Roving Eye: Beth DeWoody, in the Blink of an Eye

Collector Beth Rudin DeWoody has the quickest eye around. Her sweeps through art fairs are legendary and her West Palm Beach and New York homes are resplendent with arrangements of art, vintage furniture and other treasures gleaned from her expeditions. I've observed Beth in action on several occasions, but last week I asked if we could sit down to analyze her decision process.
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Roving Eye: A Happy Tracey Emin

Surprisingly enough, when Tracey Emin attended this year's installment of Art Basel Miami Beach, it was her first trip to the city. She came to check out the opening of "Mark Handforth: Rolling Stop" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, where in two year's time her own major exhibition will kick off the week of Art Basel. She was so enthused by the spirit of the annual MOCA party, and its diverse group of revelers—her friend Julian Schnabel, Art Basel VIPs, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, throngs of North Miami teens, and Yves Jason, mayor of Port-au-Prince—that for a few moments she stood amongst the crowd in the exhibition and thought to herself, "this will be me in two years."
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Roving Eye: Rothko in New Orleans

The Tony Award-winning play Red, about Mark Rothko, is currently being produced in regional theaters throughout the United States. As the former curator of the Mark Rothko Foundation, I have become something of a roadie, giving lectures on his work and even interviewing the late artist (the actor in character) in conjunction with the GableStage production in Miami.

Most recently I was at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans on a panel that focused on Rothko's two months as a visiting artist at Tulane University (February and March 1957), during which time he met with art students and set up a studio. The sojourn coincided with Mardi Gras, and the artist enjoyed his strolls through the French Quarter, which he described in a letter to his friends Herbert and Ilse Ferber as a "miniature of a section of Paris with its intense charm of scale." [1]
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