September Notes - 2026

If I were to try to show all the forces and influences that shaped the art scene in Manhattan over the last seventy-five years, I would need to include returning veterans from World War II, the occupation of abandoned buildings by artists in SoHo, the Vietnam War, the feminist movement, the AIDS epidemic, the creation of the NEA and NYSCA, the major art dealers, the invention of acrylic paint, legalized abortion, and much, much more.

Now try doing that for fifteenth-century Venice.

I have spent this summer reading about how Venice was governed, who commissioned its artists, where their materials came from, the development of canvas as a painting support, the introduction of oil paint, how artists’ workshops operated, Venice’s wars with the Ottoman Empire, the periodic recurrence of the plague, and the laws governing sodomy.