The Lincoln Stayed in Moscow. Warhol Took the Wall.

In 2016, we bought a Lincoln portrait. It was meant for the VIP room of the World Chess Championship match in New York — the same building where, a few rooms over, we had improvised a bar in a service corridor and convinced Woody Harrelson, Peter Thiel, and assorted ambassadors to drink there for two weeks. The Lincoln was part of a broader theory we were testing at the time: that chess, if it was going to be taken seriously, had to look like something. A sport with a visual code. A room with a wall worth standing in front of.

Lincoln did his job. We snapped a lot of people in front of him — players, sponsors, people who had wandered in and weren't sure why they were still there. Then he traveled with us to Moscow and kept doing it for years. Russian politicians, Norwegian aristocrats, fashion editors who had recently started taking chess lessons. The Lincoln was patient. He posed with all of them.

When the war in Ukraine began, World Chess closed its Russian operations and moved the team to Europe. Most things made the trip. The Lincoln did not — we didn’t have time to apply for an authorization to transport an artwork out of the country. He is, for now, still in Moscow, presumably watching the room go quiet.

Today a vintage photograph of Andy Warhol arrived at our office. The brief is the same as it was a decade ago. Chess people will stand in front of him, and the photographs will look better than they otherwise would. The wall does the work the player can't always be counted on to do.

Lincoln held the post for nine years. Warhol takes it from here. The number, by the way, hasn't changed if you’d like to stop by!