A fire at his home in New Roads, Louisiana, this past summer took the life of James Donald Didier, one of the most idiosyncratic, engaging, and gifted minds in the world of American antiques and preservation.
Editor’s Letter: May/June 2019
There are some art exhibitions that transcend themselves. That is to say, the fact that the show is taking place is of greater significance than the art on view.
Big News!
We have important news: our publisher, Don Sparacin, and I have acquired The Magazine ANTIQUES from Art News Media, LLC. We are now independent, and we intend to go places.
Editor’s Letter: March/April 2019
As I write this it is early February, yet I still feel a bit of lingering zing from our participation last month in the sixty-fifth annual Winter Show, which was billed as the event’s Sapphire Jubilee edition. The Magazine ANTIQUES has had an association with the show, held at the Park Avenue Armory, almost from the beginning.
Hail, Columbia!
America’s oldest steamboat heads for a new life on the Hudson River
Beautiful Desuetude
Even as it awaits restoration, the historic Bronson House in Hudson, New York, reveals its architectural charms
Arms and the Man
We spoke with Joel Bohy, a specialist in historic arms and militaria for Skinner Auctioneers and Appraisers, about his vast and varied knowledge of military history and material culture, his expeditions to archaeological digs at battlefields, and his talent for making reproduction arms and uniforms.
Frederic Church’s Olana on the Hudson
“Almost an hour this side of Albany is the Center of the World,” wrote Frederic Edwin Church (1826– 1900) to his friend sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer. He added: “I own it.” Church, preeminent among the Hudson River school painters, was referring to Olana, his magnificent “Persian” style mansion and the surrounding 250 mountaintop acres of landscape he subtly designed.
Editor’s Letter: January/February 2019
We moved offices recently—and you all know what a joy moving can be. We’re now on the far west side of Midtown Manhattan, the neighborhood where two of New York’s great fictional characters resided: Nero Wolfe, the ingenious, orchidfancying, and largely housebound private detective, and his much more dynamic legman and chronicler, Archie Goodwin.
Lax and lost wax
Driving into Blue Hill, Maine, it’s hard to miss the eleven-foot-tall bronze statue in front of an otherwise classic New England white clapboard building on Main Street: a glorious Native American figure in full stride raises his lacrosse stick high and cradles a ball in the pocket.