Michael Biondo

A mid-century beauty opens to the public for the first time, and it?s stocked with new art and design. The Noyes House is one of those mid-century homes that wind up in coffee-table books and on Pinterest mood boards. With its floor-to-ceiling windows, flagstone walls, and asymmetrical lines, it?s emblematic of the cluster of great houses in New Canaan, Connecticut, a hot spot of swingy, high-design modernist living in the 1950s. Residents of this bedroom community included a significant number of art directors and similar aesthetes ? including the industrial designer and architect Eliot Noyes, famous for the IBM Selectric typewriter, who built this house in 1955 for his family. Right now, members of the public can visit and tour the house for the first time ever, thanks to the new art and design exhibition At The Noyes House, presented by the uptown galleries Blum & Poe and Mendes Wood DM, and Object & Thing, a design and art fair now in its second year.
Michael Biondo
The painting above the mantel is Mark Grotjahn?s Untitled (Capri 53.16) (2020); the red vase is Gaetano Pesce?s Large Red Pebble Vase (2016); the two small vessels on the table are Jim McDowell?s Madison Washington (2017) and Love Trumps Hate (2019); the other piece on the table is Lynda Benglis?s AMAXA, (2013). The chairs, coffee table, and giraffe sculpture are all original.

The nearby Glass House, Philip Johnson?s weekend-home compound, has been op...