New York is one of the oldest modernist capitals, in the sense of being a home to modernism as a dominant cultural force. As such it is perhaps second only to Paris, and far, far older than London, which is the new brat on the block. So unsurprisingly, New York is also home to modernist institutions, one of these being the Louise Bourgeois salon. Bourgeois, who was born in Paris and moved to New York in 1938, makes sensual, sometimes viscerally disturbing sculpture. She had a retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1982 when she was 71. She represented the US at the 1993 Venice Biennale. In 2000 the Tate Modern installed her 35ft spider in the new Turbine Hall.

So Louise Bourgeois is a Big Artist but one who comes out of a smaller art world, a far more supportive one, and she began her salon as a simple artists' get-together. It remains in the Chelsea brownstone in which she has lived for over half a century and brought up a family but it became more structured ten years ago, with attendees expected to bring work for Bourgeois to critique.