Editors's letter.(Editorial)

In baseball joining a team on a winning streak can be daunting. That's also true in magazines as I've recently discovered. As the new editor of The Magazine ANTIQUES, I arrive after many winning seasons led by my predecessors Wendell Garrett, editor from 1972 to 1990, and the late Allison Ledes, who died this past January. They created the team to beat in this field.

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Now eighty-six years old, ANTIQUES remains the premier venue for the most informed and beautiful presentation of its subject. No silver salver has ever looked better or been more keenly described than in ANTIQUES. Our talented and discerning staff holds each issue to the same high standards they cherish in the paintings, chests of drawers, and porcelains that have always filled these pages. In the year 2008, such standards are, to say the least, rare, even heroic.

For me the world of antiques is exciting because it is always evolving. Each year inevitably adds something new to the assembly of honored objects. Then too, new attitudes, new sensibilities, and new information make their claim on our attention. For most scholars and serious collectors, folk art was once beyond the pale of consideration. Now an anonymous portrait of an anonymous four year old can take its rightful place in a major museum. An important institution such as Winston-Salem's Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts would once have been unthinkable. Now it rightfully merits an entire issue of ANTIQUES.

We remake ourselves as we rediscover our past. Paradoxically, we don't always know what our past will be. What we do know is that including articles in the current issue such as Martin Filler's report on a sleek and elusive ...