By Lane Florsheim | Photography by Keith Oshiro for WSJ. Magazine

Over the course of his 45-year career as an artist, Vladimir Kanevsky has tried several times to quit making the sculptures of flowers for which he is best known. But now his legacy is cemented with an installation at the Frick that netted him dozens of sales and introduced him to a new generation of collectors.

After three years of meticulous work, the artist and the 30-plus floral sculptures that make up his "Porcelain Garden" installation have become one of the most buzzed-about parts of the museum's reopening following a four-year, $220 million renovation and expansion. Before the Frick's first official day back in its building on Manhattan's East 70th Street in mid-April, all but two of the lifelike flower sculptures had been sold to museum trustees and patrons who'd become enamored after seeing them during previews and a gala, and who paid up to $500,000 per piece. (All sales went through the artist.)

"In the end, they oversold, so I have to make more," said Kanevsky, 74. Some of the pieces had two or three interested buyers. "It always happens when you do something real." The 28 smaller works he made for the museum's shop, priced from $3,000 to $15,000, sold out before the public opening.

The floral arrangements Helen Clay Frick, the daughter of Henry Clay Frick and Adelaide Howard Childs Frick, commissioned for the museum's original opening in 1935 gave Kanevsky a few ideas about the relationship between flowers and interiors. "I said, 'Can you give me the photos [of those flowers]?' And there were no photos," said Kanevsky. "But there was some exchange of letters between Ms. Frick and the florist and at some point, the florist answers, 'We can do it, it's rather complicated and it will be really very expensive -- almost $25.'"

Kanevsky, a former architect who immigrated from the Soviet Union to New York in 1989 before settling in New Jersey, has been making flowers out of porcelain, terracotta and metal for 36 years. Most of the pieces he made for the Frick -- cascading roses, black poppies, hollyhocks and others -- are on a larger scale than much of his past work, which made him unsure if anyone would want to buy them.

He's had high-profile fans for years. His flowers have been featured in a Sofia Coppola movie and as brooches on Oscar de la Renta's runway. Lauren Santo Domingo, the co-founder and chief brand officer of fashion retailer Moda Operandi, first saw Kanevsky's flowers at philanthropist and socialite Deeda Blair's "divine apartment in the River House."

After seeing a second Kanevsky piece at Oscar and Annette de la Rentas's Kent, Conn., home, Santo Domingo bought a set of two single peonies that live on her bathroom vanity. She also started selling Kanevsky's work on Moda Operandi in 2018. A company spokesperson said it had done over $2 million in sales, and the site's top Kanevsky collector had purchased over 20 pieces.

Now, a new generation is discovering the artist's sculptures through the Frick. "When I saw them at the opening gala, I was like, 'Oh, my God, the flowers are so beautiful,' and then I was like, 'Oh, my God, wait, no, these are porcelain flowers,'" said Alexander Hankin, a real-estate developer who's on the museum's Young Fellows Steering Committee. Hankin bought a single blue carnation from the Frick gift shop.

Laurence Milstein, the vice chair of the museum's Young Fellows Steering Committee and co-founder of Gen Z creative communications agency Przm, said that museum-goers learning about a 74-year-old émigré artist felt particularly meaningful, since most people don't associate contemporary art with the Frick. "At a time when our feed is [full of] AI slop, there's something so exceptional about a work that's so delicate and tactile," he said. The theme for the museum's Young Fellows Ball this month is "Porcelain Garden."

Xavier Salomon, the Frick's deputy director and chief curator, said the pieces "have this celebratory quality to them." Museum-goers keep mistaking them for the real thing, trying to touch and smell them. "Our guards are having a very interesting time trying to keep people away from them," Salomon said.

The original seed of the idea for the installation was planted back in 2018, when Kanevsky was approached at a presentation of his work by the philanthropist and banker Henry Arnhold. "Sitting there, he said, 'Why don't you show in the Frick?' I couldn't even imagine it. Why don't you show it on the moon?" Kanevsky said. Arnhold died later that year, and years later, Kanevsky and his wife, muse and, as he describes her, "comrade in arms," Edita, connected with Salomon.

Kanevsky estimates he'll spend another two years making flowers from the backlog of commissions he had to postpone to work on the show. Then he wants to retire and focus on photography and figurative sculpture. (Once, in the '90s, he tried to quit making flowers to go work for a company that made mannequins: "I figured it was closer to sculpture. They decided I was overqualified.") Kanevsky said that to him, retirement meant freedom.

"If I want to sculpt figurative pieces, I will. If I want to sculpt a self-portrait as a soup tureen with flowers and then photograph it, I will do it," said Kanevsky. "With no deadlines."

Write to Lane Florsheim at lane.florsheim@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 15, 2025 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)

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