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The article focuses on the painters in New York City. Lisbeth Firmin, a painter in a storefront studio in a small town in New York, use to paint the city's street scenes. Firmin shows her work at Michael Ingbar Gallery, where painting and photography by a number of artists with an affinity for architecture is displayed. Ironically, Firmin and most of her coevals tend to remove the masses of people from their paintings, focusing more on mood and structures, whether anonymous dwellings, instantly recognizable landmarks or the formidable skyline. These painters are part of a multifaceted tradition that flowered a century ago when Ashcan School artists like John Sloan limned quotidian life on the Lower East Side and Childe Hassam delighted in celebratory flags fluttering from the facades of fashionable Fifth Avenue. New York's bridges have been a theme of perpetual fascination for painters.

The article focuses on Red Grooms and his six 8-by-8-foot contemporary paintings based on the legend of the unicorns depicted on a medieval setting. Groom's fascination with the medieval period and his showcase of medieval art and architecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, inspired him to come up with these sextet of huge paintings. It is noted that these paintings function both as a legendary tale and a creative caricature of art-world iconography.

This year marks the golden anniversary of The Winter Antiques Show in New York City. This staple on the calendar was born when members of The East Side House Settlement, its beneficiary, sold a trunk full of vintage couture at an antiques fair and, heady with success, started a show of their own. Over the decades, the show became a fulcrum for other events. One constant is the participation of Elinor Gordon, a Villanova, Pennsylvania, dealer of Chinese export porcelain. Gordon recalls selling an Order of Cincinnati plate years ago for $2,600, then watching it fetch $44,850 at an auction in 2002.