Off the Market

STAGING IS PERFORMANCE with props and light, and I’ve made a career out of teaching people what that means. The wealthy don’t crave blank canvases; they crave a masterpiece already hung. They pay me to lecture them, really—to explain that illusion only works when it feels like history. Glossy fruit gleaming in bowls, art books with uncracked spines, linen sheets so pressed you’d swear someone had just left the bed, not that no one had ever dared to touch it.