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Remembering Greg Cerio
13 Plays1 year ago
Greg Cerio, editor of The Magazine ANTIQUES, died Saturday. In this special episode, Ben pays tribute to the man who gave Curious Objects the green light, and who foresaw a rich future for objects from the past.
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Transcript
Tribute to Greg Surio
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:05
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I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:07
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This will be a very brief and unusual episode.
00:00:11
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Greg Surio, the editor in chief of the magazine Antiques, has passed away after a long illness.
00:00:19
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We're going to postpone this week's planned episode and take a moment to acknowledge and pay tribute to him.
00:00:26
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It's a heavy time, of course, for Greg's friends and family, and also for his colleagues at the magazine Antiques and for myself.
00:00:36
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And now I don't want to dwell too much on sadness because I know Greg wouldn't have approved of that.
00:00:42
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We did lose him too soon and his absence will be acutely felt.
00:00:47
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But I'd rather give attention to the mission and the passion that Greg poured into our shared world of antiques and decorative arts and to reflect for a moment on how to carry that mission forward.
Greg's Editorial Vision and Impact
00:00:59
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For context, my place in the antiques world would be very different without Greg.
00:01:03
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I pitched my first article to Antiques Magazine just as he was transitioning into the editor's chair in 2016.
00:01:12
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And he would have been absolutely justified to be skeptical of a novice silver specialist with
00:01:19
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Pretty thin qualifications and almost no experience, but he didn't show it.
00:01:25
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Instead, he made clear to me, as he did consistently for as long as I knew him, that his magazine was going to be pitching a big tent and that I was welcome to come in.
00:01:40
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he wanted to welcome everyone into that tent.
00:01:43
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He had worked at publications with quite different approaches like House and Garden and Modern Magazine.
00:01:53
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And to be clear, he always found antiques and particularly American antiques fascinating and inspiring.
00:02:00
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But he wasn't one to miss the forest for the trees.
00:02:03
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Greg saw the potential for the magazine Antiques to be a vehicle for, I think, a much broader kind of storytelling around material culture.
00:02:14
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He didn't have a religious respect for the artificial partitions between antiques versus lifestyle or interior design or art.
00:02:24
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In fact, when he assumed the editor position, he said, quote, I respect the word antiques in our title, but don't want to be captive to it.
00:02:33
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The things I want to explore will not be determined by their age.
00:02:36
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Fundamentally, I am interested in telling good stories, in showing how the things around us reflect our culture.
Balancing Tradition and Modernity
00:02:45
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I think Greg walked and helped the magazine to figure out how to walk a tightrope.
00:02:52
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It's honestly a very fine line between, on the one hand, monomaniacal fixation on esoteric minutiae around antique objects, which quickly loses any pretense of cultural relevance and power.
00:03:07
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And personally, I fall on that side of the line all too often.
00:03:12
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And on the other hand, capitulation to a kind of superficial and transient material culture, which obsesses over celebrity and styling and presentation and loses sight of the heart and the soul of great craftsmanship.
00:03:33
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Antiques magazine has teetered on that tightrope, as have so many museums and galleries and organizations.
00:03:40
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But if you've read the magazine during Greg's tenure, I think you've seen a very compelling and sincere effort.
00:03:48
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And I'd like to think that Curious Objects has played a role in finding that balance.
00:03:52
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From day one, Greg supported my proposal to start a podcast.
00:03:57
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Neither of us knew exactly what that might look like or how it might change the face of the magazine.
00:04:03
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But Greg's love for the community and the objects he cherished was always greater than the fear of change.
Future Vision for Antiques
00:04:12
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Being a magazine editor isn't easy, especially when your subject matter is fighting for recognition in this ruthless attention economy.
00:04:23
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And so many others have chased short-term promises at the expense of their passions.
00:04:29
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But Greg held to the belief that careful and deliberate engagement with objects in their stories justifies the effort.
00:04:40
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A lot of people in the antiques world are living in the past, and that's not always a bad thing.
00:04:44
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After all, our whole discipline is about understanding people who came before us.
00:04:48
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But I think it's fair to say that Greg wasn't stuck in the past, but just the opposite.
00:04:56
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He was stuck imagining a future that he wanted to bring about.
00:05:02
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I hope Curious Objects can be part of the larger project of bringing about that future.
00:05:07
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And you listening now are right at the center of it.
Final Reflections and Gratitude
00:05:10
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I say thank you a lot on this show.
00:05:14
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And it's not forced or artificial.
00:05:16
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I'm sincerely thankful for the time that you give to me, to my guests, to the objects we explore.
00:05:23
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And I know it meant the world to Greg that you wanted to come along for the ride.
00:05:29
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We'll have another curious object for you next week, but for now, be well.
00:05:34
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And give the gift of your attention to the people and things that mean something to you.