Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Editor’s Letter”
It would be tempting to wiggle into this one, introduce the issue with some high minded talk about the past not being another country and so forth, go on to mention our wonderful articles about Julia Margaret Cameron, etc., but more about all of that in a minute…The fact is we have something here requiring immediate comment—Paul Kossey’s discovery of …
One afternoon not long after I began working here I opened a letter that asked me a challenging question: how, the writer wanted to know, “did a Polack [sic] like you get your position?” After a few jolly moments in the office I called our longtime editor Wendell Garrett, who enjoyed odd news from the passing scene. Wendell was amused, …
We look forward to the merger of The Magazine ANTIQUES and MODERN Magazine with ARTNEWS S.A. as we expand our digital presence, reach new readers, and bring the best in scholarship and criticism on the fine and decorative arts to a global audience.
What has been lost… The only thing more American than sentimentalizing the past is our habit of discarding it. And so when it comes to the dolls shown in this issue, stunning examples of an African-American folk art, questions abound: who were their makers and for whom were they made? How can they be dated and where did they originate? …
We missed something this spring, and at this point all I can do is urge you not to miss it too. I refer to When the Curtain Never Comes Down at the American Folk Art Museum, closing July 5. There is much to say, even much to debate, about what is happening with outsider art in the museum’s galleries, and …
The divide between “pure” art (painting and sculpture mostly) and functional art (lighting, ceramics, furniture, and so much else) comes and goes in history depending on who has the power to enforce its shaky distinctions. Just now the contemporary art market tilts toward the healthy side of the issue: a table by Urs Fischer, for instance, is a work of …
When he was designing the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth the great American architect Louis Kahn said that he wanted it to resemble “a friendly home.” That might surprise anyone familiar with Kahn’s museums—the Kimbell, the Yale Center for British Art, or the Yale University Art Gallery—but I think he was simply saying that he wanted his building to wall …
In the nineteenth century there was an oft-repeated tale about the young Thomas Coleentering New York from the far reaches of rural Pennsylvania and being met with hosannasfrom the city’s artists. Like most oft-told tales this one turned fact toward myth (to beginwith, Cole had arrived from nowhere more obscure than Philadelphia), and yet it suggests somethingintriguing and durable about …
On our cover, the cacophonous world in which we live–digital and artisanal, ephemeral and timeless–is rendered, ironically, in the disciplined quiet of limewood by the master carver (and prose master) David Esterly. Carving, Esterly has observed in his book The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making, is a metaphor for many things. I’d count among them the …
Here is a curious turn of events: British folk art, although obviously many centuries old, is just this summer receiving its first ever museum exhibition. Robert Young, who with his wife Josyane has carried aloft the standard of European folk art in their handsome London gallery for several years now, discusses Tate Britain’s exhibition in this issue with his customary …