Digital doings: Chatting from Winter in Spring, a Curious Cupid, and More
Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Abraham Thomas, painter Andrew LaMar Hopkins, and ceramist Roxanne Jackson— along with Curious Objects host Benjamin Miller— participating in the panel discussion “Craft in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” at this year’s edition of the Winter Show. Although New York City’s gradual recovery from the pandemic can seem at times to be a case of one step forward and two steps back, a bit of a return to normalcy was signaled by the March/April staging of an in-person version of the Winter Show, the annual art and antiques fair, for the first time in two years. Despite being displaced from their usual late- January spot on the social calendar, and from their usual haunt (instead of at the Park Avenue Armory, dealers set up shop at the less familiar if only—for fashion lovers— slightly less storied 660 Madison Avenue, formerly the Barneys department store’s flagship), the proceedings felt, for the most part, hearteningly familiar. And as has become something of a tradition, the Winter Show was the occasion for a live panel discussion presented by ANTIQUES and presided over by Benjamin Miller, host of our podcast, Curious Objects. The topic this year—rather grandly—was “Craft in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” a contemporary riff on Walter Benjamin’s famed 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” incorporating the insight and wit of Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Abraham Thomas, ceramist Roxanne Jackson, and painter Andrew LaMar Hopkins (whose artwork graced the cover of ANTIQUES’ January/February issue, the first of our hundredth-anniversary year). What was a lively discussion on April 9 is now a lively podcast episode, a morsel for listeners in need of a fix as they await the debut of Curious Objects’ upcoming season. As always, you can tune in