A listing photo shows white floors in a prewar building — as unusual as staging a unit with Adolf Loos chairs and an Art Nouveau rocker.
Photo: Easton Properties
The sculptor Carol Bove is right now putting the finishing touches on a career-defining retrospective and, simultaneously, selling her Fifth Avenue apartment. Her Guggenheim survey opens on Thursday, and the apartment, which listed over a week ago, looks as though it could be a satellite exhibition space. The walls are white — and sometimes the floor, too — placing reverent, gallerylike attention on the furnishings, few as they are. A listing shot shows a room that is empty save a Donald Judd daybed, a Pierre Folie lamp, and what looks like one of the geometric wall panels that she’s also hanging in the Guggenheim. White floors in the dining and living area pull the eye up to the curving black cane of an Adolf Loos chair and accentuate the conchlike whorl of a pink velvet sofa.
A listing photo is staged atypically with a Donald Judd daybed and a Hydra Lamp by Pierre Folie. The painting on the wall matches other works by Bove that are on display at the Guggenheim this weekend.
Photo: Easton Properties
Price: $3.5 million
Specs: Four bedrooms, two baths
Extras: Walk-in closet. Building has a shared roof garden.
10-minute walking radius: Washington Square Park, the Strand, Il Cantinori
Listed by: Paul Bernstein, Easton Properties
As for why Bove is selling at what appears to be the busiest month in her career, that might remain a mystery. (Bove declined a request to chat through her broker, who describes himself as a “notable art collector … committed to nonprofit arts organizations.”) Still, public information tells most of the story: She bought in 2021 for $2.9 million, a period during which, per a profile in the New York Times, she moved “in the midst of a divorce” from her artist husband, Gordon Terry. Meanwhile, she sold Terry her stake in their house in Red Hook — a 19th-century home near the studio where a small army of assistants help produce her massive pieces. A commute to Red Hook from Washington Square Park could be worse, and the apartment has four bedrooms — plenty of room for hosting their two children. (The last owner, Jim Salzano, might have painted those floors white to make a backdrop. He’s also an artist: a portrait photographer.)
The listing asks for $600,000 more than she paid five years ago, though listing copy suggests to potential buyers, “Bring Your Architect.” The kitchen looks particularly ancient with the chrome hardware and blond-maple cabinetry of a 1990s renovation. The staging is sparse, almost severe. But at the Guggenheim, Bove is installing cushioned seating in five lounge areas and told the Times reporter she felt the need to make Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral feel more welcoming. “‘When I go to a museum and there’s no place to sit,’” she said, “‘It’s like, Who is mad at me?’”
A listing shot shows a bedroom where the seating consists of a Zig Zag chair by Thomas Rietveld. Ubik, by Philip K. Dick, rests on the side table by a bed, staged on a tatami mat.
Photo: Easton Properties
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