Douglas Elliman Sets the Scene at ArtCrush 2026 in Aspen
by ELLIMAN INSIDER TEAM
August 2026
Above, Lucas Oliver Mill of Collector Walls, Nicola Lees, CEO and Artistic Director, Aspen Art Musuem and Douglas Elliman's Riley Warwick. (Photo by Trevor Triano)
The art world recently descended upon a sprawling Starwood estate high above Aspen for an evening poised to become a fixture of the summer’s cultural calendar: the Saslove & Warwick ArtCrush Kick-Off Dinner, hosted in partnership with the Aspen Art Museum ahead of AIR and ArtCrush 2026.
The dinner, presented by Saslove & Warwick of Douglas Elliman, in collaboration with CULTURED Magazine, unfolded on Sunday, July 26, at a 1025 N Starwood Road, a 14,577-square-foot mountain residence exclusively listed by the team for $47.5 million. Under a forest canopy and framed by 200 purple alliums flown in from the Netherlands by Los Angeles floral designer Adam Gallagher, guests gathered for cocktails, dinner and a wide-ranging conversation on the current state of collecting.
Joshua Saslove and Riley Warwick welcomed the evening's crowd alongside Aspen Art Museum Artistic Director and CEO Nicola Lees. Between courses, writer Janelle Zara sat down with London-based art advisor Lucas Oliver Mill of Collector Walls for a discussion spanning collecting, advising and the evolving art market, a fitting overture to a week built around ArtCrush, the museum's signature summer benefit.
The guest list read like a who's who of the art and design world: ArtCrush 2026 Co-Chair Charlie Pohlad, Brooklyn Museum Director Anne Pasternack, architects Sarah Broughton, John Rowland, Cristof Eigelberger and advisors Peter Bentley Brant and Dana Farouki all made appearances, alongside Douglas Elliman President and CEO Michael S. Liebowitz and President of Brokerage Lena Johnson. Guests received CULTURED magazine's special-edition Aspen issue, spotlighting the region's summer season. (The magazine also published its own perspective on the event.)
For Douglas Elliman leadership, the evening underscored the firm's deepening ties to Aspen's cultural calendar and its longstanding support for the agents who make the market run.
“Aspen has always been a market where culture and real estate move in step with one another, and this evening was a perfect example of that,” said Liebowitz. “Being able to host this dinner alongside Joshua and Riley, in a home that speaks to the caliber of what our Aspen team represents, is exactly the kind of moment that defines who we are as a company.”
Johnson, who spent the weekend with the Aspen team ahead of the dinner, echoed that sentiment.
“After spending 48 hours in Aspen with some of the most talented agents, it's clear that while every market has its own language, Aspen's is spoken fluently by the people who work it every day,” she said. “I came away with a deeper appreciation for what makes this place, and our Elliman agents and colleagues, so special.”
For Saslove and Warwick, whose team hosted this inaugural kick-off dinner, the night felt like the beginning of something bigger for Aspen's summer calendar.
“The AIR and ArtCrush week in Aspen feels like it’s becoming something genuinely significant, the kind of week people plan their summer around, in the way Milan Design Week has grown into a cultural pilgrimage,” said Warwick. “We’re honored to be among the first to engage with the Aspen Art Museum in this way and to contribute to the broader dialogue taking shape around AIR and ArtCrush. Our ambition for the evening was to create a setting where art, architecture and conversation could intersect in a way that felt both considered and completely natural, where people might leave seeing the relationship between art and the spaces we inhabit a little differently. There was a real energy in the room, and it felt meaningful to contribute to what Aspen is becoming culturally.”
Top left and right photos by Trevor Triano; bottom photo by Garrett Lobaugh.
Set on 66.58 private acres in Aspen's coveted Starwood neighborhood, the seven-bedroom, 12-bath estate spans 14,577 square feet with sweeping mountain views, a private elevator, an indoor pool and an industrial-grade kitchen built for large-scale entertaining, making it the ideal setting for the season's art-world kickoff.
As ArtCrush and AIR week continued through the days that followed, the kick-off dinner set the tone. In Aspen, art, architecture, and real estate are rarely far apart, and Douglas Elliman's agents are woven into the fabric of it all.
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