Hasta La Ideas

In anticipation of this year’s NYCxDesign / NY Design Week festivities, we caught up with a few of the curators of the major satellite exhibitions that take place from May 15–20. Although they are referring specifically to their 2014 event(s), their insights apply to past, present and future exhibitions.

This article was originally published in the C77 Design Daily, Vol. 1, Issue 3, on Sunday, May 18.

By Anne Quito

Monica Khemsurov and Jill Singer had a vision. Sensing the decline of the print periodical format in 2010, the former editors of I.D. decided to branch out and create their own magazine on the web. “We had an idea and we immediately printed business cards that weekend,” Khemsurov says. Pitching their plan on Kickstarter, Khemsurov and Singer built Sight Unseen to be a portal into the habits and habitats of an emerging creative class of designers working across furniture, interiors, art, fashion and related disciplines.

Working from independent offices—Khemsurov in Brooklyn and Singer on the Lower East Side—the duo scours blogs, Pinterest and Instagram, conversing via Skype chat when something catches their eye. They also attend design fairs together, and constantly meet with designers in search of new talent to feature. As Khemsurov puts it, “Our approach is to cast as wide a net as possible, sifting through as much primary material as we can.”

Photos from Sight Unseen OFFSITE by Glen Jackson Taylor

But Sight Unseen is not just an online magazine. Since its launch, Khemsurov and Singer have published print editions, organized pop-up shops and curated exhibitions. During the last four New York Design Weeks, they produced Noho Design District, a satellite fair with a low-key downtown vibe that served as an alternative to the Colossus of Midtown that is the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. “ICFF is very important to American design but we thought that there was room for an extra platform to give emerging talent a chance to shine,” Khemsurov says.

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