Nate Freeman

New York, United States

Culture Correspondent at Vanity Fair

Host at NOTA BENE: This Week in the Art World

Culture Correspondent, Vanity Fair

Articles

An Art Fraud Case That Is Bonkers Even by Florida Standards

5 days ago | vanityfair.com | Nate Freeman

In December 2021, FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation agents arrived on the posh Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida, an island home to more than 60 billionaires, to raid a gallery called Danieli Fine Art. FBI agents stormed the premises, covered the windows with brown paper, and answered very few questions. As it turned out, the gallery’s owner, Daniel Elie Bouaziz, had sold an undercover agent what he said was a legit Jean-Michel Basquiat for $12 million.
Trump Wants to Rewrite History at the Smithsonian. It’ll Be an Uphill Battle

1 week ago | vanityfair.com | Nate Freeman

President Donald Trump wasn’t always at loggerheads with the museums that make up the Smithsonian Institute. In February 2017, he arrived at the brand-new National African American Museum of History and Culture for a tour with its director, Lonnie G. Bunch III, and told Bunch he’d been looking forward to it. His wife, Melania, had recently toured the museum with the first lady of Israel, Sara Netanyahu.
Inside a $220 Million Facelift at the “World’s Favorite Museum”

2 weeks ago | vanityfair.com | Nate Freeman

On Monday morning, Xavier Salomon was walking around the empty art-stuffed mansion built by the Gilded Age steel magnate Henry Clay Frick, taking in his favorite views during a rare moment of complete solitude. Were the building still a house, it would be the largest in Manhattan, but since the 1930s it’s been open to the public as the Frick Collection, home to the industrialist’s incredibly stacked collection of Old Masters.
Trump and the Fate of the Government’s Massive Art Collection

3 weeks ago | vanityfair.com | Nate Freeman

Earlier this month, staffers at the General Services Administration, the federal agency that oversees, among other functions, the federal government’s vast real estate portfolio and a massive trove of fine art accumulated over the last two centuries, received an email from its new acting director, Stephen Ehikian, who Donald Trump appointed in January 2025.
Cuomo, Lander, Zohran, and More NYC Mayoral Hopefuls Talk Arts and the City

1 month ago | vanityfair.com | Nate Freeman

On the first Monday of May in 2022, Eric Adams walked up the steps of The Metropolitan Museum of Art to attend the Costume Institute Benefit, making perhaps his most high-profile appearance since taking the oath of office as mayor of New York City that January.
Nationwide Tesla Protests Against Elon Musk Are Escalating | Vanity F…

1 month ago | archive.is | Katie Herchenroeder |Chris Murphy |Kase Wickman |Nate Freeman

Earlier this week in Maryland, graffiti was found at a Tesla dealership a day after a protest that read “No Musk” with a sign that resembles a swastika. Police in Massachusetts said on Tuesday that seven Tesla charging stations were intentionally set on fire, and the incident is being investigated as suspicious. On Thursday, law enforcement in Portland said that at least seven shots were fired at a Tesla dealership, damaging three cars and shattering windows, according to the CBS affiliate KOIN.
Gaga, Britney, and a Moldovan Oligarch: A Cultural History of Ric Grenell, Trump’s Man at the Kennedy Center

1 month ago | vanityfair.com | Nate Freeman

The takeover was swift, and total. Over the course of a few days in February, President Donald Trump purged the historically bipartisan board of the Kennedy Center, the federally backed performing arts center in Washington, DC, of any members appointed by Democrats and gave the shiv to billionaire David Rubenstein, the board chair first appointed by George W. Bush.
Gaga, Britney, and a Moldovan Oligarch: A Cultural History of Ric Grenell, Trump’s Man at the Kennedy Center

1 month ago | flipboard.com | Nate Freeman

2 hours agoTrump administration cancels $400 million in grants for Columbia UniversityThe move comes shortly after the administration notified Columbia University that it was conducting a "comprehensive review" of its federal grants and contracts.
Gastronomic Immunity | Vanity Fair

1 month ago | archive.vanityfair.com | Nate Freeman

ON A WEDNESDAY in late November, Keith McNally, the king of New York restaurants, was somewhat improbably in the outer reaches of Washington, DC. He was getting ready to open the world’s second Minetta Tavern, some 90 years after the first one debuted in the heart of Greenwich Village, in a neighborhood that has provided much of the District of Columbia with its meats for nearly 100 years.
The Art World Returns to a Post-Fires Los Angeles

2 months ago | vanityfair.com | Nate Freeman

On January 7, the artist Kelly Akashi packed a bag at her house in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Altadena to go stay at the Los Feliz home of a friend, the Château Shatto gallery founder Olivia Barrett. The winds whipping around her home, a historic abode that before her had been inhabited by LA artists Jim Shaw and Marnie Weber, were approaching 100 miles per hour, and they were upsetting her cat.