Last week my six-year-old came home from school loaded up with books from the school book fair but nonetheless wanting to Amazon another, How to Read People’s Minds.  Now, among other considerations, I try to evaluate my kids’ “needs” (they always classify their wants as such) through the prism of educational merit.  From that perspective, [...]

Last week I heard the funniest story that I just have to blog. (Names have been omitted to protect the guilty.) A reputable dealer in Chicago told me that he sold a painting to a blind man. The blind man is a collector who had bought art from him for many years. He would typically [...]

Some of us are collectors and others are not. I suppose that to some extent we may be born that way. But I also believe that there are substantive differences between the presumed collecting instinct and the state of being a “pack rat.” Are these both instincts, or are they learned behaviors? Are they both [...]