Sweeney's Swag

The Fashion & Style section of the New York Times has just featured our founder and cultural maven Spencer Sweeney!

Or take Spencer Sweeney, a talented painter whose work fetchingly echoes a variety of sources, from Odilon Redon and Francis Picabia to Larry Rivers and Martin Kippenberger. Mr. Sweeney, also a sometime D.J., used to play keyboards and guitar in the short-lived band Actress, and owns the quintessentially hip nightclub Santos Party House on the edge of Chinatown. For his last exhibition, a year ago at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, he moved into the gallery lock, stock and easel for the duration, taking everything — his messy creative process, his messy range of ideas about what that is, his messy bed — with him.

“Luckily, I’m not called upon to describe myself too often,” Mr. Sweeney said. “It does happen when we’re trying to find managers for the club, and they’ll say, ‘What are you guys?’ It’s not a good sign. The thing for us is to remain open to being anything and, hopefully, everything.”

Read on to learn more about Sweeney and how he came to possess Willie Nelson's ring.