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...

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. ...

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...

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...

My wife and I just got back from two weeks in California, visiting our daughters.  As always, Roberta and I were struck by the beauty of the California landscape.  It brought back a question I have occasionally pondered: why bother to paint landscapes in...

In Chicago in the mid-1950’s, Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-1977) was acknowledged as the “Queen of Bohemian Artists.” She grew up in Hyde Park, home of the University of Chicago, the daughter of itinerant opera singers, but she became a painter, not a musician, though...

I got a query through my website the other day, seeking an appraisal of some real estate.  Thanking the sender for his interest, I told him that I am an art appraiser and am not qualified to appraise real property.  I directed him to the professional organizations...

There are two kinds of collectors that can make a dealer tear his hair.  The first kind don’t know exactly what they want; they’re just in the mood to buy something.  “I’ll know it when I see it,” they tell you.  You end up pulling out paintings of every conceivable...

As we watched the news of the deep freeze in Texas, our horror at the images of people burning furniture to stay warm and lined up for hours trying to buy food was made doubly shocking, whether we realized it or not, because of the unconscious perception most of us...

Back during the days of the Reagan Administration, I was participating in the Tri-Delta Antiques Show in Dallas.  Among the artworks on display in my booth was a cast of Frederic Remington’s iconic bronze The Bronco Buster.  An older gentleman visiting the...