The first time Roberta and I visited the Barnes Collection, we could tell why it was world-famous. The museum was at that time in its old digs in Merion, Pennsylvania, and they didn’t make a visit easy. This quiet suburb of Philadelphia did not want a lot of traffic,...
The end to my days as an outsider artist occurred in the second grade. My classmates and I were making crayon drawings the way children do today – a strip of green along the bottom for the grass, with a child and a tree standing against the white of the paper, and a...
It’s the time of year for vows of changed behavior in the year to come. Take these art-related resolutions with me — they should be easier to keep than losing 30 pounds or quitting smoking. Explore something new: Museum curators of American art, not to mention dealers...
Unless you’ve been living someplace without newspapers, TV, or Wi-Fi, you have doubtless heard about the painting by Leonardo da Vinci, discussed in this blog last January (Selling Mona Lisa), that sold for $450,312,500, including buyer’s premium, at Christie’s New...
Earlier this month, I gave a lecture entitled “Appraising the Art of the American West” to a group from the Appraisers Association of America. I spoke about how to set valuations on artworks depicting the American West and its inhabitants by artists from the early...
A client called me the other day, looking for a particular print by Claes Oldenburg – “Profile Airflow (Axsom Platsker 59), cast polyurethane relief over lithograph, done in 1969. So I’m looking around – call me if you have one. But the request got me thinking about...
