On the cover: Andrea Carlson. Pictured: The Host, 2025, Detail view. Courtesy of the 

artist and Jessica Silverman. Photo: Philip Maisel.

By GINNY VAN ALYEA

There has been a collective interest lately in everything analog. After years of living in an always-monitored, notification-saturated world many of us understand how constant digital attention can steal time and focus. It’s no surprise that people are beginning to seek out spaces and objects that offer a purposeful, slower, tacile disconnection. I’m encouraged to see a renewed interest in ephemera that draws people offline and, hopefully, toward a lasting commitment to the ecosystem of support that comes from engaging with artists and their ideas.

One generation tends to repeat the natural cycle of rediscovering what appealed in the past — I’m waiting for Swatch phones, celebrity magazine collages, mix tapes, and thrift store corduroys to make a comeback any day now — but more than nostalgia, the desire to have objects and images that are personal, interesting to observe and touch, even repurpose or pass along, speaks to the particular satisfaction of making something common into something else unique through creative modification. 

Encountering art conceived and made real by human imagination is an important social connection. In this issue of CGN, we highlight places and exhibitions we hope you’ll see in person. William Lieberman reflects on the 50-year history of Zolla/Lieberman Gallery and the many relationships that have sustained it across generations. What might sound old-fashioned about how the gallery began is also what some of us now find ourselves longing for: spontaneous lunches, cheap wine, good old-fashioned cold-calling, and pavement pounding. Sending emails into the void isn’t fulfilling. I know William will use his Rolodex to mail copies of this issue to his many friends — glad there is a printed magazine to page through and share.

We also look ahead to the June opening of the Obama Presidential Center, the first center of its kind to emerge from a digital presidency but designed to bring visitors together in a physical space — not just to sightsee, but to connect and experience commissioned public works by some of today’s most important contemporary artists.

Collector Kate Neisser shares her personal approach to discovering, falling in love with, and living with art that can surprise her. It’s what fills her home with life. 

I often say there isn’t enough time to see everything. But there may be more time than we think — if we make the effort to choose how we spend it.

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