8 Ways to Display Art in Your Kitchen

Photo of LaTonya Yvette’s kitchen by Nina Barry

Do you hang art in your kitchen? I’ve always viewed the room as utilitarian — I go in, I cook, I’m out of there! — but lately I’ve been craving a homier feel. Taping a family snapshot above the sink or leaning a watercolor next to the toaster feels like an easy way to freshen up the space, don’t you think? Here are eight ways to display art in a kitchen…

Taping paintings onto doors — and resting artwork or tiles on top — makes a home feel lived in and layered. “When you have a lot of pictures, you have to start hanging them wherever you can,” says Wendy Coggins in Minneapolis. (Also, how fun is that champagne cork collection?)

A themed gallery wall is a fun ongoing project. “As soon as I hung my first pear, it felt like a magnet,” says author Catherine Newman. “People now sent me pear photos and postcards and drawings. The collection was this organic thing.”

Turning cookbooks to display their covers makes kitchen shelves look beautiful. “Our biggest fights in our marriage come down to me buying cookbooks when our shelves are already overflowing,” laughs author Adam Roberts. “But if I buy a lot of cookbooks, he buys a lot of records, so we’re kind of tit for tat.”

If your kitchen doesn’t have windows, bring nature inside with landscape portraits, like designer Holly Waterfield does in her 575-square-foot Brooklyn family apartment.

You could also put up children’s artwork. “My kids started drawing self-portraits in kindergarten,” says Holly. “It’s amazing how the drawings show how their features changed through the years. When Emmy was in middle school, I realized,‘Oh, now she has high cheekbones.’ And when Bodhi was a baby he had enamel hypoplasia, which made his first two baby teeth came in all yellow and brown. So, in his kindergarten self-portrait, he drew these yellow, bumpy teeth! He was not shy about them at all.”

Alex Mill’s creative director Somsack Sikhounmuong hung a sweet Hugo Guinness linocut.

And our friend Erika Veurink in Brooklyn displays a cool photo of her grandfather: “He used to race cars, and when I saw this photo hanging in his garage, I made him to give it to me so I could make prints for my sister and myself.” Now I’m inspired to look through old family photos.

Where do you like to display art in your home?

P.S. Many more home tours, like a book lover’s dream and an ode to Black joy; plus, lovely seaweed artwork.

(Minnesota door photos by Wing Ho. Pear gallery photo by Lyndsay Hannah. Adam Roberts’s cookbook shelves by Julia Robbs. Holly photos and Somsack photo by Kate S. Jordan. Open shelving photo by Mallory Fletchall. Kitchen cabinet and art above the stove photos, plus Erika Veurink’s racecar photo, by Christine Han.)