Gallery Scene

NILUFAR DEPOT IN MILAN

Milan’s Nina Yashar has long been known for her exquisite taste and extraordinary eye. Her Brera district gallery, Nilufar, is a joy to visit, and an adventure, as it winds back from the narrow Via della Spiga with each small space yielding yet more treasures. It seemed hard to top, but Yashar did so herself.

Her newest venture, called Nilufar Depot, is a vast former warehouse adapted by the architect Massimiliano Locatelli of CLS Architetti into a three-story-high space open in the center but ringed by mezzanine gallery space. Yashar says the design was intended to pay homage to Milan’s famed La Scala opera house. The 16,000-square-foot space on the much- less-central Viale Vincenzo Lancetti houses close to three thousand pieces of furniture, lighting, and decorative arts. The new Depot took its bow during Salone del Mobile in April.

The work on view ranges from the historic to the contemporary, work that Yashar has assembled and stored in the Depot for some three decades. On display in the roomlike vignettes that line the upper stories are works that show Nilufar’s amazing range: Josef Hoffmann, Gio Ponti, Gino Sarfatti, Alessandro Mendini, Lindsey Adelman, Martino Gamper, Bethan Laura Wood, Maarten de Ceulaer, and Glithero. The ample ground floor features, among other pieces, several of the extraordinary (and heavy and long) tables designed by Locatelli; his serpentine connected tables, each in a different marble, were a centerpiece of Nilufar’s Design Miami offering last June but look far more imposing in a space that truly shows them off. nilufar.com
—Beth Dunlop