THE SUM OF ITS PARTS

Nothing elevates a room any room like the perfect gallery wall.

- KATHRYN O'SHEA-EVANS

The year was 1667, and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris had a problem: How to display the massive amount of art by École des Beaux-Arts graduates all at once? The answer lay in what was reportedly the first-ever salon wall also known as a gallery wall an overwhelmingly beautiful bit of controlled chaos, a riotous run-on sentence à la française of artworks, mostly pictures, hung from side to side, floor to ceiling.

Fast forward 356 years and gallery walls are more popular than ever, and just as excruciating to arrange today as in the 17th century. "Sometimes people get really caught up in, well, all the mats have to be the same, or all the frames have to be the same, or whatever the case may be," says New York-based designer Corey Damen Jenkins. "There's great fun and enjoyment in releasing oneself from those rules." In Jenkins's private office, abstract pieces, architectural prints, a gilt Louis XVI mirror, and more hang against a gold flame-stitched wallcovering from Arte. "A gallery wall is a great solution when one has a large collection," he says.