When word broke that the legendary Judge Crater case may be solved soon, I received phone calls from friends telling me that my grandfather was all over the news. But my grandfather wasn’t Joseph Force Crater. My grandfather was Maurice Bloch—a name that’s vanished from New York’s political scene, remembered only by Robert Morgenthau, filmmaker Read More
How surprising is it to learn that John Mullen’s recent paintings, on display at the Howard Scott Gallery, are a meditation on the natural world? Very surprising. Oh, you can ascertain images, some more specific than others, in Mr. Mullen’s abstractions-the forest path in Forcing, the cluster of clouds in 96% Carbon and a tumble Read More
Nowadays I’m loath to give the Whitney Museum of American Art credit for anything; few museums have done as much to debase the cause of art. But the place does deserve credit for bringing to New York City Rosie Lee Tompkins, a quiltmaker who lives and works in California. Presumably because she was included in Read More
The wooden sign outside the unremarkable, white Tudor-style house on Lewis Street in Southampton, L.I., depicted two realistically rendered cows under the legend, “Til the Cow Comes Home.” Beneath the cows’ hooves: “The Ferry Family.”
The cow came home on Aug. 15, 1998, when Dr. John J. Ferry Jr. resigned as chief executive of Southampton Read More
