Fine Art Connoisseur

I am continually amazed by how a few people can have a giant impact, as well as by how some forces work in concert toward a common goal without even being aware of each other. Late in the 20th century, a handful of visionaries began swimming against the tide of a contemporary art world enamored with conceptualism and apt to discount anything done in the past. Daniel Graves founded the Florence Academy of Art, and before him, Ives Gammell had established his atelier in Boston and Richard Lack another in Minnesota. Collectors like Fred Ross created the Art Renewal Center (ARC), an online repository and advocacy platform for classical realism. A group of collectors founded the New York Academy of Art, and then one of its graduates, Jacob Collins, launched…

Lynn Wyatt has always been noticed. The elegant, glam, ever-photogenic Houston socialite — actually more a philanthropist than a party host and party-goer — was noticed back in the late 1970s by Andy Warhol. Even though he had already made his signature silkscreens of Jackie Onassis and Liza Minnelli, Farrah Fawcett and Marilyn Monroe, as well as such alpha males as Mao and Muhammad Ali, Warhol was especially captivated by Wyatt's beauty. “I would never have dreamed of marching up to Andy and asking for a portrait,” says the 90-year-old Wyatt from her expansive Houston home, long ago dubbed “The Wyatt Hyatt” for the way it has welcomed so many celebrity friends over the years. “Andy actually approached me at a dinner. It happened very naturally, in conversation, the way…

What an autumn! The art world has heaved a sigh of relief as success after success unfolded late in 2025. In November, Sotheby's opened its Manhattan flagship in the former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Crowds poured in to admire the auctioneer's renovation of that landmark, and to ogle 55 artworks offered from the estate of the collector-philanthropist Leonard A. Lauder. On November 18, his marvelous Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer painted by Gustav Klimt broke the auction record for a modern artwork, selling for $236.4 million plus fees. In total, the fall auction season pulled in $2.2 billion in sales. Soon after, the Miami fairs got underway, led by the 23rd edition of Art Basel Miami Beach. Gallery sales there were impressive: a Gerhard Richter painting for…

It's no secret that Florida is America's third most populous state, nor that several of its cities are among the fastest growing in the nation. The Sunshine State has gained steadily in population since Standard Oil magnate Henry Morrison Flagler (1830–1913) began building hotels and housing along its Atlantic coast 150 years ago, yet it's only comparatively recently that Floridians have focused in earnest on the visual arts. This development — a key indicator of increasing sophistication – is surely related to the fact that part-year residents are spending more time at their Florida homes. Florida's cultural vitality has been enhanced further by worldly part-and full-year residents not only from Canada, the Caribbean, and Latin America, but also from Europe and Asia — thanks particularly to the availability of direct…

MAGGIE O'KEEFE (b. 1997) is a fine artist and illustrator whose practice has been enriched substantially through her longstanding relationship with the Art Students League of New York, now celebrating its 150th anniversary (see page 87). Born and raised north of New York City in Westchester County, where she lives today, she has been drawing since childhood. Her supportive family wisely enrolled her in children's classes at the League with Gregory Vigrass and Martha Bloom, and as a high schooler she studied there with Oldrich Teply. During her four years at Cornell University in upstate New York, O'Keefe earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in architecture. There she had her first experience with painting alongside instructor Stanley Taft, and began making realist portraits and working outdoors. She also…

Depicting water is notoriously difficult. We take for granted those artworks that do it well, but we also shudder at seascape paintings in which the waves look more like cake frosting than water, right? Around the world, the desire to evoke water — and to see it evoked — endures. No matter where we live, we all have a personal connection to some body of water or another, from oceans and rivers to lakes and pools. Water is one of the four elements essential to life, a symbol of diverse meanings, and a site of both pleasure (e.g., hot tubs) and tragedy (drowning). Now combine this appeal with the equally challenging prospect of depicting some sort of figure — be it human or animal — immersed in water, or near…