Tiffany: Not Just a Shopping Destination, but a World-Class Museum
When the redone Tiffany & Co. flagship store opens on the corner of Fifth Avenue, there won’t just be showstopping diamonds on display.
By Stephen Wallis | Photography by Nagi Sakai for WSJ. Magazine
April 20, 2023 8:30 am ET
When Tiffany & Co. reopens its New York City flagship on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street this spring, following three years of work, visitors will hardly recognize the street-level sales floor famously featured in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Or any other floor, for that matter. Where dark-green marble and teak columns once surrounded a bank of art deco elevators, a showstopping painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat now hangs. It’s the same one, Equals Pi, that featured prominently in Tiffany’s 2021 ad campaign starring married musicians Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who crooned “Moon River,” the theme song of the 1961 movie. The canvas was chosen especially for the robin’s-egg-blue background that nearly matches Tiffany’s own trademarked blue. It’s an intentionally placed lure—inviting in those tourists who come to re-create Audrey Hepburn’s dreamy window-shopping scene….
The sixth-floor cafe, originally introduced in 2017, has been redesigned, featuring jewelry-themed ceramic wall sculptures by Molly Hatch, and will be called the Blue Box Café by Daniel Boulud. Galleries on the eighth and ninth floors will host long-term rotating exhibitions. “We really wanted to give the feeling of this being more than just a store and a full experience,” says Alexandre Arnault.
Many of the artworks in the store have a connection with Tiffany, whether visually, in their use of Tiffany-like blues, or with their content. And several of the works that will be on display, including pieces by Jenny Holzer, Richard Prince, Sarah Sze and Schnabel, are part of Tiffany’s permanent collection. Basquiat’s Equals Pi is on loan from the LVMH collection, and there will be a group of works on loan from Marino….