Summer normally brings family parties on the deck for Roberta and me, and at a recent such get-together I was talking with my nephew Greg, about whose boyhood enthusiasm for collecting baseball cards I have written. Greg, now middle-aged, long ago put his baseball...
When Norman Rockwell died in 1978, Time Magazine art critic Robert Hughes briefly discussed the artist’s place in American art. Hughes acknowledged that Rockwell in his last years had moved beyond the soda-fountain-American-flag-and-Mom’s-apple-pie subject matter...
My wife says that you know you’re getting old when you visit an antique store and recognize something from your past. “Oh, my grandmother had one of these!” you say, picking up a kitchen implement. “Oh, my mother had one of these!” you say, picking up something else....
As a young dealer of American art, I sometimes looked enviously at dealers in Old Masters and French Impressionist art. Not only did they have excuses for frequent trips to art fairs in Europe, but they also had a worldwide clientele. The major Impressionist and...
I received a lot of comments from museum directors and curators on last month’s blog, agreeing with me that changing social mores have caused a re-evaluation of what gets presented in museums today. The art market follows this trend: paintings depicting Native...
There’s a pleasant fantasy, held even by those who should know better, that goes something like this: You’re on a day trip in the country, and you happen across a little auction being held in a tent in a quaint village. A small painting that attracts you is being...
