This Young Art Patron’s Brooklyn Town House Is a Dreamy Design Showcase
What is the life you want to lead? And where? Both can feel like daunting questions in the existential rinse cycle that is our present era. For Will Palley, the answers came into focus not long ago when, after 12 tentative years in New York, he realized the city was truly meant to be his home. By then, the British-born tech executive had laid roots in the Big Apple’s art world—launching the podcast Art From The Outside; beginning a graduate degree in art history; and supporting local institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (where he now co-chairs the Young Patrons Council Steering Committee and sits on the Media and Performance Acquisition Committee). Along the way, he had also built a collection worthy of a proper showcase. “Art is very much an extension of who I am,” says Palley, who envisioned a gathering space not just for artworks but for art lovers. “I love building community, bringing people together.”
His search for a permanent home led him to Brooklyn, where a passing flirtation with one historic Clinton Hill town house eventually yielded a serendipitous off-market deal. “The stars aligned,” Palley says of the property, which had undergone a gut renovation just a few years earlier, obviating the need for any major structural changes. “The previous owners were so thoughtful in their attention to detail,” he says, citing everything from the hardware to the solar panels to the Henrybuilt kitchen. “They didn’t compromise.”
Nor did Palley when he set out to adapt the space as his own. After being introduced to designer David Lucido by a mutual friend (full disclosure: yours truly) the two embarked on a spirited refresh of its four stories. “Will wanted it to feel authentic to him and not decorated per se,” reflects Lucido, an AD New American Voices honoree, describing the layered and nuanced approach. That, Palley adds, meant scrambling any expected design formulas, creating a dynamic interplay “between masculine and feminine, the formal and the frivolous.”
Color, to that end, becomes a driving force. The primary bedroom’s acid green carpet, for instance, gives way to the all-over pink scheme of the adjoining sitting room. A similarly rosy carpet, meanwhile, was the jumping-off point for grasscloth walls in the den. And the library is cloaked in an old-world shade of deep evergreen. “How can you make color feel gentlemanly without elderly?” Lucido muses. “The home’s overall palette feels cohesive but every room has a different experience.” That’s true down to the two guest chambers—one blue, the other accented in red—and the kitchen’s jewel-box powder room, the walls of which are upholstered in wool the shade of clay.
Vintage furniture, much of it picked up at auction or on buying trips to Paris and Palm Beach, nimbly pivots between culture and camp. “It was about finding interesting things and giving them new life,” Lucido notes of the mix, which foregrounds sculptural 20th-century seating that they then reupholstered in luxe fabrics. (Think Art Deco armchairs in a nubby Zak+Fox neutral or a midcentury sofa in Dedar mohair.) Folded in are the designer’s own bespoke creations, among them Palley’s magnificent burl bed and the blue guest room’s suite of aluminum pieces. Playful moments abound too, whether the dining area’s showstopper fireplace, reclad in vibrant ceramic panels by Jordan McDonald, or the parlor level’s tufted ottoman, topped by a flouncy tasseled pillow. At every stage, Palley and Lucido consulted closely. “It was the longest game of design ping-pong I have ever played,” notes the designer, calling the project “a true collaboration.”
Throughout the process, Palley drew conceptual lines between the art and the furnishings, harmonious though that array may be. “I strongly believe that art is not decoration,” he notes of his collection, which focuses on queer and female artists, with, he says, “an eye to the Global South.” There are pieces by established names—Lynda Benglis, Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer, Robert Gober—but also emerging talents. On the parlor level, a tapestry by Tadáskía, a Black trans artist from Brazil, mingles with a double portrait by the South Korea–born painter Eunnam Hong, and a textile work by Vivian Caccuri, another Brazilian rising star. Mounted in one corner, meanwhile, are sculptures by Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj, whose Madrid-born husband, Alvaro Urbano, created the leaf sculptures scattered at the base of nearby windows. “When you live with art it has to be more than static objects,” says Palley, noting the dialogues that have emerged organically among works.
These days, conversations have materialized among people too, as Palley puts his new home to use as a space for entertaining. Recent events have included a seated dinner in celebration of SculptureCenter and a party for newly engaged friends. At the end of the night, guests gone, he and his dog, Taxi, will wind up the stairs to his top-level suite, where the first piece of art he ever bought—a print by Julie Mehretu—hangs within view of that bespoke bed. It’s just one of many constant companions. “Living with art,” he reflects, “is like living with friends.”
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