Welcome to The Buzz, our monthly roundup of design world news and inspiration for Design Miami’s discerning community of creatives and collectors. Enjoy!

The Female Voice at Carpenters Workshop Gallery

Now showing at Carpenters in New York: The Female Voice in Modern & Contemporary Design, 1950-2023, part one of a two-part exhibition celebrating women’s contributions to the world of collectible design, guest curated by design historian Daniella Ohad. Taking over both floors of the gallery, the exhibition covers five decades of the 20th century, from the post-war era and the women’s liberation movement to the advent of Postmodernism and the dawn of the millenium. Each decade is represented by a selection of seminal pieces created by iconic designers like Gabriella Crespi, Zaha Hadid, Charlotte Perriand, Ingrid Donat, and Johanna Grawunder. The show runs through July 3rd.

Jolie Ngo at R & Company

At New York’s R & Company, you’ll find Memory Palace, an exhibition of vibrant and futuristic vessels by artist-designer Jolie Ngo. At just 26 years old, Ngo is at the forefront of a new generation using the latest technologies to challenge the expectations of the centuries-old medium of ceramics. While Ngo actively engages with technologies, including 3D printing and rapid prototyping, she is also very interested in tactility, adornment, and the authenticity of  an artist’s hand. After she models and prints her forms, she meticulously paints them by hand. Influenced by the early digital spaces of her youth, Ngo’s “memory palaces” recall the color palettes, pixelations, hazy gradients, and atmospheres of games such as Pokémon and Animal Crossing. The show is on view through August 12th.

Flower Craft at MAD Museum

On May 14th, New York’s Museum of Arts and Design opens Flower Craft, a rotating exhibition dedicated to the ephemeral art of floral design. Each week over the course of the show, the installation will be refreshed by a new, innovative botanical artist, including Kristen Alpaugh, Doan Ly, Lutfi Janania, Noritaka Noda, Emily Thompson, and Manu Torres—all of whom are inspired by nature’s ephemerality and engage with the full life cycle of plants to interpret nature in sculptural forms. Plant lovers of New York take note: the show is accompanied by a program of hands-on workshops led by the artists. Flower Craft runs through June 26th.

Maison Intègre at Ateliers Courbet 

Burkina Faso-based studio Maison Intègre makes its US debut at NYC’s Ateliers Courbet with a new bronze collection created by West African expert craftsmen in collaboration with French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance. Born from a desire to honor and support the  craft heritage of West Africa–in particular, the traditional lost wax bronze technique–Maison Intègre works closely with 15 artisans in Ouagadougou, molding bronze into new exquisite forms. The new collection features seven sculptural, functional pieces, many in a dark patina bronze developed exclusively for Les Ateliers Courbet.  On view through July 26.

East to West at Schloss Hollenegg

Schloss Hollenegg for Design—an international exhibition platform and residency program for young emerging designers, set in a fairytale-like castle in the Austrian countryside—opens its doors later this week for its annual design exhibition. For this year’s show, entitled East to West, curator Alice Stori Liechtenstein invited 20 young designers to create objects that tell stories of movement and displacement. Participating studios include Studio Sain, Omer Polak, Tuomas Markunpoika, Laurids Gallée, Studio Nienke Hoogvliet, Adaptism, Tadeas Podracky, Thomas Ballouhey, and others. Til May 29th.

Adam Silverman at Friedman Benda

Also in New York, at Friedman Benda, you’ll find ceramics artist Adam Silverman’s third solo show with the gallery, entitled Marks and Markers. The title of the show refers to not only the marks from Silverman’s process—the artist’s hands, the fire, the glaze, and the compounding alchemy, but also the “markers” that denote certain rituals, the passing of time, and signposts of one’s physical and existential position. The culmination of a three-year long investigation, Marks and Markers premieres a series of large-scale sculptures up to 6 feet in height that challenge the physical limits of the material, presented alongside a more intimately scaled body of work, each pushed to the point of failure while maintaining a glimpse of their original geometric purity. The show runs through May 21st.

MELT by ADORNO and HNH Gallery

On May 10, ADORNO launches MELT, an exhibition featuring radical contemporary design by 30 New York-based artists and designers. Co-curated by the new HNH Gallery and set in HNH’s  just opened, 3-story Williamsburg space, the show presents a diverse range of makers tuned into the experimental, expressionist aesthetic that has emerged in recent years. The show, which runs ’til the end of May, will include never-before-shown works by the likes of Jumbo, J McDonald, and Joseph Algieri, as well as new commissions from rising stars such as Nicholas Devlin and Gustavo Barroso.  As ADORNO co-founder and creative director Martin Clausen tells us: “MELT gives an on-the-ground, insider look into the subversive style making waves through New York’s young, vibrant melting pot of a design scene.”

Jason Jacques Gallery X Last Prisoner Project

This month, Jason Jacques Gallery in NYC launches SMOKE, a group exhibition presented in partnership with the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit dedicated to cannabis-related criminal justice reform, with a focus on helping individuals incarcerated for nonviolent, marijuana-related convictions. 100% of profits from contemporary art sales will go to the Last Prisoner Project.

Staged in direct response to the current push for the legalization of cannabis, the rapidly shifting legal landscape, and the ways in which its criminalization reinforces systemic oppression of people of color and marginalized communities, SMOKE explores past and present attitudes towards cannabis use. Participating artists include Katsuyo Aoki, Anne Marie Laureys, Roberto Lugo, Gareth Mason, Shari Mendelson, Johannes Nagel, Rick Owens, Aneta Regel, Nick Weddell, and others. May 18-25.

Via Lactea & A Boy from Texas at Cristina Grajales

In Tribeca, Cristina Grajales launches her spring-summertime program with two shows. The first, Via Lactea (Milky Way), brings together Paula Hayes and Randy Polumbo, two artists whose styles are rooted in the cosmic and the supernatural. Hayes’ work will include new hand-blown glass comets, alongside silicone planters and resin birdbaths, among other work, while Polumbo will present several mixed media pieces, including recent explorations with fungi as a sculptural material. 

In parallel, the gallery presents Robert Wilson’s highly personal A Boy From Texas, an immersive installation of hand-blown and cast glass deer, reflecting on nature, fragility, rebirth, and memory of his childhood in Texas. Through September 9th.

Tuleste Factory

Finally, NYC’s Tuleste Factory has a busy May. In addition to presenting new pieces by FACTURE, Ian Cochran, and Moses Nadel at this week’s Future Fair in Manhattan, the young gallery—which is led by sisters Celeste and Satu Greenberg—will also present three new installations in its Chelsea space this month: TONE, a new body of work in nude-toned resin by Quincy Ellis of Facture; STACK, a collection of furniture and accessories in stack-laminated Birch plywood by digital fabrication studio Timbur; and a group show in Tuleste’s new immersive “Blue Room.”