Old Masters

The impulse to personalize a car is almost as old as the car itself. Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, an English aristocrat, is credited with inventing the hood ornament, also known as the mascot, when he affixed a statue of St. Christopher to his 1899 Daimler.

The defining moment in the career of James Rorimer, the sixth director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, fell on Nov. 9, 1965, when a blackout shut down the northeastern United States. With a loaded gun in hand, Rorimer patrolled his museum from dusk until dawn. He was, in the words of one associate, “a housekeeper extraordinaire,” an administrator safeguarding the past against an uncertain future.

Among the few items remaining in Marcel Duchamp’s studio after he quit painting in 1914 was an unmounted coat rack that tripped him up whenever he passed. Rather than nailing it to the wall where it belonged, one day he fixed it to the floor and, declaring it a readymade, dubbed it Trébuchet.

On June 27 the Cleveland Museum of Art officially opened its much-anticipated East Wing, the second of four stages in an ongoing $350 million expansion and renovation project, designed and supervised by the New York-based Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly.

“If you’re a modern art collector, you can squint your eyes and say, ‘Jasper Johns,’” says John Monsky. He’s referring to the array of antique American flags that festoon the walls of his Manhattan apartment. And it’s true: Flags make a strong graphic statement and have great Pop art appeal. But Monsky, who is general counsel at an investment firm and an avid history buff, is most excited by the stories woven into these pieces of cloth.

On Sept. 4, 1898, two young artists, Bert Geer Phillips and Ernest L. Blumenschein, were driving a horse and wagon from Denver to Mexico, in search of scenery to paint. They lost a wheel not far south of the Colorado border into New Mexico, and flipped a coin to see who would have to walk to the nearest town and replace it.