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‘Van Gogh and Britain’ — The EY Exhibition

Van Gogh at the Tate, Summer 2019

On our recent trip to London, we snuck away on a Thursday afternoon to Tate Britain for its new summer feature exhibition — Van Gogh and Britain.

Running until Aug. 11, this show features more than 50 of his works, with a focus on pieces he produced during his residence in London (1873–75) and how the...

Ex Libris: Brian Fenwick-Smith (Financier, Philanthropist, Bibliophile)

Upon retrieving a recent auction purchase in London that included one lot of approximately a dozen works of modern fiction and poetry, we were surprised to find that the majority included a mysterious looking bookplate from a fellow named Brian Fenwick-Smith. The books were all in excellent condition and many included...

Open Space in the Inner City: Ecology and the Urban Environment

At a recent auction we uncovered a wonderful specimen of NYC history — the exhibit portfolio of black & white photographstaken by Arthur Tress and produced by the Visual Arts Program of the New York State Council on the Arts in 1971. Arthur has a fascinating story from his birth in 1940 in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn to his...

For someone who relishes the tactile pleasure of turning the page of one of my favorite novels, the concept of registering a book on a transparent, immutable digital ledger would seem a waste of time— but I get it. The question of provenance has plagued humanity since the beginning of time (or so I would posit). Look at the millions who flock daily to post the ‘provenance’ of their lives on...

A visual tour of George Saunders’ first novel

By now you’ve probably heard of the George Saunders first work of fiction, Lincoln in the Bardo, that was published in early 2017. In short order, the novel won the Man Booker Prize, was listed as one of the 100 notable books of 2017 by The New York Times and made Bill Gates list of five books worth readingfor the summer of 2018. (If you are new to...