Is This Heaven!

The owner of this high-style, art-filled Manhattan by Kelly Behun would say yes.

- Hilarie M. Sheets

When a pair of Miami art collectors bought a pied-à-terre on the 53rd floor of a ManN hattan skyscraper, they wanted a home where they could reside among their works including pieces by Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, and Alex Katz-without feeling as though they were inhabiting a museum. They turned to ELLE DECOR A-List designer Kelly Behun to fashion comfortable interiors around their striking collection.

"Art, for me, lives in its own lane, and that is not about decorating," says Behun, who never puts artwork in the service of a design scheme. This approach made her an ideal collaborator for the collectors, who called their placement of works "a labor of love." A case in point was a large-scale abstract canvas by Angel Otero that layers hard-edge shapes with organic foliage. The piece migrated to different spots in the great room before settling in visual conversation over a sculptural brass console by Vikram Goyal.

Known for her warm modernism, Behun in turn found the perfect client in the owner, who, like the designer, is from Pittsburgh. "She's decisive, she's adventurous, she has strong opinions about things," Behun says. "But she's not unwilling to consider other ways of thinking."