“I’m here about the Rembrandt,” said the older man carrying a brown-paper package up to the art gallery’s front desk. Directed to a table in the back, he unwrapped his treasure.
The woman who came to greet him was the one who would decipher its value. Her name is Shayla M. Alarie, and she faces someone like this man almost every day in her role as the director of antique and modern prints at Davidson Galleries.
Miranda K. Metcalf is the one at the front desk, but she is not simply the receptionist. She is the director of contemporary prints. Like Alarie, she has a master’s degree in art history and handles everything from sales, client relations, and exhibition management to price research, artist research, writing educational materials, PR, authentication, inventory management, and consignment management. They’ve co-curated the history-spanning new show opening Thursday, Pick Your Poison: Politics in Print.
On this particular day, the man showed Alarie his midsize Rembrandt etching of a man in a hat. He explained that he bought it at a gallery in Canada 30 years ago, where “the guy told me that there are only three or four around.”
Alarie said nothing at first.
For whatever reasons, the owners of antique prints frequently are older men. Meanwhile, Alarie and Metcalf are youthful women who are experts in their field and often have to bear bad news.
