Tiffany & Co. Renews its Role as US Open’s Official Trophy Crafter, and Other News. – SURFACE

Tiffany & Co. has renewed its nearly four-decade partnership with the USTA, continuing its role as the US Open’s official trophy crafter for 2026. The relationship dates to 1987, when Tiffany silversmiths began producing the tournament’s championship trophies; today, the house creates the Men’s and Women’s Singles Championship trophies alongside doubles and mixed doubles hardware. Each 18-inch sterling silver singles trophy takes roughly six months to complete at Tiffany’s hollowware workshop in Cumberland, Rhode Island, requiring about 66 hours of silversmithing, chasing, and hand engraving. For the fourth consecutive year, Tiffany will operate an on-site pop-up near Fountain Plaza at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, running through September 13. The activation gives visitors a closer look at trophy-making, including engraving tools, keepsake trophy displays, and a Tiffany Blue-themed photo installation, while champions once again receive custom-engraved replica trophies on-site.

The Kvareli Foundation for Contemporary Art, a private institution founded by Georgian businessman and collector Jemal Inaishvili, will open October 31 in Kvareli, in Georgia’s Kakheti region. Dedicated to the preservation, exhibition, and study of Georgian contemporary art, the foundation follows last year’s opening of the Anagi Art Foundation in Tbilisi, further signaling the country’s rising profile in the international art world. Designed by Tbilisi-based firm Midamo, led by Giorgi Chkonia and Dato Danelia, the building responds to its setting in the Caucasus foothills, incorporating exhibition spaces and a hotel alongside areas for cultural programming. The foundation will launch with the group exhibition “Georgian Contemporary Art: Origins and Continuities,” which eschews a chronological narrative in favor of tracing broader shifts, from formal experimentation to ideological opposition, and from collective movements to individual practice, spanning Soviet-era work from the 1960s and ’70s through the artist collectives that emerged as Georgia moved toward independence in the 1980s.

A new cultural center, The Light, opened in Durham, England, marking the £17 million redevelopment of the former Durham Light Infantry (DLI) Museum and Art Gallery. The inaugural exhibition, “Victory Over the Sun: Encounters with Light,” curated by Natasha Howes, brings together artists working with light from the 1960s to today, including Dan Flavin, Tracey Emin, Steve McQueen, Olafur Eliasson, and Chila Burman. Designed by architects NORR, the remodeled 1960s building includes three galleries, a permanent DLI history display, and expanded use of glass to connect with its landscaped surroundings.

Bevel, a 12-story, 180 feet mass timber office tower in Bellevue, Washington, is set to become the tallest mass timber commercial office building in North America upon its completion later this month. Designed by Waugh Thistleton Architects and Mithun and developed by Skanska, the project pushes past the limits of Type IVB construction code, territory previously explored in multifamily housing but not yet in commercial office buildings at this scale. The building leaves its mass timber columns, beams, and ceilings fully exposed throughout its 18,580 square meters, paired with floor-to-ceiling glazing that draws in natural light and views of the Pacific Northwest landscape. Marking the first collaboration between London-based Waugh Thistleton and Seattle-based Mithun, Bevel represents a global answer to a distinctly regional question about the future of commercial construction materials.

Bonhams will present The Sandy Lerner Collection this fall, a four-part auction series spanning nearly 1,000 lots from the Virginia estate of Cisco Systems co-founder and Urban Decay creator Sandy Lerner. The sale brings together what is considered one of the most significant private collections of cat-related decorative art, books, and collectibles ever assembled, alongside historic furnishings from Lerner’s Georgian Revival estate, Ayrshire Farm. “The Sandy Lerner Cat Collection Part I,” a live auction on September 30 at Bonhams’ new New York headquarters, features 66 works spanning centuries and media, including pieces by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, Diego Giacometti, and Henri Matisse, alongside feline-inspired jewelry from Tiffany & Co. and Boucheron. In October, “Ayrshire Farm: The Sandy Lerner Collection” will offer furniture, paintings, and decorative arts from Lerner’s Upperville, Virginia estate, spanning British and European design from the reign of Charles II through Elizabeth II.

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