Tchotchkes

Tchotchke: (Yiddish, of Slavic origin) a small object that is decorative rather than strictly functional; a trinket The kind of artworld story that the public loves popped up in the general press three weeks ago: a 22-year-old college student, browsing through his...

Andy, Again

I once interviewed the artist Philip Pearlstein, who is well-known for his paintings of nudes.  As a child growing up in Pittsburgh, Pearlstein was encouraged in his artistic leanings by his parents, who sent him to Saturday morning classes at the Carnegie Museum...

Framed

One of the upsides to being friends with artists is that sometimes they give you works of art.  One of the downsides to being friends with artists is that those works are often unframed.  You’re glad to receive a work, but, if it’s unframed, you can’t hang...

Journal of the Plague Years

In March, 2020, I sent out a letter to clients and colleagues instead of posting my usual monthly blog.  Covid was beginning to make itself felt on a serious scale.  The country was entering uncharted territory, at least for non-centenarians.  In my...

Amphetamines and a Limo, Please!

More years ago than I care to remember, a professor in a course I was taking on Baroque architecture told us how you could tell who had power in Italian cities during the 16th and 17th centuries.  Buildings were normally erected to front the streets on which they...