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...

Your Money or the Dumpster

Many years ago, my wife and I were having supper at the home of friends.  After supper, Tim said he wanted to show me something.  I followed him outside to be met by a two-foot-high stack of unstretched canvases that Tim had pulled out of the garage. ...

What the Heck?

Magazzino Italian Art, a terrific small museum that opened in Cold Spring, NY a few years ago, currently has on view an exhibition of works by Costantino Nivola (1911-1988).  Nivola was born in Sardinia, the son of a mason, and attended art school near...

Hometown Boy Makes Good

I like to say that there was only one truly creative genius in the whole of art history: the first caveman (or woman) to draw a mastodon on that cavern wall.  All other artists have been stealing from him or her ever since. I’ve been reminded of this assertion...