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Well, my first fully functional day back in New York was not bad at all, I thought to myself. I have not lost my touch. The City is still my oyster. (3/28/09)

LAND OF OPPORTUNITY, USA
    I’ve said for a long time that the best way to see the world is to spend two weeks in New York. That may sound strange coming from a New Yorker who has spent a lot of his life traveling around the world. As a collector of sorts, mostly of what one calls “tribal arts,” I’ve combed faraway places for textiles and artifacts. But the most extraordinary finds are at my fingertips, so to speak. Just yesterday I found three scarves from the Central Anti-Atlas Mountains of Morocco, of very fine wool with widely spaced red-brown patches made with henna. At another dealer’s outlet, about a thousand feet away, I found three textiles from the Southern Philippines; Mindanao, to be precise. The Moro people there wear sarongs of silk with tapestry-woven bands running vertically and horizontally to divide the surface into panels. The sarong I bought made use of the ikat technique, which is unusual and must derive from neighboring Indonesia. A couple of hours earlier The Museum for African Art on Broadway just below Houston Street sold me a copper bracelet of the type known as Manilla, found in West Africa and used as money. They are horseshoe-shaped, with trumpet-like ends. I had bracelets of this sort but none the size of the museum piece which has a nice speckled-green patina—a sign of age.
    Speaking of African currency, a few days ago I had the good fortune (no pun intended) to come across examples of iron money from North Cameroon in the form of a torque, that is, just short of a complete circle, about six inches in diameter. I’ve been on the lookout for African currency for some time and this type from North Cameroon had never been seen until this week. I felt the thrill of discovery that a paleontologist must feel coming across an entirely new species. Right here in New York.
    A friend of mine who travels to Southeast Asia at least twice a year called to tell me she had textiles I might like to buy. I couldn’t wait. I ended up with several batik shoulder pieces, or selendang , from southern Sumatra. The designs, often taken from Chinese sources, are stamped on fine cotton. These batiks are worn on special occasions such as festivals or religious functions. At about the same time I acquired four textiles from the same part of the world, a dealer was selling at half-price because he was moving to a new location. The four textiles consisted of a large Sumba blanket, which was different from other Sumba blankets by its overall pattern and Borneo-like effects; a sash from Bali worn by a youngster going through the teeth-filing ritual; a shoulder piece from the Minangkabau with gold threads on a deep red ground; and a textile, still under study for the dealer was not clear in his account. It is a waist or shoulder-cloth, long and narrow, dyed indigo blue with a five-inch band at either end, decorated in a discrete pattern with gold thread and edged by small lead weights. I think it must come from northern Sumatra. Part of the fun in collecting is in tracking down precise origins and meanings. Fellow collectors are often helpful in such cases, and sharing finds with like-minded friends is always a pleasure. Another textile I bought did not pose any problem. The Chin blanket from Burma or Myanmar, as the country is now called, is illustrated in Sylvia Fraser-Lu’s book, Handwoven Textiles of Southeast Asia . It is a sort of open plaid of broad bands of solid lacquer-red alternating with finely detailed patterns.
    As though to crown this short period of discovery, I visited the renovated Ancient Greek Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was there on the day that the space opened to the public and what a delight it was to walk through the galleries flooded with light and view the cleaned and restored statuary