No Respect – And a Sigh of Relief

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...

Rosemary

In 1978, Roberta and I joined our friend Buzz Spector to found White Walls: A Magazine of Writings by Artists. One of the few publications dealing with word-and-image art, it soon began to attract submissions by some notable artists in the field. One evening as we sat...

Hope Springs Eternal

Two stories about art captured the general attention this past month. The first embodied every thrift store visitor’s dream, something that has kept the Antiques Roadshow franchise in business since 1977.  It invites visions of “That could happen to me!” A woman who...

In the Pink

As any retailer will tell you, presentation is everything. Painters, as retailers hoping to sell objects they make, have to consider how those objects are best presented. If a painting is to be framed, what kind of frame will present it to best advantage? Not framing...

About to Get Shafted Again

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...