On the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of our magazine’s founding, curators and scholars, members of the art and antiques trade, collectors, and other readers sent us tributes, memories, comments, and reflections that testify to the immense good will and esteem that ANTIQUES has earned over the course of its history. You will find a selection below, published with our immense gratitude.
As a longtime reader of The Magazine ANTIQUES, I’m pleased to join in celebrating its centennial. That it anticipates by two years a similar anniversary in the American Wing, founded in 1924, makes it that much more resonant for me.
From the first, the two organizations shared a symbiotic relationship in their emphasis on early Euro-American material culture, grounded in a popular colonial revival zeitgeist then sweeping the country that privileged ideas of Americanness and cultural nationalism. A 1949 editorial in the magazine marking the wing’s twenty-fifth anniversary described the Met’s physically freestanding department as a “pioneering effort . . . that led the way in furthering knowledge and appreciation of our American heritage. It is no exaggeration to say that its influence has been felt, directly or indirectly, by all the museums and historical societies working in the American field, all the restorations public and private, all the publications on antiques, and all the collectors of American things.” The editorial went on to call for an expanded educational mission—and a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—as the wing looked to its future, given the “profound, enthusiastic, and inquiring interest [that] exists all over the country in the symbols of our own background.”
There’s no question the American Wing proceeded to do just that, and those later holdings became among its strongest, a point made in the 2000 special issue of the magazine that appeared a few months after the department’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Now, as both ANTIQUES and the American Wing look to their centennials, it’s exciting to see how we’ve continued to evolve by more widely featuring in our respective pages and galleries the creative expression of a diverse range of regional and national African American, Euro-American, Latin American, and Native American artists, collectors, and specialists, subjects and perspectives that emphasize the urgency of historical and contemporary dialogues today. Here’s to continuing to share that meaningful journey!
SYLVIA YOUNT, curator in charge of the American Wing, Metropolitan Museum of Art
There may not be a single issue of The Magazine ANTIQUES that I have not read, enjoyed, and learned something from over the last fifty years—half of the magazine’s existence. It is not only a beautiful magazine, but its concise, accurate, stimulating, and evocative presentation of content has long been accepted as the gold standard for popular-scholarly publications. Many books have come and gone from my library, but there are copies of ANTIQUES that have remained on my shelves for decades, simply because they are too useful to be without.
The dozen or so articles that I have written for the magazine have covered a wide range of topics, from Queen Victoria’s collection of hair jewelry to the trade medals given by explorers to indigenous peoples around the world. I have discussed historical figures from different eras, from George Washington to Beatrix Potter, and described collection-filled institutions, from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia to the Explorers Club in New York. I have written about decorative arts and fine arts, and several subjects that fall somewhere in between. I can think of no other magazine that would have encouraged such an eclectic assemblage of topics—or given them such a spectacular showcase.
The editorial guidance, thoughtfully and sensitively provided by Wendell Garrett, Alfred Mayor, Allison Ledes, Eleanor Gustafson, Gregory Cerio, and their colleagues over the years, has greatly improved everything I have ever submitted.
I congratulate The Magazine ANTIQUES on its hundredth birthday and wish it all the best as it embarks on a second century of engaging, instructive, and insightful scholarship.
ROBERT MCCRACKEN PECK, senior fellow and curator, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Drexel University
ANTIQUES is full of surprises, happily. It is probably the last of the general arts magazines, and still thoughtful, imaginative, well-informed, and gutsy in its own way. Editor Gregory Cerio and ANTIQUES bravely offer us quirky, off-the-beaten-track, personal approaches to the arts and to life, and to things of high quality everywhere. As a longtime reader and admirer, I salute them on this grand occasion!
JOAN K. DAVIDSON, philanthropist, Furthermore and the JM Kaplan Fund
The Magazine ANTIQUES has been a central part of my life from my early teen years. In the many years that have followed, I have looked forward to the arrival of each issue while wearing my various successive hats as a student, a museum curator, a dealer, and, always, as a collector. Cumulatively, the amount of information contained in nearly one hundred years of magazines is overwhelming. There is almost no subject of research in the field of American art that would not benefit from a review of the scholarship published in ANTIQUES. As an author, I have always been pleased with the excellent editing and artistic presentation of the various articles I have submitted. Good health and long life to a great American institution!
STUART P. FELD, principal, Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York
Arriving in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the mid-1980s, I was pleasantly surprised one afternoon to be brought to the offices of ANTIQUES at 980 Madison Avenue by my one-time supervisor and now dear friend, Morrie Heckscher. “Let’s stop by and see Wendell. I want you to meet him.” he said, as easy as that. I was stunned by my good fortune at landing a job in the American Wing fresh out of graduate school and now to walk in on Wendell Garrett, editor and publisher of The Magazine ANTIQUES, legend, unannounced— magic!
Wendell’s avuncular warmth, the ease with which he drew out my interests and passion for a future in the museum field as a curator and historian of American furniture were utterly disarming. A friendship was struck that day with Wendell, one I am fortunate to report has continued for me over four decades with successive editors of ANTIQUES, each of them— Allison Ledes, Betsy Pochoda, and Greg Cerio—carrying with them something of Wendell’s special gift for connecting with people and bringing out the best in their authors. Not to stoke charges of favoritism, but curators in the American Wing have long enjoyed a special, home-team relationship with The Magazine ANTIQUES when it came to presenting their latest projects and scholarly endeavors, a phenomenon that predates this writer’s involvement by sixty years. As Casey Stengel, the colorful one-time manager of the New York Yankees and New York Mets, once said: “You could look it up.” Start in 1922.
One hundred years and going strong. Congratulations!
PETER M. KENNY, past co-president, Classical American Homes Preservation Trust.
Since my childhood, The Magazine ANTIQUES has been an influential and indispensable part of my life. As a boy, I would run to our mailbox in heart-pounding anticipation for the arrival of the latest issue. As a reader, I felt welcomed by a familiar sequence of ads for Israel Sack, David Stockwell, the Old Print Shop, and John Walton at the front, with John Bell of Aberdeen, Herbert Schiffer, and Shreve, Crump and Low anchoring the back. I joyfully dove into its pages, absorbing a galaxy of illustrations throughout and fascinating articles. One of the most treasured and well-utilized sources in our reference library is a bound complete run of the magazine.
When my mother, Marjorie H. (Peggy) Schorsch, transitioned from a private collector to a dealer in 1975, her first advertisement appeared in the December 1976 issue. Over the past forty-five years, our ads have featured pieces that both evidence our particular point of view and reflect trends in collecting. I achieved a professional milestone in 1990 when ANTIQUES’ editor Allison Eckardt Ledes afforded me the honor of writing the first of a series of articles that the magazine has published. Throughout its one hundred years The Magazine ANTIQUES has advanced scholarship, promoted the market for art and antiques in the United States, and served as a documented timeline in the maturation of the field.
DAVID SCHORSCH, principal, David A. Schorsch and Eileen M. Smiles American Antiques, South Woodbury, Connecticut
Here’s to a century’s worth of The Magazine ANTIQUES! From my childhood onward, copies have been strewn around the house, each with important articles and eye-catching advertisements that bring ‘if only” thoughts. The magazine has played many roles over the years, including recuperation. My dad was hospitalized in 1934 after a bad automobile accident during a search for a Christmas tree. One day someone brought him a copy of ANTIQUES to pass the time. He was about 150 issues behind but caught up, and kept on going to age ninety-five! Thanks for that.
PHILIP ZEA, past president and CEO, Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts
When we first started our business thirty-six years ago, we quickly realized that knowledge would be a key ingredient to our success. So, early on, we purchased a whole run of The Magazine ANTIQUES, starting with the first issue of January 1922. Throughout the years, the articles, pictures, and advertisements have produced exemplary scholarship and documented the tastes of the times. We always look forward to each issue.
MARK MCHUGH and SPENCER GORDON, principals, Spencer Marks, Southampton, Massachusetts
Growing up in Baltimore in the ’70s and ’80s, I lived in a house full of fabulous old paintings, prints, furniture, rugs, porcelain, glass, silver, and all other sorts of wares. My parents carefully selected their treasures from dealers they befriended along Baltimore’s venerable Howard Street and at the local antiques shows that my mother helped to organize as a volunteer at the Maryland Historical Society and Baltimore Museum of Art. They would have rather done without than buy something they only liked halfway. Mom and Dad were—and remain—interested in art and architecture from ancient Greece to nineteenth-century China and Japan to baroque Paris and neoclassical Britain—and, of course, three hundred years of American art and design. They found inspiration from each of the cultures they loved in the objects they collected—all well-designed, some period, and others “excellent reproductions,” as my father still emphasizes.
In the mail each month came The Magazine ANTIQUES. It was easily distinguished from other magazines by its careful wrapping, generous size, and heavy paper stock printed in brilliant color. They drooled over the advertisements and read Wendell Garrett’s editorials and the articles that followed. I can distinctly remember them showing me Linda and George Kaufman’s collection in ANTIQUES in advance of a trip to the National Gallery of Art to see the exhibition of the Kaufman collection. After they finished reading an issue, I would often be asked to add it to the top of the neat stacks in the cabinets underneath the bookcases in the living room where they displayed Imari porcelain. ANTIQUES was the only magazine that didn’t get sent to Dad’s office waiting room.
I decided early on that I wanted to be a curator. I began to pursue studies in Italian baroque painting, but was urged by a mentor to consider other disciplines. I soon landed in the field of American art, where I could draw on my knowledge of world art to discern the influences of the many cultures that combine to make American decorative arts distinctive. And so it was that in graduate school I began to read current ANTIQUES issues and mine past ones for all the best research.
I had been a curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for four years in March 2005 when editor Allison Ledes asked me to contribute to The Magazine ANTIQUES. I was ecstatic: I thought, oh wow! I just might make it in this field! Since then, Betsy Pochoda and Greg Cerio have ably shepherded the magazine well into the twenty-first century, and their fabulous editorial staff, most notably the inimitable Eleanor H. Gustafson, have worked with me (and even my daughter!) on articles that showcase PMA acquisitions, new research, and fabulous private collections. Here’s to another one hundred years!
ALEXANDRA ALEVIZATOS KIRTLEY, curator of American decorative arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Magazine ANTIQUES was the first magazine to which I ever had a subscription. No Seventeen for me. When Charles Montgomery left his position as director of Winterthur to teach at Yale, I had the opportunity to take his course known among students as “pots and pans.” My interest in historic houses began about the age of nine, when I visited houses in Exeter and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Concord, Massachusetts, so this was a wonderful experience. Thanks to Montgomery, who became my thesis advisor and mentor, we were able to study closely the great furniture at Yale, rearranging it according to the different periods we were learning about. He also took us on a private tour of Winterthur.
My parents evidently understood that this had become a major passion when I bought an eighteenth- century Windsor chair with the cash birthday present given to me from a grandfather. My Christmas present from them was unusual for a nineteen-year-old but it was perfect—my first issue of a subscription to ANTIQUES. Every month I rushed to open it and usually read most of it without stopping. It coincided with my own early research, several more courses with Montgomery and others, and my graduation into the museum world.
I have kept all the issues and frequently go back to find articles. Sometimes, I go to look for one thing and end up reading the articles on either side—like going into the stacks of a library. I am glad I still have them. While I hope full digitization will allow all to share in the many years before and after my subscription of nearly fifty years began, I still love the feeling of seeing my first issues, with their elegant photos and research in areas that led to further finds in many later issues, and the romance of the lives of collectors in the “Living with Antiques” feature articles.
I wish The Magazine ANTIQUES congratulations on its first one hundred years, and best wishes for inspiring and captivating more generations in the next hundred.
SARAH D. COFFIN, former head of the product design and decorative arts department, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York
Since its first appearance in January 1922, ANTIQUES has served as a key source for information about early Americana, broadly conceived. Moreover, as was noted in a printing trade journal in 1922, ANTIQUES not only published good content, but did so elegantly: “typographically the magazine is a gem.” Appropriately published initially in Boston, it flourished under the leadership of distinguished editors and staff, beginning with Homer Eaton Keyes, and including Alice Winchester and the inestimable Wendell Garrett.
For more than a thousand issues, ANTIQUES has consistently brought new research and fresh topics to the attention of its readers. It has fostered healthy scholarly debate, as with the legendary battle between Fiske Kimball and Mabel Munson Swan over the attribution of Samuel McIntire furniture in the 1930s and has helped expand the temporal and spatial boundaries of the ANTIQUES world writ large. Over time, even its many advertisements have become a valuable archive helping to chart the unceasing flow of objects through the marketplace. With its rich blend of well-edited, authoritative texts accompanied by colorful images, ANTIQUES has been a fixture for a century, evolving with the field and helping to shape the trajectory of its evolution, as it no doubt will in the challenging years and decades ahead.
GERALD W. R. WARD, curator emeritus, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Even before entering the antiques business in 1976, we were aware of The Magazine ANTIQUES and its importance to scholars, collectors, and dealers. It was a vital learning tool for us at the time, and we spent many hours reading the articles, admiring the ads, and envying the homes profiled in “Living with Antiques” features.
After some early learning years and venturing into the world of antiques shows and advertising, we decided to make the financial plunge for a color ad in ANTIQUES, a serious budgetary consideration at the time. Our first ad was a half-page color in the September 1984 issue, which featured a charming carved and painted pine figure of a cat, made as a doorstop. Not only did we sell the piece from the ad, but it led to a relationship with one of America’s leading collectors who continued to be a regular client for the next couple of decades.
With forty-five years in the antiques business behind us, we still firmly believe in the importance of the magazine for both its scholarly content as well as the advertising opportunity it provides for reaching the most sophisticated buyers for Americana. It stands as a cornerstone in our industry, and we join in celebrating the past one hundred years while looking forward to many more to come!
PATRICK BELL and EDWIN HILD, principals, Olde Hope Antiques, New York
I was not raised with antiques—or even magazines about antiques. My Depression-era parents had an aversion to anything that smacked of the secondhand and threw away whatever possessions grew old or tarnished in favor of something shiny and new. I think they were puzzled by their thrift-shopping, vintage-clothes-wearing, Victoriana-collecting, art loving daughter, and always on the lookout for a career that would match my proclivities. That career started to take shape when I entered the small and rather brave graduate program in American folk art studies conceived by Robert Bishop, then director of the American Folk Art Museum, and instituted by New York University. I quickly discovered the library at the museum. In a quiet corner that I claimed as my own, and occupying quite a length of shelf space, stood years’ worth of issues of The Magazine ANTIQUES.
ANTIQUES was born in the flush of the colonial revival. In its earliest incarnation, the pages revealed a reverence for china, silver, ancestor portraits, Pilgrim and brown furniture—a world unknown to me, and in which my Lower East Side soul was not the least comfortable. But TMA granted me entr e into that world, in private, where I could read, dream, and learn. As a graduate student my papers were centered on topics and artists that, once introduced, I would pursue throughout my career (and often write about in ANTIQUES). One of my first papers was a consideration of the Boston fishing lady needleworks, which prompted my first research foray into ANTIQUES— to encounter the marvelous articles by Nancy Graves Cabot. I was hooked. Thereafter, I spent hours and hours leafing through the pages of issues that marched through time, always returning to ANTIQUES as my first port of call for any research project. As I became more familiar with the museum’s collection, I fell under the thrall of the Phrenological Head attributed to Asa Ames (1824–1851). A sculpted bust by the artist was first exhibited at the Newark Museum in 1931, that age when modernism met folk art met the colonial revival. But, of course, the one and only article published on the artist to date had appeared in ANTIQUES in 1982.
The topics covered by the magazine cast a wider and wider net as time marched on, always relevant, always scholarly, always inviting even the most uninitiated to become enmeshed in the sheer beauty of things and ideas. ANTIQUES is now itself an antique, and the tenor of the magazine has necessarily changed and grown as it has responded to new leadership, times, and interests. What has never changed, though, is the intellectual delight in art, objects, and their histories—the passion in knowledge for its own sake, and the pure joy in sharing it with others.
STACY C. HOLLANDER, former director of curatorial affairs, chief curator, and director of exhibitions, American Folk Art Museum, New York
In the 1970s, when I was a kid, my mother, Renée Kahn—an artist, historic preservationist, and art and architectural historian—and I started going to tag sales and estate sales every Saturday morning near our home in a New York suburb. We lived in an 1830s farmhouse, which soon filled up with an oddball selection of antiques, from medieval Islamic pottery to film-noir-style vintage trench coats. Anything popular with other collectors, anything listed in the Kovels’ guides—Limoges porcelain, say, or Tiffany and Co. silver—we could afford only if it was damaged, and, in any case, we often took a contrarian pride in liking what others didn’t.
I knew that if The Magazine ANTIQUES was on the shelves of the house that was hosting a sale, it was a cultured and informed owner. I remember leafing through the ads and articles, my mouth watering at the images of impeccable objects stratospherically out of our price range. And as I have aged and developed ever more eclectic interests, including as topics for my weekly Antiques column in the New York Times, I have marveled at how well The Magazine ANTIQUES has changed with the times and keeps me surprised. What a priceless lens its one hundred years of back issues provide on what collectors have craved and why, and how scholars have reexamined the past. And how much looking through old copies brings me back to my days as a big-eyed child rummaging through suburban garages, attics, and closets at dawn.
EVE M. KAHN, journalist and author most recently of Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams, 1857−1907
The Magazine ANTIQUES, since its founding, has been of the moment, promoting art and antiques of interest to collectors of any given period. Initially catering to the taste of early American collectors like Henry Francis du Pont, as in vogue in the 1920s, the magazine has kept up with the times by reflecting new collecting interests over time. The varied articles on twentieth-century decorative arts, historic homes, and unique genres offer rich, engaging fodder to today’s readers.
DEBRA FORCE, principal, Debra Force Fine Art, New York
Without question, The Magazine ANTIQUES played an important role in inspiring me to become a career professional in the museum field. The publication began coming to my family’s home long before I arrived on the scene. From age four or five, it was a treat to sit with my parents as we examined all the pictures and discussed the articles before heading off to antiques shows and shops across the Midwest. Since becoming a curator (longer ago than I care to reveal!), I have been privileged to share my own research via the magazine. There, I have been encouraged to consider themes ranging from rare early British earthenware to design sources for ceramics and the social history associated with punchdrinking. The advice and design sense of the ANTIQUES staff has made each article much more than I originally envisioned. Recently, I was honored to join The Magazine ANTIQUES’ editorial advisory board. It is gratifying to know that the publication continues its tradition of high-quality research on objects of the past, while also embracing new trends in collecting and the examination of material culture.
LESLIE B. GRIGSBY, senior curator of ceramics and glass, Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library
Ubiquitous in my life, issues of The Magazine ANTIQUES extending back to the 1920s and the 1950s, respectively, could be found in my grandparents’ and parents’ homes. Both were situated on the family farm in central Kentucky. While isolated, my childhood exposure to American arts was rich, thanks to the magazine. My career kept me in Appalachia until the late 1990s, when my wife, Sharon, and I built a home in the Bluegrass. After revisiting the 1947 and 1974 Kentucky issues of the magazine, we were inspired to furnish our home with early Kentucky material. Eleven years later our collection was covered in a “Living with Antiques” feature story. From childhood to the present, The Magazine ANTIQUES has enriched my life.
MACK COX, collector and historian, Richmond, Kentucky
Before directing the Frick Collection, I was chairman of the departments of European decorative arts and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It can be a struggle to get attention for exhibitions and books on the decorative arts, so I have always appreciated the stalwart support for the field by The Magazine ANTIQUES through its thoughtful and beautifully illustrated articles. In my ten years at the Frick, the curators have showcased ceramics and furniture, works sometimes overshadowed by our famous paintings but every bit their equal. ANTIQUES has reported on most of our shows, such as those on Luigi Valadier and French faience from the collection of Sidney Knafel. My favorite article was “Celebrating Pierre Gouthi re at the Frick” (November/December 2016). Charlotte Vignon, former Frick curator and now director of the French National Museum of Ceramics at S vres, had organized a major exhibition on this master bronze chaser and gilder and with her colleagues published the first English monograph on him. ANTIQUES presented a lavish number of photographs of his gilt-bronze mounts, zeroing in on his brilliant technique and seductive surfaces, so that a wider audience could appreciate the talents of this great French eighteenth-century artist. Vive The Magazine ANTIQUES!
IAN WARDROPPER, director, Frick Collection, New York
In 1957, when I was but eight or nine years old, my parents had a houseguest, Albert Sack. My father had known Albert about ten years, and the two had become great friends. Albert Sack was considered e the “dean” of the American antique furniture trade, and was the author of the widely read reference book on antique furniture popularly known as Good, Better, Best. He was well known as “the eye” of the revered firm of Israel Sack, Inc., and (lucky for me), my surrogate father after my dad passed on.
On occasion, Albert stayed over at our house rather than drive several hours back to his home on Long Island. Sometimes, my bedroom became his guest quarters. Albert was a restless sleeper, and would often be reading into the wee hours of the morning. One morning, I woke early. I went into the living room to find Albert, wearing a white muscle tee shirt, white boxer shorts, and black knee socks, reclining on our sofa and surrounded by scattered issues of ANTIQUES—some on the floor, some on the sofa. He laughed heartily, welcomed me into the room, and went on to explain how much he loved reading past issues of ANTIQUES.
My father and Albert’s friendship was profound. ANTIQUES was, without doubt, one catalyst for this friendship, and has consistently been a pillar supporting our industry. Such has been the impact that ANTIQUES has had on our field for a hundred years. Mazel Tov! A well-earned centennial worth celebrating.
ARTHUR LIVERANT, principal, Nathan Liverant and Son, Colchester, Connecticut
During my first year of graduate school, John A. H. Sweeney, curator emeritus at Winterthur, gave me his fifty-year archive of The Magazine ANTIQUES, a stash that provided endless fascination and fodder until the time came to move to New York City and start an internship at the Met. John was pleased that I passed the collection along to Lisa Minardi, thereby helping to spark her illustrious career. I have since ventured forward as an avid reader and admirer of ANTIQUES’ role as a bellwether of the arts. The magazine and its growing online presence are not timeless, but rather a timely reflection of the scholarship, pursuits, and engagements that keep our passion—whether professional or avocational— fresh and meaningful.
MATTHEW A. THURLOW, executive director, Decorative Arts Trust
My introduction to The Magazine ANTIQUES came in 1969 by way of Wendell Garrett, then managing editor of the magazine. He had traveled to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to lecture at Reynolda House Museum of American Art. I was an undergraduate at Wake Forest College (now University) with a passion for history but no knowledge of decorative arts. Chippendale? Never heard of him. Meissen? A mystery to me. Wendell’s talk—on Wallace Nutting of all people— transported me to another world, one of antiques and Americana. The study of objects became an obsession, leading me to the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture and a succession of museum positions. Research opportunities along the way took me back to The Magazine ANTIQUES time and time again. In one case, the cover of the very first issue helped propel a project that culminated in a book and exhibition on the furniture of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Now, in retirement, I consider the magazine an old friend. I can pick up any copy, flip through the pages, and enjoy an engaging article, or editorial commentary. I treasure those moments. Thank you, ANTIQUES, and heartfelt congratulations on your one hundredth birthday.
BROCK JOBE, professor emeritus of American decorative arts, Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library
Thumbing pages filled with beautiful photographs, inspiring articles, and meticulous research sparked my original interest in American decorative arts over thirty years ago. Then came personal friendships with a succession of talented editors, Wendell Garrett, Betsy Pochoda, and now Greg Cerio. Over these many decades, as my career moved me from Charleston to Colonial Williamsburg to the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and Classical American Homes, The Magazine ANTIQUES has been a major source of inspiration.
ROBERT LEATH, president, Classical American Homes Preservation Trust
The Magazine ANTIQUES has always represented for me the highest quality of journalistic design and content covering the antiques trade. As such, I usually save my best items for my ads and am mindful that the quality of our photography matches that of the magazine. More importantly, there have been numerous occasions when we have been doing research on a new object and the only published information about an artist, a regional group of furniture, a maker or a school of work can be found in past issues of ANTIQUES. We have spent a lot of time tracking down old issues to get access to the content that has been published in the magazine for the last one hundred years. Bravo! Keep up the good work!
KELLY KINZLE, principal, Kelly Kinzle Antiques, New Oxford, Pennsylvania
When I was born, my mother was working in the editorial department at The Magazine ANTIQUES. Karen Drechsler Barron had joined the magazine in 1968, and, bucking trends of the era, and clearly loving her work, she had returned to the magazine part-time after her maternity leave—and stayed on until 1974. As a child growing up in New Orleans, my mother’s New York life at ANTIQUES was integral to my sense of self, and a connection to a big, sophisticated art world to which I was always drawn.
As an art history student at Vassar College, the bound volumes of ANTIQUES, gold-stamped on the spine and stately on the library shelves, were a beacon. I remember pulling out the years of my mother’s tenure to look for her name on the mastheads, and then proudly photocopying each time her name appeared in print to produce a little compendium for her on Mother’s Day. The contents and specialty subject matter of the magazine reflected aspects of the art world I had yet to experience in a significant way. For me, ANTIQUES simply held a strong personal connection and vintage allure. Little did I realize how widely it would connect with the field of American art writ large, and my eventual role in it.
Imagine my surprise, when, in 2014, the magazine engaged with the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM), where I had recently become the American art curator, for a project in which several contemporary artists, including Kent Monkman, were invited to engage with the museum’s wide-ranging collections and to reflect on works of particular interest to their own practices for ANTIQUES. It was then that I learned my mother’s successor at the magazine was Eleanor Gustafson, who’s, of course, still there, and that under the leadership of then editor Betsy Pochoda, the magazine had started to use its distinctive lens to expand on connections and ideas across the art world.
A case in point came when current editor Greg Cerio invited Elizabeth Hutton Turner to write “Missing Pieces,” published in January/February 2017, about the unlocated panels from Jacob Lawrence’s series Struggle . . . from the History of the American People (1954–56). Turner’s article announced her collaboration with PEM and me on a major exhibition that would reunite the series for the first time since 1958 and initiate a search for the missing panels. Greg knew the magazine might be able to leverage its readership, and the hunch paid off—ultimately three more of the missing paintings materialized. Having the opportunity to reflect on those discoveries in the magazine’s Endnotes section in 2021 was a joy.
As ANTIQUES turns one hundred, I marvel at its longevity, impact, and meaning—for the field and for me personally.
AUSTEN BARRON BAILLY, chief curator, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Dala horses by Grannas A. Olssons Hemslöjd and Nils Olsson Hemslöjd, c. 1970s. Collection of Todd Engdahl and Caroline Schomp; photograph by Paul Salveson, © Museum Associates/LACMA.
As a graduate student in the Winterthur program in early American culture at the University of Delaware, The Magazine ANTIQUES was the gold standard. Our teacher, Brock Jobe, claimed that one could get a very well-rounded education in American decorative arts simply by reading back issues. How gratifying it was to finally publish an article in ANTIQUES last year about Scandinavian Design and the United States (co-authored with Monica Obniski)! It took fifteen years since graduation, but I had finally arrived!
BOBBYE TIGERMAN, curator of decorative arts and design, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
It’s challenging to imagine my career without the benefit of The Magazine ANTIQUES. In college and graduate school, I first appreciated the knowledge gained through this indispensable resource, and developed an admiration the scholarship of its writers, several of whom I now know as dear colleagues and friends.
I’ll never forget the honor of having my first article published in ANTIQUES in 2000—a synopsis of my Winterthur master’s thesis—as well as the thrill of seeing it in print. That same feeling of excitement exists every other month when I receive the current issue of ANTIQUES. Now I also beam with pride when seeing the name of the American Folk Art Museum in ANTIQUES, and the public recognition of the excellent work that my colleagues accomplish as AFAM celebrates its 60th anniversary.
JASON T. BUSCH, director and CEO, American Folk Art Museum
ANTIQUES is a resource for everybody; a stimulating and inviting venerable publishing presence with a terrific range of articles and features in every issue by those who know and who also know how to write.
As a curator who labors in the vineyard of American painting and has had the privilege of several articles, ANTIQUES has also kept me abreast of everything else: sculpture, the decorative arts, architecture, textiles, prints, jewelry, and on and on.
Importantly, ANTIQUES pays close attention to private collectors and the practices of collecting in addition to the collections they assemble and their modes of display.
Moreover, between the front and back covers of every issue is a robust survey of the current marketplace; much of it ‘American’ but hardly all. This is an education (and a visual delight) in and of itself.
The sheer breadth of the magazine’s range of inquiry over the past century has been extraordinary; exploring “up and down” the hierarchies of connoisseurship and scholarship from indigenous, folk, and artisanal to popular culture; from high art to material culture and artifacts as well as a geographic range that can reach well beyond continental borders. In the expanding global community of today, such ambition suggests that ANTIQUES is well-positioned for its second century.
LINDA S. FERBER, vice president and museum director emerita of The New-York Historical Society and curator emerita of The Brooklyn Museum
The Magazine ANTIQUES has long remained a principal resource for me in keeping apprised of select new exhibitions and scholarly endeavors in the field of decorative arts. Just as the fascination with and study of our multi-faceted histories is so richly reflected in the variety of functional and artistic objects that are part of our lives, each issue continues to open eyes and minds to new work, new discoveries, and new ways of thinking about our shared past and present.
KEVIN W. TUCKER, chief curator, High Museum of Art
Virtually every week I reach for an issue of ANTIQUES for help with my research. With its articles and ads, it is a resource of immense value.
PATRICIA E. KANE, curator of American decorative arts, Yale University Art Gallery
I vividly remember the very first time I saw a copy of The Magazine ANTIQUES. I was a student scholarship recipient at the Colonial Williamsburg Antiques Forum and there they were: a stack of complimentary copies just beyond the scones and lemon curd. I was a senior at William and Mary, and new to the field, but between those copies and a lecture by the legendary Wendell Garret, I was hooked. The Antiques Forum and ANTIQUES that January really showed me the power of objects to tell important stories about our past.
DANIEL K. ACKERMANN, chief curator and director of research, collections, and archaeology, The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and Old Salem Museums and Garden
The Magazine ANTIQUES was always a fixture in our house when I was growing up—my parents kept every old issue, even some dating back to the ’20s and ’30s—and I loved poring over the magazine on rainy days. I still look forward to its arrival every month.
WILLIAM CULLUM, senior designer, Jayne Design Studio, New York
I imagine I was one of a few college seniors in the spring of 1982 who, in addition to anticipating graduation, were also eagerly awaiting the arrival of the April issue of The Magazine Antiques. The previous summer I was introduced to the magazine, as well as curatorial research, as an intern at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk, Maine. There I had the opportunity to shadow Martha Gandy (M’Lou) Fales as she undertook research on the nineteenth-century portraitist, still life painter, and Kennebunkport native, Hannah Brown Skeele. A regular contributor to Antiques, M’Lou received her MA from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture in 1954 where she was in the first class of fellows and met her future husband, Dean Fales, another scholar of American fine and decorative arts. By the end of the summer, M’Lou had identified a core group of perhaps thirty or forty paintings by Skeele and had assembled a chronology of the artist’s career. M’Lou’s resulting article in Antiques remains, to my knowledge, the only substantial piece of writing on Skeele, an artist who was relatively well known in her own time and whose meticulous depictions of people and objects—even an Italian Greyhound in one notable painting in the collection of the Brick Store Museum—was so accomplished that it invited
comparison with the work of members of the Peale family. I returned to the article not long ago after coming across one of Skeele’s paintings listed for sale by a private gallery. I reached out to the gallery to let them know about this important source and they passed it along to the purchaser, a major museum. If the gallery had not turned up the article in its research, others have. A short piece by Shana Klein, an assistant professor at Kent State University, in a recent issue of the online journal of American art, Panorama, enlisted M’Lou’s research in an argument that would have been entirely foreign in 1982: an analysis of still-life painting in relation to American imperialism. Klein cites M’Lou’s article in Antiques as her major source for Skeele’s biography.
I suspect that Skeele is just one of many women artists, queer artists, artists of color, or artists who worked outside of metropolitan areas whose lives and work are documented most extensively—or even exclusively—in The Magazine Antiques. Now as scholars expand upon the canon of artists we write and teach about, and as the works of artists whose identities led to their marginalization during their lifetimes are gaining more traction among collectors, Antiques’ archive takes on even greater significance. The magazine remains, as far as I am concerned, a unique venue for the publication of original and substantial research on artists, works of art and architecture, and locales that otherwise might remain obscure. I hope that new generations of college students will discover in the archive of deeply-researched and carefully-edited articles from The Magazine Antiques a trove of cultural objects which they will think about in ways we can scarcely imagine.
KEVIN D. MURPHY, professor of art and architectural history, Vanderbilt University
Like many of us, I have a near-complete run of Antiques in my home library. My set came to me from a collector in Connecticut, and every time I leaf through an old issue, I think of her. I also dwell on the names of all those who contributed articles or placed ads, feeling a sense of kinship that transcends time. We antiques scholars, antiquers, and antiquarians thank you for a century of community and wish you a century more.
JOHN STUART GORDON, curator, Yale University Art Gallery
My first memories of The Magazine ANTIQUES are of the seemingly endless hardbound copies in the Winterthur Library that my roommate and I dutifully passed back and forth as we completed our graduate school reading. At the time, the magazine felt like a portal to a long history of traditional object connoisseurship. It was tremendously valuable to learn what had been considered an “antique” as the field developed. In the almost twenty years since then, it has been telling to watch ANTIQUES broaden coverage into modern histories, a more international scope, and to envelope a wider and wilder array of materials and perspectives. I look forward to how ANTIQUES next defines the “antiques” we all love.
MEL BUCHANAN, curator of decorative arts and Design, New Orleans Museum of Art
Happy Birthday to The Magazine ANTIQUES! What a remarkable CENTURY!
ANTIQUES has been a touchstone for me in so many respects—the groundbreaking scholarship, the stunning advertisements, the exceptional photography, and the extraordinary individuals who work there. It has been a presence in my life, starting in childhood as an exotic magazine seen from afar. Later, I got to know the editors, writers, and staff members personally through my work with Dick Jenrette and his foundation, the Classical American Homes Preservation Trust. I feel so incredibly fortunate to have known Wendell Garrett, Allison Ledes, Betsy Pochoda, and Greg Cerio and to have witnessed firsthand the remarkable articles written on CAHPT’s properties. I look forward to future articles with new scholarship and new perspectives on these and other historic houses.
Looking back over the decades, it is difficult to select one memory about ANTIQUES, but one individual who stands out for me is Allison Ledes. I first got to know Allison through nursery school—that is, her daughters and my sons attended the same one. After coffee hour and drop-off, we would often commute to work together. I loved listening to her unique deep-barreled voice above the noisy subway as she talked about her upcoming trips to international antiques fairs, meetings with scholars and curators, and breaking deadlines. In 2002, we were in London for the Attingham Summer School’s 50th Anniversary and she asked me if I wanted to go with her to call on several dealers one afternoon. (There might have been a glass of wine and some cigarettes involved as well.) One memorable highlight was visiting Wartski and seeing a very significant tiara with a very significant provenance. We both examined it carefully and then decided we needed to try it on for scale! Tiara aside, the real gem was seeing Allison in action. Her energy was unparalleled and magnetic— she loved the objects, the dealers, the scholars, the publishing world, and The Magazine ANTIQUES. I wish she were here to celebrate this watershed anniversary.
Another favorite memory is how an ad in ANTIQUES led to Dick Jenrette’s acquisition of an important portrait for his collection. A friend called him one day to say “his lady” was in ANTIQUES. It was a portrait he didn’t even know existed and he was thrilled to discover not only her portrait, but later a suite of furniture belonging to the woman’s family as well—all of which he was able to return to its former home. Perhaps we should consider ANTIQUES the match.com between collectors and objects of the past.
One hundred hip-hip-hoorays for the 100th Anniversary of The Magazine ANTIQUES! And a hundred more to its next century!
MARGIZE HOWELL, past co-president, Classical American Homes Preservation Trust
