The Way We See Things Now: The Times, the National Gallery, and the new orthodoxy

Editorial Staff Opinion

On Friday March 6 Roberta Smith of the New York Times delivered a spirited and largely negative review of the recent reopening of the American painting galleries at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Held fast in the grip of what she describes as the “strictly orthodox” arrangement of periods and schools, the rooms bored her and, she …

Queries: American musical clocks

Editorial Staff Art

The first musical clocks were invented in the Netherlands in the fourteenth century. Two hundred years later European royalty and aristocracy were commissioning them. At the palace of Versailles Marie Antoinette possessed a musical clock that played ten of her favorite tunes. (It was discovered at the palace in June 1914, two weeks before the start of World War I.) …

Time Flies: A daylight savings reminder

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

This 18th century cartel clock from the Horace Wood Brock collection, featured in the March issue of ANTIQUES, aptly depicts the fleeting nature of time, is particularly appropriate  this Sunday, when are clocks, now mostly digital, are turned ahead one hour. Brock’s stunning collection is a reminder of an age when instruments of timekeeping were not just practical necessities, as …