SPOTLIGHT: Everything We Loved at This Year’s 2026 Frieze Week in LA

Despite being in LA in February once again for my annual winter sojourn, I promised myself this year that I would finally take it easy during Frieze week, not run around so much, maybe pick three new artists to spotlight in my newsletter rather than trying to digest it all. Well, dear readers, I failed at that task — hence this extensive roundup of everything I loved.
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Armando Cabral Turns the Cult-Famous USM Shelving Into a Collection Steeped In West African Symbolism

Getting creative with modular furniture can require a certain amount of inventiveness; there are only so many ways to organize a rigid set of components, as in the Swiss company USM’s signature Haller storage. So to produce something never before seen from such a precise framework — metal rods, ball-shaped connectors, and a system of wildly colorful milled steel panels — a designer really needs to think outside the, well, box. “Restraint sometimes allows you to think further in order to arrive at something unexpected,” says Armando Cabral, who has entwined the expressive elements of his West African heritage with strict Swiss production parameters in a new collaborative collection with USM.
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Announcing the 2025 American Design Hot List

Welcome to the 13th annual American Design Hot List, Sight Unseen’s unapologetically subjective award for the names to know now in American design. Founded in 2013, the ADHL serves as a guide to the US (born or based) talents influencing the design landscape in any given year, whether through standout launches, must-see exhibitions, or just our innate sense that they’re ones to watch. Considering we’ve recently changed almost everything else about the way we present Sight Unseen to the world, we decided to do things a little differently this year.
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