This is the house that Jack built

This book offers an insight into the private contemporary art and design collection of Maja Hoffmann. As Hoffmann enters a new, increasingly public phase of philanthropy embodied by the construction of her Frank Gehry designed, non-profit LUMA Foundation Center in Arles, she is encouraged to share part of her collection to reveal that living with art and amongst artists is a dynamic and sincere experience, as well as a harbor for dreams.

Here photographer François Halard and art director Beda Achermann have created a flow of images depicting very human environments, absent of people yet populated by their spirit. To complete the book, Rirkrit Tiravanija has chosen the British nursery rhyme This Is The House That Jack Built which is dispersed (in his custom-designed font) between the photos: slightly obsessive yet full of humor, the text removes any possible traces of vanity in the purpose of this publication and creates space for Hoffmann’s vision of the world as an extended “house”—a place for storytelling, family, and an ongoing exchange with artists and thinkers.

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New York Times Magazine