Editor’s letter, January/February 2013

Editorial Staff Opinion

In the 1950s Robert Moses, New York’s bully-boy developer (a familiar type in these parts), had a suggestion for citizens who objected when he razed their neighborhoods: “Go to the Rockies,” he told them, implying that city life is bulldozers, cranes, and scaffolding and to resist them is to resist being urban and modern. Moses notwithstanding, modern life in New …

Wendell Garrett (1929-2012)

Editorial Staff Opinion

We are an extended family here at Antiques and we are mourning our most valued member-the man who gave Americana its voice and our office its warmth. There will be a celebration of Wendell’s life at the Winter Antiques Show on January 28, 2013 at 10:00 a.m. at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. It will be a joyful …

Editor’s Letter, November/December 2012

Editorial Staff Opinion

Not long ago I planned to have some fun in these pages by running a sly taxonomy of the current television shows about old things-from the somewhat shopworn Antiques Roadshow down through Pawn Stars, American Pickers, Market Warriors and the rest of the Roadshow’s offspring. I expected to spare only Storage Wars, which I find the sunniest of guilty pleasures …

Editor’s Letter, September/October 2012

Editorial Staff Opinion

Our country’s regional wars may be over, but in the 1960s when the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) began, they were very much alive. Southern writers for instance were still working through the story of loss while northerners remained dubious about the value of southern culture. MESDA took a different path. The idea that the South did not …

Editor’s Letter, July/August 2012

Editorial Staff Opinion

  We have something to celebrate this summer in the resurgence of the American Folk Art Museum. Pronounced dead after selling its award-winning building on Fifty-ThirdStreet in Manhattan, the museum is noth­ing of the sort, as you will see in the articles grouped here under the rubric “Folk Art Rising.” At its tidy quarters on Lincoln Square, a smooth street-level …

The boy who loved ANTIQUES

Editorial Staff Opinion

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, May/June 2012 | “While my childhood friends were engrossed in Boys’ Life, Mad Magazine, and racier fare, I eagerly anticipated next month’s issue” When my friend Betsy Pochoda invited me to write a brief celebratory essay marking the ninetieth anniversary of The Magazine Antiques, she extracted a promise that I would take a personal approach and …

Editor’s Letter, May/June 2012

Editorial Staff Opinion

  Starting out in the intoxicating decade of the 1920s, Antiques began by running against the rhythm of its times, celebrating tradition in a decade fueled by the Americanization of the avant garde and the arrival of mass culture in radio, music, and film. The 1920s also witnessed the founding of several other magazines more specifically attuned to the spirit …

Editor’s Letter, March/April 2012

Editorial Staff Opinion

There are days when I am sure that there is a constant worldwide conspiracy out there to pretend that the past does not exist. Fortunately I leave the office occasionally and find that this may not be true. I recently toured Camera Solo, the exhibition of Patti Smith’s photographs at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford with Susan Talbott, the museum’s …

The Intrepid Helen Messinger Murdoch

Editorial Staff Opinion

My interest in Helen Messinger Murdoch began almost three decades ago during my early years as the curator of the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, England. It was there that I fell in love with autochromes—beautiful, translucent, early color images on glass resembling miniature stained-glass windows. There were several thousand autochromes in the society’s collection, among them some glorious examples …

Curator’s Choice: A tour of TAAS with Stacy C. Hollander

Editorial Staff Opinion

A visit to the American Antiques Show (also known as TAAS) at the Metropolitan Pavilion is always filled with discovery, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to join a special tour of the show with Stacy C. Hollander, the American Folk Art Museum‘s senior curator and director of exhibitions. This year’s new layout designed by Ned Jalbert, which …