1. How Ina Garten, Everyone’s Favorite TV Chef, Learned to Trust Her Appetite by Emmeline Clein
When I arrive at Ina Garten’s bucolic home in East Hampton, where she’s lived since the ’90s, she has a silver tray of champagne flutes in her hands and a mischievous smile on her face. I was lucky enough to meet a universally beloved New York legend at an especially auspicious moment: 10 days into Pride Month, with the Knicks up 3–1 in the playoffs. On the other hand, we were a month out from this country’s highly inauspicious 250th birthday, a particularly pessimism-inducing moment. After the year of the gooner and the loneliness influencer, Garten’s cherubic grin embodies something that, if Knicks mania is any indication, American culture seems to be starving for: the ideal of neighborliness, a sense of abundance, a hearth…
Read the full profile here.
2. How Willem de Kooning, Bill Murray, and Dan Aykroyd Helped This Painter Build a Life in the Hamptons by Sophia Cohen
For nearly five decades, painter John Alexander has watched the East End evolve from a quiet enclave of farmers, fishermen, writers, and artists into the glamorous destination it is today. What began as a chance encounter with Willem de Kooning in Houston ultimately led Alexander to Springs and then Amagansett, where he built both a home and an artistic practice deeply rooted in the rhythms of the landscape. Here, he reflects on the larger-than-life characters who have shaped his life, from Larry Rivers and John Chamberlain to Bill Murray and Lorne Michaels. Along the way, he sounds off on old Amagansett, life in the studio, and the enduring curiosity and light that continue to animate his work…
Read Cohen’s conversation with Alexander here.
3. Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry on Couture in the Age of Brand Ambassadors and Billionaires by Christopher Bollen
On a blindingly sunny April morning, Daniel Roseberry, the creative director of Schiaparelli, chooses a bench in the shade. It’s windy in Paris’s Tuileries Garden, the chalky gravel swirling into miniature sandstorms, and Roseberry’s brown suede boots and black parka windbreaker are lightly covered in the dust. At age 40, the designer is strikingly handsome, with dark brown eyes, olive skin, and a silvering close-cropped beard. Although he’s been living in Paris for the past seven years, he’s just bought his first apartment in the 7th arrondissement. “My walk to work goes right through here,” he says. “It’s hard not to stop and take a beat, just to prepare for the day.”
Read the full profile here.
4. Here’s What a Career in Fashion Taught Cathy Ho Lee About Collecting Art by Sam Falb
If you can’t find Cathy Ho Lee at a museum, there’s a good chance she’s at a runway show or the ballet. The former fashion executive has applied the sense of proportion, novelty, and style she cultivated in business to her art collecting, with a focus on work both subtle and searing. For the 2026 Young Collectors list, Lee gave us a tour of the pieces that line her New York abode…
Discover the full 2026 Young Collectors list here.
5. The Incel Curriculum: Everything You Need to Understand the Niche That Subsumed Culture by Isabella Bernstein
A few summers ago, the Internet erupted around a single question: Would you rather be alone in a room with a man, or a bear? For many women, the decision was simple, but not in the way most (men) would assume: “I choose the bear.” For evidence of the breakdown between genders, look no further. Media plumbing this theme runs deep, with roots in classics such as Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and Sam Mendes’s American Beauty, but its contemporary contributors are narrowing their cultural critique to the incel movement, a castoff social media phenomenon that, all too quickly, became mainstream. For those still perplexed at how we arrived here, we’ve compiled a curriculum that should help provide clarity…
Read our full guide to the evolving incel media canon here.
6. Following the Natalie Portman-Rachel Cusk Drama? Here Are 10 Other Novels Hated by the Celebs Who Inspired Them by Isabella Bernstein
It’s been a hell of a year for memoirs, with Lena Dunham’s Famesick and Belle Burden’s Strangers monopolizing bestsellers lists and group chats, and spawning a deluge of spin-off content that has only kept us coming back for more. A different type of “true” story, set to be released Aug. 25, is already threatening to loosen their chokehold on the cultural conversation. Cult author Rachel Cusk’s upcoming novel, Life of M, reminds us just how slippery fiction can be as a designation, as the book is suspected to be a portrait of Natalie Portman. And an unflattering portrait, at that…
Read our full guide to the celebrity roman à clef here.
7. Has Any Artist’s Sexual Fantasies Shaped Culture as Much as Tom of Finland’s? by Karly Quadros
In the decades since Tom of Finland’s drawings—public/private fantasies of musclebound studs, hot cops, and bicurious cowboys—first graced the pages of Physique Pictorial, no single artist has had such an indelible impact on gay aesthetics. Now, a generation-spanning exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles—”Tom’s Stretch,” running through Aug. 22—is showcasing the groundbreaking artist’s work alongside more than 70 artists including Matthew Barney, Peter Hujar, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Salman Toor, Jonas Wood, Mike Kelley, and more. With an exhibition so large, the scope of artists, mediums, and themes are, of course, as expansive and diverse as Tom of Finland’s own work. Ahead of the exhibition, CULTURED spoke with nine of its participants about Tom of Finland’s legacy and the future of erotic art…
Read Nayland Blake, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Huma Bhabha, and more on Tom of Finland here.
8. Introducing CULTURED’s 2026 Young Collectors List
Being a true collector involves a lot more than just buying art. Sometimes, it requires advocating for artists inside bureaucratic institutions, match-making between creators and museums, and even selling yourself to a protective art dealer in order to convince them you will be a fitting custodian of a great work. These five young collectors share a commitment to going above and beyond for the chance to live with art they love…
Discover the full 2026 Young Collectors list here.
9. We Asked 18 Food Insiders Where (and What) to Eat in New York This Summer by Paloma Baygual
Summer has always been the season for trying something new—especially in New York. Longer days and warmer nights have a way of encouraging us to stray from our routines. This can mean wandering a little farther, eating a little later, or taking a chance on somewhere you’ve never heard of before. For those looking to try a new restaurant or visit a new neighborhood this season, we asked 18 chefs, restauranteurs, food writers, and other culinary insiders to share the places they’re seeking out this summer—and exactly what they order…
Find your next summer meal in New York here.
10. Which ‘Odyssey’ Actors Have a Chance at the Oscar? Christopher Nolan’s Casting Director Weighs In. by Karly Quadros
Before he was casting Matt Damon as Odysseus, John Papsidera was opening fine-dining restaurants for the very ’80s restaurateur Jonathan Waxman while secretly harboring an MFA in acting. He couldn’t shake the film bug and slipped through the side door to Hollywood as a casting director. Papsidera’s fortune changed forever in the ’90s when his former producers from the Austin Powers films slipped him a puzzle box screenplay about a man with memory loss. Memento captivated Hollywood and kicked off a lifelong partnership between Papsidera and Christopher and Jonathan Nolan. As the Oscar buzz for The Odyssey performances grows louder, CULTURED caught up with Papsidera to discuss what really goes into casting the starriest epic Hollywood has seen in years…
Read our conversation with Papsidera here.
11. The 2026 Young Activists List: Meet 13 Change Agents Nominated by Gloria Steinem, Stacey Abrams, and More by Sophie Lee
After a gunman walked into Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and executed the deadliest school shooting in our nation’s history in 2018, a group of surviving students shocked the nation. They mobilized across social media, primetime news spots, and rallies with a unified vision of common sense gun reform. CNN effused, “Parkland students are first glimpse of post-millennial wave that will change the country.” Studies followed, and indeed, Gen Z is the generation most likely to attend a demonstration, volunteer, or participate in a boycott. But how do we square that dogged pursuit of progress with the emerging reality that they’re also the most world-weary, cynical group of people ever born? The 13 organizers included in CULTURED’s inaugural Young Activist list bring assurance that the fight isn’t over yet…
Meet the inaugural Young Activists here.
12. What Happens When You Break an Artwork Two Hours After Purchase? Ask This Collector. by Sam Falb
Art is a personal and professional path for Annie Taylor, who has steadily been building a role for herself as a patron alongside her work as director of her family’s philanthropic foundation. She serves on the advisory board and contemporary art committee of the Brooklyn Museum, as co-chair of the Apollo Circle at the Met, and on the board and acquisitions committee of the Bronx Museum. For the 2026 Young Collectors list, Taylor offers a look inside her ever-growing personal collection…
Discover the full 2026 Young Collectors list here.
13. What Do Basketball Stars Talk About in the Locker Room? Fine Art, According to Kevin Love by Sam Falb
Between Olympic medals and offensive rebounds, Utah Jazz power forward Kevin Love has found time for a lesser-known pursuit: amassing an enviable art collection. The trove features a roster of all-star artists of the last century, from Ed Ruscha and George Condo to Rashid Johnson. Discovering that fellow NBA stars Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James were also in the game may have set Love on the path, but advisor Jane Suitor and dealer Vito Schnabel have helped him carve out a niche all his own…
Read Kevin Love’s full Collector Questionnaire here.
14. Is This 28-Year-Old Our Next Great Playwright? by Matthew Gasda
Georgica Pettus has a “can’t-teach-it” facility with language. It’s something you notice in great playwrights: They attach themselves to certain words and speech patterns that have an unusual music. You notice it when it’s not there, and you appreciate it when it is. Pettus’s new play, Truck, has just this kind of lively musicality. Set at a used car dealership in Texas in 2021 (which feels like very long ago), it is centered around a farcical, if morbidly serious, contest: The last person to take their hand off a truck gets to drive it home for free. It’s unusual for a playwright who grew up on the West Coast and went to school on the East Coast to slip into the verbal texture of the Southwest and the rural. A playwright has every right to try to sound like anyone, but Pettus also has the unusual skill of being able to sound like someone she is definitively not…
Read Gasda’s interview with Pettus here.
15. What One Angeleno Learned From a Six-Week Bender With the Downtown NY Art Scene by Sammy Loren
I’m not a New Yorker. In fact, I’ve spent close to 20 years living in and covering—and, in my own small ways, shaping—LA’s humming underground. Through my reading series Casual Encountersz, my biennial Made In helLA, and my conceptual print tabloid On The Rag, I’ve tried to create the artistic world I want to inhabit. So, when my flight lands at JFK on June 6, I’m curious to take in New York’s equivalent, and historically legendary, underground. Does it still exist? If I hit enough openings, readings, and performances, can I find the city’s offbeat pulse? This diary records that attempt…
Read Loren’s full diary here.
More of our favorite stories from CULTURED
‘I Live in Your Piss’: Florentina Holzinger on Venice, Violence, and Why Nudity Still Scares Us
Which ‘Odyssey’ Actors Have a Chance at the Oscar? Christopher Nolan’s Casting Director Weighs In.
‘Synthetic, Easy, Lethal’: A Psychoanalyst and a Boxer on Why We Can’t Quit Betting
A Year After Bob Wilson’s Passing, Six Artists and Collaborators Reflect on His Legacy
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