Transcript
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: This will be a very brief and unusual episode.
Speaker: Greg Surio, the editor in chief of the magazine Antiques, has passed away after a long illness.
Speaker: We're going to postpone this week's planned episode and take a moment to acknowledge and pay tribute to him.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: And now I don't want to dwell too much on sadness because I know Greg wouldn't have approved of that.
Speaker: We did lose him too soon and his absence will be acutely felt.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: For context, my place in the antiques world would be very different without Greg.
Speaker: I pitched my first article to Antiques Magazine just as he was transitioning into the editor's chair in 2016.
Speaker: And he would have been absolutely justified to be skeptical of a novice silver specialist with
Speaker: Pretty thin qualifications and almost no experience, but he didn't show it.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: he wanted to welcome everyone into that tent.
Speaker: He had worked at publications with quite different approaches like House and Garden and Modern Magazine.
Speaker: And to be clear, he always found antiques and particularly American antiques fascinating and inspiring.
Speaker: But he wasn't one to miss the forest for the trees.
Speaker: Greg saw the potential for the magazine Antiques to be a vehicle for, I think, a much broader kind of storytelling around material culture.
Speaker: He didn't have a religious respect for the artificial partitions between antiques versus lifestyle or interior design or art.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: The things I want to explore will not be determined by their age.
Speaker: Fundamentally, I am interested in telling good stories, in showing how the things around us reflect our culture.
Speaker: I think Greg walked and helped the magazine to figure out how to walk a tightrope.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: And personally, I fall on that side of the line all too often.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: Antiques magazine has teetered on that tightrope, as have so many museums and galleries and organizations.
Speaker: But if you've read the magazine during Greg's tenure, I think you've seen a very compelling and sincere effort.
Speaker: And I'd like to think that Curious Objects has played a role in finding that balance.
Speaker: From day one, Greg supported my proposal to start a podcast.
Speaker: Neither of us knew exactly what that might look like or how it might change the face of the magazine.
Speaker: But Greg's love for the community and the objects he cherished was always greater than the fear of change.
Speaker: Being a magazine editor isn't easy, especially when your subject matter is fighting for recognition in this ruthless attention economy.
Speaker: And so many others have chased short-term promises at the expense of their passions.
Speaker: But Greg held to the belief that careful and deliberate engagement with objects in their stories justifies the effort.
Speaker: A lot of people in the antiques world are living in the past, and that's not always a bad thing.
Speaker: After all, our whole discipline is about understanding people who came before us.
Speaker: But I think it's fair to say that Greg wasn't stuck in the past, but just the opposite.
Speaker: He was stuck imagining a future that he wanted to bring about.
Speaker: I hope Curious Objects can be part of the larger project of bringing about that future.
Speaker: And you listening now are right at the center of it.
Speaker: I say thank you a lot on this show.
Speaker: And it's not forced or artificial.
Speaker: I'm sincerely thankful for the time that you give to me, to my guests, to the objects we explore.
Speaker: And I know it meant the world to Greg that you wanted to come along for the ride.
Speaker: We'll have another curious object for you next week, but for now, be well.
Speaker: And give the gift of your attention to the people and things that mean something to you.
