Milton Esterow, an award-winning journalist who owned and edited ARTnews for 42 years, died on Friday at 97. His loss of life was confirmed by his daughter Judith Esterow, who beforehand served as this journal’s affiliate writer. She didn’t state a trigger.
In a social media put up, Robin Cembalest, who served as govt editor of ARTnews beneath Esterow, wrote, “Milton educated generations of editors and writers, printed scoop after scoop that gained prize after prize, and was justly happy with the influence of the journal’s relentless investigative journalism—notably when it got here to the restitution of Holocaust warfare loot.”
She added that “his passing marks the top of an period, for artwork magazines and for artwork journalism.”
Esterow bought ARTnews in 1972 from Newsweek, which on the time was a division of the Washington Put up Firm, and owned it till 2014, when ARTnews was bought in 2014 to Sergey Skaterschikov. (The publication was then acquired two years later by Peter Brant, who additionally owned Artwork in America; each publications have been owned by Penske Media Company since 2018.) Throughout the time he owned ARTnews, Esterow reworked the journal right into a news-focused entity, infusing the publication with an vitality it had misplaced within the years after its critics had helped outline actions corresponding to Summary Expressionism and Pop throughout the postwar period.
ARTnews went on to achieve nationwide recognition for a few of its investigative studies, a few of which had been authored by Esterow himself. Underneath his management, the journal additionally launched the annual ARTnews Prime 200 Collectors checklist in 1990, which this fall will publish its thirty sixth version. The intently watched checklist is at present a cornerstone of ARTnews’s protection.
“Milton’s legacy of fantastic journalism is massively essential to the journal,” mentioned Sarah Douglas, ARTnews Editor-in-Chief since 2014. “It has been a continuing touchstone as we have now moved ARTnews into the digital age.”
One may simply enumerate Esterow’s many achievements. In a 2023 New York Occasions profile, at age 94, he claimed to have written greater than 6,000 articles in his lifetime—and he continued writing much more articles through his 1950 Royal typewriter after the piece was printed. Underneath his management, ARTnews gained one Nationwide Journal Awards (for common excellence in 1981) and two George Polk Awards (each for cultural reporting in 1980 and 1991).
However Esterow went about his job with a modesty that didn’t go unnoticed by exterior observers: the critic Ben Davis as soon as wrote that he was “hardly a flashy man.” Inside his newsroom, he was often known as each a nurturing presence, with a behavior of offering incoming hires with inspiration within the type of a printed packet of articles printed by ARTnews. (One recipient of such a packet was this author when he was onboarded as an intern.)
A staple of that packet was a 1957 essay on the avant-garde by the artwork historian Meyer Schapiro printed by ARTnews. Esterow as soon as mentioned was “most likely the one genius I’ve recognized.” After taking up, Esterow tried to persuade Schapiro to conform to a profile, however all the time obtained the reply that he was too busy. “Esterow repeated the request yearly or two, and the response was all the time the identical,” in keeping with a 2007 article on ARTnews’s prime 10 articles. Schapiro lastly agreed after almost a decade, and Esterow printed the article by journalist Helen Epstein in 1983.
Milton Esterow was born in 1928 in New York and was raised in Brooklyn. He confirmed an early predilection for journalism and even made his personal newspaper when he was a child, writing the articles by hand.
He attended Brooklyn School and, whereas he was a scholar there, acquired a job as a replica boy with the New York Occasions. His first process: going to Occasions Sq. to buy horse betting sheets for the managing editor.
Esterow went on to marry Jackie Esterow, with whom he had two daughters, Judith and Deborah. Milton and Jackie had been collectively for 74 years; she died earlier this 12 months.
In 1948, Esterow was named a reporter by the Occasions, main him to drop out of faculty. “The Occasions newsroom,” Esterow would go on to recall, “was my journalism college.” He initially centered on crime, then turned his consideration to the humanities.
Esterow’s method, an uncommon one for its period, concerned treating artwork tales as events for investigative journalism. Whereas others on the Occasions seemed on at his work with befuddlement, Esterow plugged away and proved himself fairly adept. In 1964, he printed a narrative on plundered artwork in Europe throughout the years after World Battle II. The report made the entrance web page of the Occasions—a rarity for an artwork story each throughout its time and now.
He was promoted to assistant to the director of cultural information on the Occasions in 1968, although he went on to go up the publishing division of the Kennedy artwork galleries quickly afterward.
Then, in 1972, he led an eight-person investor group in buying ARTnews. The journal was on the time devoted primarily to criticism. It was central to the New York artwork world of the Fifties, however its readership had dwindled; Esterow, figuring out it wanted a brand new focus, let go of almost everybody on the journal and proceeded to convey on a group of contemporary hires. “The artwork world is fascinating and mysterious,” Esterow advised the Occasions on the event of the acquisition. “It’s also underreported. There’s a real thirst for artwork info that publications haven’t been satisfying.” (Not everybody was joyful. Thomas B. Hess, then nonetheless the editor of ARTnews, mentioned, “The lack of Artwork Information is a loss to my alter ego.”)
His management of ARTnews, together with his daughter Judith, put the journal on a brand new course, and his influence was most evident within the investigatory items it started to publish. One from 1984 started with a tip to Esterow: an Austrian monastery held many Nazi-looted masterworks, and nobody may go to it. Andrew Decker was assigned to the piece, and the resultant article grew to become one in every of many dedicated to restitution.
Esterow’s fascination with the behind-the-scenes goings-on of the artwork world was one purpose he started the Prime 200 Collectors checklist in 1990. The general public knew that wealthy individuals had been shopping for artwork, however there was little understanding of why, he recalled. Collectors “are after all large spenders, however on the similar time there are such a lot of completely different sorts of collections as there are collections,” Esterow advised NPR in 2009. “Some collectors are joyful, some are tormented. Some purchase little or no, whereas others can’t assist themselves. Why do individuals gather?” He needed to reply that query for himself and others.
After ARTnews’s 2014 sale, Esterow stored writing for retailers such because the Artwork Newspaper and the New York Occasions, with the latter paper persevering with to publish his articles as just lately as this previous spring. That he continued writing nicely after he relinquished management of ARTnews—nicely after he vowed to “take it just a little straightforward,” as he put it—confirmed his devotion to his craft.
He as soon as mentioned he had no regrets about spending a profession investigating the artwork world, save for one: “It hasn’t helped my tennis recreation, however that’s one other story.”
