Some are so fastidious they have no furniture at all, being allergic to the “visual clutter of objects” in particular, as Klaus Biesenbach, director of PS1, the Museum of Modern Art alternative outpost in Long Island City, Queens, likes to say — and to design in general.

“I hate design,” Mr. Biesenbach will tell you emphatically. When he travels, he has a habit of stripping his hotel room of anything that moves (furniture, colored pillows, desktop accessories) and stuffing it all into the closet. “It’s a little bit of curatorial disease,” he said. “I like to reduce everything to its original surface.”

For the last five years, Mr. Biesenbach has been living in a nearly empty apartment in Seward Park, the former union co-op complex on the Lower East Side.