A Pig in a Virtual Poke

“The art business is not something you can equate to any other business. They’re not selling stocks and bonds here. They’re selling fine art.” Thus spoke dealer Helly Nahmad in a recent New York Times article entitled “The Fickle Salesroom,” which reported on a 40...

Size Does Matter

Any art dealer knows that the size of the painting he or she is offering is going to be an important factor in getting a collector to purchase the artwork. Collectors with loft-style walls may make exceptions for large contemporary paintings, but dealers in older art...

Too Much and Not Enough

As part of a group from the Appraisers Association of America, I visited the studio last week of sculptor Chaim Gross (1902-1991). The building in Greenwich Village now houses the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation. It’s definitely worth a visit – the ground floor...

You Can’t Take It With You

My two-year-old granddaughter, Veronica, was sitting at my dining room table last week, having some strained pears and admiring Water Garden #1, a painting by the late Paul Gardere. It’s a large, complicated piece by an artist who was also large and complicated. Paul...

The End of an Era

In 1981 I arrived in New York, jobless and with a wife and a baby daughter to support. I had worked in art publishing in Chicago and hoped to find something similar in New York, but a professor I had known at the University of Chicago called me and made a suggestion...