Future Is Perfect

American art curator David Alhadeff has sparked off a new trend that might just change the world of decorative art.

- Nidhi Raj Singh

Over the years, speaking to numerous artists, designers, entrepreneurs, and achievers, I have come to realize that we are truest to ourselves when we are six years old. I am using ‘trust’, a superlative adjective—which I rarely do—because, well, we are brutally honest to ourselves and others when we just start to know ourselves. We know what we want to become, whose footsteps we want to follow and what truly makes us happy. However, as we grow older (and hopefully wiser), we think and overthink our options, and our priorities shift gears. For most successful people though that little person’s dream is what matters the most. David Alhadeff is a fine example of that.

As a little boy, David would spend hours rearranging his room, building home for his Smurf figurines and had an eye for decorative objects. This art curator started young. “I would say that I didn’t choose my profession. I was compelled to take it up. The affinity for decorative art, architecture, interiors, and design was engrained in me,” David tells us over the phone from his New York-based gallery, The Future Perfect. As he went on to study art, not formally though, this autodidact understood that art has some very hard-lined impressions attached to it.

In 2000, after a wave of the recession hit the world, David decided to move on from his e-commerce venture to a more structured project, never letting that little boy’s dream die on the altar of practicality. Three years later, he started his art gallery, The Future Perfect, to promote what has become a passion for him over the years in between his journey from an art enthusiast to an art curator to an art connoisseur— American contemporary art.