INDISPENSABLE

Despite its narrative heft and a host of very beautiful images, I can personally attest that American Art: Collecting and Connoisseurship fits a backpack as readily as it adorns a coffee table.

- Jim Balestrieri

American Art: Collecting and Connoisseurship

General Editor: Stephen M. Sessler with foreword by Elizabeth Broun, PhD (Merrell Publishers, Autumn 2020). Hardback with jacket, 304 pages with 180 illustrations, $70.

Yet, because it was published prior to the pandemic, it seemed worthwhile to revisit it in light of the seismic shifts in the arts-not just in the market that have occurred over the past four years. The purpose of art, its role in a turbulent world, and the place and responsibilities of artists, museums and scholarship stand at the cutting edge of culture. NFTs and A.I. alone are reshaping the very definition of the word.

The brainchild of Atlanta art collector Stephen M. Sessler, who edited the volume, American Art: Collecting and Connoisseurship was unusual and perhaps unique among fine art books in that it was both beautiful and useful. Offered by Merrell Publishers under the direction of publisher Hugh Merrell, one of the few remaining keepers of the art book flame, the book was nothing less than a quick course in American art history combined with advice from top professionals on every aspect of collecting: the place of galleries, the function of art advisors, how auctions work, scholarship and research, framing conservation, and a primer on art and law.