Whenever I travel, for work or pleasure, I check in advance what art exhibitions will be running while I am in town. During the preparation time for this issue, I was fortunate to travel twice, and happily in each destination, there was not only an exhibition I was excited to see, but one that also coincided with my schedule.
In New York for our cover shoot, it was a Cy Twombly show at Gagosian on Madison Avenue that caught my attention. The last time I had seen Twombly’s work in person was a few years ago at the extraordinary gallery dedicated to his work at Houston’s Menil Collection. After a couple of hours of letting his large-scale abstract works infiltrate my being, I was moved to lie down on the grass outside and allow all the emotions they prompted to course through me. I could not be in a city where his pieces were on display and pass up an opportunity to revisit those feelings.
More recently, a few days in Florence lined up with an exhibition of British artist Tracey Emin at Palazzo Strozzi. Emin has been a significant force in the U.K. art scene since the arrival of the Young British Artists movement, and her controversial 1998 work and Turner Prize finalist My Bed. Fiercely intelligent, Emin spent years being railed at—a female artist who speaks her mind and doesn’t pull her punches receives far less largesse than her male counterparts, even more so when the work is deeply confessional and unflinching. But she prevailed, her unwavering commitment to the pursuit of art leading to her 2024 damehood. The works on display in Florence showed an artist who has grown and matured through her lived experiences, and the result cuts deep.
Art has the power to trigger all sorts of emotions and reactions if we allow ourselves to be open to them. Collecting art creates an entirely new connection with the work. Living with it develops yet more nuances to that relationship. Brigitte and Henning Freybe know this better than most: the couple have, over decades, amassed an exceptional collection of modern art, even renovating areas of their home to accommodate large and complicated pieces. Many of the works are challenging—intellectually rigorous and complicated to display—rather than decorative. Living with them requires endless curiosity and personal exploration, something few of us have the energy for on a daily basis. As the Freybe collection is donated in large part to the Vancouver Art Gallery for us all to enjoy, we talk to them about a life marked by art.
Endless curiosity is the drive behind another of the stories in this issue. As Modern Biology, Tarun Nayar has combined a scientific background with musical training in a mission to connect us more deeply with the natural world. Plugging into the bioelectrics of plant life, Nayar turns emissions from fruit and vegetables, shrubs, and other flora into sound compositions designed to help us sense the inner workings of the apparently still life that surrounds us.
If Nayar can find magic in the music of something as small as a mushroom, Rob Lyons turns his gaze onto a far bigger presence—the universe itself. A photographer by trade, Lyons pursues his obsession with space from an observatory constructed on his Kitsilano rooftop. His images of the night sky and beyond ask questions of our very existence and how small our little corner of life really is.
One young woman with a star on the rise is Whitney Peak. Still only 22, the Ugandan Canadian actress and model who grew up partly in B.C. landed on acting as a career by happenstance as a young teen. Already a well-established ambassador for Chanel, Peak is ready to make waves as an actor with a number of movies in the can and a role in the forthcoming Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping alongside Ralph Fiennes and Kieran Culkin. It was our pleasure to talk to Peak in her chosen home of New York and to photograph her in the latest couture collection from Chanel.
Read more from our Summer 2025 issue.
