From the August/September 2016 Issue
Central Attraction
The Princeton University Art Museum has the intimacy of a small institution but some of the range befitting a much larger one. When Ben Franklin called New Jersey a keg […]
From the June/July 2016 Issue
Always Wash Your Hands
Aquamanilia were created for the purpose. From ancient Rome and Islamic cultures to the Byzantine empire and medieval Europe, ritual hand-washing was done for both symbolic and sanitary reasons (probably […]
From the June/July 2016 Issue
Art (With an Explanation)
A visit to the Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers Newark. In an art world that can often seem hermetically sealed off from the rest of society, the Paul Robeson Galleries […]
From the April/May 2016 Issue
A Taste of the Exotic
Lockwood de Forest’s interiors and furnishings brought the exotic east to the Gilded Age. To become a tastemaker you need an artist’s eye, a flair for the dramatic, a head […]
From the April/May 2016 Issue
The Awkward Marriage of Museums & Contemporary Art
The long view vs. the art of the moment. On March 18, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened Met Breuer, its new branch of modern and contemporary art. The new […]
From the February/March 2016 Issue
Eva Cellini, Late-Life Surrealist
An artist taps into the unconscious, explores uncertainty. There’s always been a youthful spirit to surrealism. The embrace of the nonrational, the prankishness, the fascination with the minutiae of one’s […]
From the February/March 2016 Issue
Art, Seriously
Gallery owners offer advice on how to form an art collection. You’ve redone the house. The paint is dry, the furniture is in place and you’re looking at the new, […]
From the February/March 2016 Issue
Time Stands Still
There was a time when everyone owned a watch stand. Caring for a pocket watch in the 18th and 19th centuries could be a 24-hour-a-day proposition. Watch owners didn’t mind […]