Ken Fulk Curates ‘Visions of America’

E ven though Ken Fulk, one of America’s most brilliant interior designers, is steeped in his country’s kaleidoscopic history, his practice is resolutely rooted in the present. An autodidact polymath with a vast appetite for cultural stimuli drawn from across a spectrum of influences, Fulk’s immense renown is based on decades honing a highly individualistic approach. And as a master orchestrator, Fulk’s San Francisco studio, The Magic Factory, takes its name partly from the studios of another American icon, Andy Warhol, an artist similarly equally fascinated and obsessed by American culture.

Working with teams across the nation, in tandem with fleets of facilitators, technicians and craftspeople, Fulk first and foremost reacts to the potentiality of spaces, whether working on his own initiative or executing – or intuiting – his clients’ wishes.

Visions of America

The results – as evidenced in his rich roster of projects to date, range from maximalist dazzle to quirky, sensitive assemblages. Every project is different. However, whether a creating a hotel, home or anything in between, we can identify some Fulk leitmotifs. He draws deeply from a site’s unique historical attributes, to create a thoroughly contemporary presentation. Form follows functionality. Beauty is in service of practicality.

“No matter how extravagant or how avant-garde something may be, I think it always has to have a human level to it,” he tells Sotheby’s. “And I think that, to me, is one of the reasons our designs are successful. It’s one thing to look at something that’s beautiful ,that moves you, but if you’re going to live in it, I think you must feel like you can relate to it. It isn’t just about the beauty of the form. Function, especially in design, must be integral to it.”

Over the years, a Ken Fulk project might have seen the designer called in to remodel the Vienna residence of the US Ambassador to Austria, or bring sparkle and light to a New Mexico beach villa. He’s worked on farmhouses and hotels – such as Miami’s Goodtime Hotel and The Commodore Perry Estate in Texas Hill Country. He’s renovated a rundown 1913 church in San Francisco, which now homes his Saint Joseph’s Arts Society, a multi-function arts space now augmented, near his Provincetown, MA home, by an 18th-century townhouse, the Provincetown Arts Society.

And as guest curator for the Sotheby’s Visions of America series, Fulk has selected a number of works that immediately struck him, works that highlight the cultural and artistic legacy of America, stretching over 400 years of craftsmanship.

“I think what’s so interesting and compelling to me about the pieces I’ve curated together from this collection of Americana is that they're part of our American collective past,” says Fulk. “When you look at them individually, there’s something almost utterly modern about them, which I think is utterly American. When they were crafted, they were forward thinking, they were innovative. I think Sotheby’s as an idea, and as a company, also represents that idea of optimism – the idea of looking forward while also honoring the past. The belief that our best days are in front of us.”