Robert Wilson & Cristina Grajales, artist and gallerist, weaving their magic in his studio
“You looking for Glamour Closet?” was not the first thing I expected to hear when I arrived to meet Robert Wilson, but it was oddly fitting. The avant-garde director occupies a singular position in the art world, and he chose to set his home, and the operational arm of his Watermill Center, not in a loft in Soho or a warehouse in Red Hook but in the no-man’s-land of the Garment District. On the 10th floor of an otherwise ordinary building, he is surrounded by objects collected over a lifetime: Han Dynasty sculptures, an ancient Burmese basket, dozens of chairs. “It’s Bob’s mind,” says his friend, the art dealer Cristina Grajales, who recently persuaded him to create a collection of glassworks, his first love (the pieces were produced by the Corning Museum). Wilson likes to say he can work anywhere (“comfort is a state of mind”), but it’s here that he gets to play Prospero, the sorcerer at the heart of a creative universe.