I was very pleased to visit this year’s BP Awards at the National Portrait Gallery, and I was very excited to think they got it right in choosing the 2019 first prize winner–Imara in Her Winter Coat by artist Charlie Schaffer. I was so much attracted to and felt such a connection with admiration to the artist’s work that I contacted Schaffer to purchase a piece, wanting to be part of this moment to endorse greatness in our times. Currently on exhibit at my gallery for the Holiday 2019/Winter 2020 season will be an “unfinished” self portrait by Schaffer, painted during the same time as his painting of Imara.

Along with Francis Picabia and Pablo Picasso, Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) is one of a generation of artists who continued to champion figurative painting after the Second World War, even as abstraction was emerging as the dominant stream in art. It is also thanks to them that, in our time, abstract and realist painting can be practiced freely side by side rather than confronting each other across an ideological no-man’s land. Today, contemporary artists, audiences and experts alike admire Kokoschka’s gestural painting style, praise his open minded cosmopolitanism, or share the pacifism that runs like a thead through his work, life and legacy.

I was very interested when I read about this Edouard Vuillard show at the Barber Institute in one of my favorite magazines, World of Interiors. The show, Maman, focused on the subject of the artist’s mother, who appeared in over 500 of his works. I was so pleased to…

All Too Human celebrates the painters in Britain who strove to represent human figures, their relationships, and surroundings in the most intimate of ways.

I’ve been wanting to go back to the Louvre to spend some time inside and think about it as a beautifully designed building to house art. I do admit, whenever I am in Paris, just sitting in the square that surrounds the pyramid is almost enough to love the Louvre, to feel all it symbolizes as a great museum.

When in London, there is always time for a visit to the National Portrait Gallery. There, I was pleased to discover an exhibit dedicated to photography portraits of the English actress Vivien Leigh.

In 2014, I participated in a designer show house, Blairsden Mansion, as part of Mansions in May. Architects Carrere and Hastings designed the estate, as well as the New York Public Library, the original New York Stock Exchange, and the buildings that currently house The Frick Collection and Neue Galerie, two well-known Manhattan museums. As part of my own design process for the Blairsden show house, I visited the two museum spaces to help inform my work.

I can’t recommend enough experiencing museum visits and artist audio tours when traveling. Such travels are really my best source of study and inspire me and my role in the arts. Thank heavens for my partner Barnet Cohn and his part-time retirement job with

Embarrassed maybe a little to admit, but I have been known to become a member of museums to cut lines. I did so with the recent exhibit at the Metropolitian Museum to visit the Alexander McQueen exhibit experiencing record number crowds….and regretted not having a way to avoid three hour lines the year before to visit the Monet exhibit at the Grand Palais. Earlier this year I became a member of the National Portrait Gallery to visit the Lucian Freud exhibit and saw on the schedule the exhibit “The Queen:

After recently visiting the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibit of the Lucian Freud show Portraits, I almost passed to travel to Texas in August to see the only U.S. presentation of this exhibit thinking myself indulgent. However, as I read articles on the show to follow, I discovered how the two exhibits had been arranged before the artists death the year before and that future shows of this magnitude might be few and far coming with the works value and insurance issues to navigate. As I consider the artist a master of our times, I thought I would allow myself to lay eyes on them one more time. Interesting to me, beyond the fact not all the paintings came to this exhibit including …

Lucian Freud (1922 – 2011) was one of the most important and influential artists of his generation. Paintings of people were central to his work and this major exhibition, spanning over seventy years, is the first to focus on his portraiture.

November 2011 – I’m traveling for a quick two-night trip to the Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal, Germany. I’m flying to Frankfurt to take a 2 1/2-drive to the German museum that displays one of my most favorite self-portraits by artist Oskar Kokoschka from 1917. It was the first time I was able to see the painting in person, having only admired it fro

With my Friday night Drawing at the Met classes providing further reason to be in the great museum weekly, I searched for the permanent collection of Lucian Freuds and found an unplanned exhibit had been created to display seventeen works of the artist. As one of my favorite artists of our time, I took advantage of multiple visits to truly appreciate the extraordinary talent of his brushwork and texture. With the artist’s recent passing in July of this year, having been considered the greatest living painter for so long …

July 2011-Having spent most Friday evenings this year drawing at the Met with artist/teacher Tatyana Zhurko, I did not plan to list all the exhibits I have seen at the NYC museum this year for my Travelogue having become a …

Leck Majewski- A Retrospective: Video Art/ Sculpture/ Photography

A quick overnight to Paris to see the Monet exhibit at the Grand Palais before the January 24, 2011 close date. The Monet exhibit website: www.monet2010.com

Sketching at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Drawing from the Masters: January-June 2011 weekly Friday evening drawing classes with a very lovely and disciplined Russian art instructor, Tatyana Zhurkov .  It has been so inspiring to hear

James Ensor’s work had always been on my radar, although it was not overly familiar to me; naturally, when I heard about the show in Brussels at the ING, I used it as an excuse to visit there.  Ensor was a wonderful colorist, and I …