Take Home a Nude 2025: Skin, lineage, and the pleasure of looking

I have always had a weakness for nudes.
Line, flesh, vulnerability, confidence—give me all of it. So when Take Home a Nude 2025 returned on December 15 at Phillips, I arrived exactly where I belonged: heels on, eyes wide, happily surrounded by bodies rendered in charcoal, oil, fantasy, provocation, and reverence. Nudes galore—my personal favorite aesthetic.

The New York Academy of Art’s annual fundraiser has long understood what so many institutions forget: that the nude is not a novelty, nor a provocation for its own sake, but one of the most intellectually demanding and historically rich forms an artist can take on. To draw or paint the body well requires courage, skill, and intimacy. To collect it requires taste and nerve. This year, the walls delivered.

The evening unfolded inside Phillips on Park Avenue, where artists, collectors, and cultural power players gathered for a night that felt at once celebratory and deeply considered. The 2025 edition carried special weight, honoring Walter Robinson—artist, critic, editor, and beloved connective force—whose passing earlier this year left an unmistakable absence. The room responded in the only way it knows how: by showing up, generously and in force.

Betsy Baker, Barry BlindermanPhoto: BFA for NYAA

Take Home a Nude 2025 was held on Dec. 15.Photo: BFA for NYAA

Cocktails flowed freely, accompanied by real caviar and real champagne—the kind poured without apology and replenished before one could ask. Luxurious, yes, but merely a prelude. Nothing, truly nothing, rivaled the electricity of the auction itself.

Eyes lingered. Conversations oscillated between gossip and theory, between memory and speculation. The live and silent auctions played out with a buoyant confidence—bidding as flirtation, as sport, as declaration of allegiance to beauty and lineage. Works by Will Cotton, Jane Dickson, Neil Jenney, Jaime Nares, Richard Prince, Walter Robinson, and Kenny Scharf commanded attention, each nude carrying its own psychological temperature and historical echo.

This was not prudish looking. This was educated looking.

The guest list alone felt like a survey course in contemporary art: Jeffrey Deitch, Sante D’Orazio, Mimi Gross, Chris “Daze” Ellis, Carlo McCormick, Kathy Ruttenberg, Kate Shepherd, and a constellation of artists, patrons, and writers whose presence signaled affection as much as prestige. The atmosphere was confident and relaxed—glamour without stiffness, intellect without posturing.

Dana Gluck, Neil Jenney, Carla ShenPhoto: BFA for NYAA

Take Home a Nude 2025 was held on Dec. 15.Photo: BFA for NYAA

A portion of the evening’s proceeds was dedicated to the newly established Walter Robinson Scholarship Fund, ensuring that his legacy remains active rather than commemorative. Robinson understood better than most that art history is not static; it is shaped by access, argument, and opportunity. Supporting future artists through education felt like the most fitting continuation of his work.

As the gavel rested, the night migrated uptown to The Metropolitan Club, where an intimate dinner extended the conversation. The tone softened. Stories deepened. The nude, after all, is not only about exposure—it is about trust. That sensibility carried through the evening’s final hours, where laughter and remembrance coexisted without sentimentality.

Walter Robinson was many things—a Neo-pop painter, a member of the Pictures Generation, a co-founder of Art-Rite, a former editor at Art in America, the founding Editor-in-Chief of Artnet Magazine, and a force behind Printed Matter, Inc. Above all, he was someone who believed in looking closely, arguing well, and caring deeply.

Take Home a Nude 2025 was held on Dec. 15.Photo: BFA for NYAA

The New York Academy of Art, founded in 1982 by artists, scholars, and patrons including Andy Warhol, continues that lineage. Its insistence on rigorous technique paired with conceptual intelligence makes Take Home a Nude feel less like a fundraiser and more like a declaration: that beauty, risk, and skill still matter.

This past Monday night, the room understood the assignment.

Nudes on the walls.
History in the air.
Pleasure taken seriously.

Just the way I like it