142 ARCHDIGEST.COM
ROBERT POLIDORI
Full English
“When you see things en masse versus a single silver teapot, you start to create this sense of desire.” So says
Robin Standefer of Roman and Williams, the AD100 firm founded with her husband, Stephen Alesch. It’s all part
of the “object lust” that fueled their renovation of the 11,000-square-foot British Galleries at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, which reopen on March 2 after a six-year rethink and four-year closure. Sleepy period rooms have
given way to an evocatively illuminated, four-century cinematic sweep that takes in, among other things, the rising
middle class’s hunger for fashionable objects in the 1700s. Visitors stand surrounded by two curved 10-foot-tall
glass cases of teapots in which the vessels swirl up and around like a galaxy of earthly delights. Nearby, invisibly
mounted snuffboxes, goblets, and more float like dreams. “It’s like a romantic idea of window-shopping at night,”
Alesch explains. “As if you’re thinking, If I could only save enough for that one pot.” —MITCHELL OWENS
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