My first job in the art world was working for Ira Spanierman, who used to run an advertisement with a large headline proclaiming, “We Will Pay Over One Million Dollars for Highly Important Paintings by . . .” followed by a laundry list of famous American...
Roberta and I were in Western New York a few days ago and took the opportunity to view the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum at Alfred University, a school which a friend who is a ceramic artist calls, “the established Mount Olympus in ceramic education in America.” ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
