Bloomberg looks at the former home of the Salander-O’Reilly Gallery. It has been transformed in this year’s Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club show house. And the art connections go beyond the Aby Rosen-owns-the-building connection:

In recent years, the nonprofit group, which selects the designers, raised around $1 million from ticket sales, galas and cocktails. On Tuesday, 220 patrons, including Martha Stewart, paid $600 each for the show’s preview dinner.

More than 30 high-end decorators participated in Kips Bay’s 37th edition, transforming the five-story building into an escapist design fantasy. They tore down the walls of cramped offices, turned a walk-in closet into a glamorous (nonfunctional) bathroom and converted a tiny basement space into a chic “panic room” complete with a martini set, oxygen tank, Kalashnikovs (fake) and a painting by contemporary artist George Condo (real).[ . . . ]

“This is your best way to expose a house to the market,” said Janna Bullock, a real-estate developer, who lent two mansions to the Kips Bay show in 2004 and 2007. “You have thousands of people come through your house and most of them are your target market.”

Bullock, who sold one of the mansions, is participating in the exhibition as a decorator this year. A contemporary-art collector, she transformed a fifth-floor landing and a stairway shaft into light-filled, moss-covered viewing rooms.

She used the space underneath the mansion’s glass ceiling to create a living room in midair. Furniture sculpture by Russian artist Anya Zholud, outlined with iron wire and hollow inside, seems to float overhead. Sam Taylor-Wood’s panoramic photomontage of a lounging family wraps around the walls.

Kips Bay Show, Panic Room Take Over Bankrupt Art Dealer Mansion (Bloomberg)

2009 Kips Bay Decorator Show House

Posted to New York Magazine by jgreen on April 17, 2009

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