is focused on his goal to get a book published of his photos. Though he has yet to find a publisher, he cites his favorite Winston Churchill quote: “Never, never, never, never, never give up.”

Speier will also have photos featured at the Project Basho Gallery in Philadelphia in February.

By Nicholas Wells

Peter Greenaway’s films—such as The Belly of an Architect or The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover—have always dealt with different forms of betrayal, usually between spouses and lovers. His new installation focuses on a betrayal at the center of Western culture and art. In Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision By Peter Greenaway, the filmmaker illuminates da Vinci’s centuries-old painting through a near perfect “clone” of the original and breathtaking cinematic devices.

Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway at the Park Avenue Armory. Photo by James Ewing

Greenaway has made it his mission to re-educate the public as to how to interact with art. “Just because you have eyes doesn’t mean you can see,” he explained during a speech he made at a recent event for the installation. In our text-based society, familiar images have been reproduced and satirized so many times, he argues, that we have lost the ability to truly see them. “Last Supper” is intended as the second in a list of 10 paintings—that will potentially include Picasso’s “Guernica,” Seurat’s “La Grande Jatte” and even perhaps Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment”—with which Greenaway plans to engage in his innovative manner. Using technology to create a stunning visual experience, he says he hopes to “create a dialogue between 8,000 years of art and 115 years of cinema.”

For the most part, this installation is visually stunning. After a ridiculously triumphant travel experience, titled “Italy of the Cities”—which was conceived for the Italian pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai—visitors are allowed to enter the main event. A three-dimensional replica of the refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie has been built in the Park Avenue Armory’s drill hall. At one end of the room “hangs” the clone of Leonardo’s “Last Supper,” dimly lit and exuding surprising power. Centered in the room before the painting is a plaster-cast rendering of the table in the painting, complete with food, wine glasses, the purse of silver that Judas was given for his betrayal and St. Peter’s knife.

A spotlight illuminates the painting and sweeps slowly across the figures assembled at the table. Shadows from outstretched hands and bodies dance across the scene in a seemingly three-dimensional still life. Sunlight streams in from the gridded ceiling and moves across the sky in two accelerated days. Then moonlight floods the room like a prison searchlight, casting an eerie blue light, revealing the guests frozen in their shocked positions.

The visuality of the projection is more impressive and believable than most contemporary 3D movies. At times the scene appears as a Bavarian woodcarving, at times as a plaster cast of itself, with a spotlight dispersing color as it slowly pans. Wine spills from the table only to disappear as a light passes over. Greenaway revels in the technology available to him and makes good on his challenge that “it’s a responsibility of all contemporary artists to use contemporary tools of technology.” Leonardo would be proud.

For no clear reason, other than to train one’s attention on the spectacle, the sequence runs twice and is accompanied by a exultant score that includes Vivaldi and Gabrielis. In the most visually interesting bit, the hands of the assembled are highlighted. Their individual positions could be a series of hand studies, or a warm-up exercise for a shadow-puppet class.

After the Vision, viewers are ushered back to the antechamber to see a version of Greenaway’s analysis of Veronese’s “Wedding at Cana.” The painting, a subtle refutation of the Protestant Reformation, depicts the site of Christ’s first miracle, turning water into wine. Greenaway’s installation, complete with booming voiceover, focuses on individual characters from the painting and we hear their private conversations on the miracle they have just witnessed.

What of the copy itself? The painting is recreated down to the smallest detail and is virtually indistinguishable from the original. Factum Arte, the company that produced the clone, used 3D scanning, color matching and a high-definition panoramic photo process to duplicate both “Last Supper” and “Wedding at Cana.”

The original “Last Supper” began to deteriorate just four years after completion, and viewings are still limited to a few people a day. During Milan’s Design Week, organizers decided to make use of Greenaway’s clone to allow more people to see the “Last Supper” than could be accommodated in the refectory alone. Patrons could choose to wait in line for hours for a quick peek at Leonardo’s masterpiece or reserve a seat to experience Greenaway’s vision of the painting. So we are ultimately left pondering whether this clone is a fake original or an original fake.

Art dealers from the Upper East Side will present American pieces on the private market Wednesday, Dec. 1.

Participating galleries will be open for extended hours, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., for the Just Off Madison Winter Gallery Walk.

Art enthusiasts will have the opportunity to see museum-quality pieces, representing a wide range of media—including painting, sculpture and drawing—from the 19th and mid‑20th centuries.

The gallery walk will coincide with the American art auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, so that collectors, curators and art aficionados can stroll through the galleries of Madison Avenue between auctions.

Participating galleries are located between East 69th and 79th streets from Fifth to Park avenues. For further information and a map of the gallery walk, please visit www.justoffmadison.com.