Artrovert — A Show About the Art All Around Us

What is an Artrovert?

An Artrovert is someone who loves art and is an extrovert and wants to share his passion with everyone. An Artrovert seeks out beautiful and fascinating things. He delights in hobnobbing with the connoisseurs, experts, and ordinary folks who share his passion–as well as the artists and designers who create it. An Artrovert is just as happy scrounging for overlooked gems at a flea market as holding court with museum curators over cocktails.

An Artrovert gets palpably excited, feels a quiver of joy, an electric sensation when discovering new things. He’s gripped with an infectious sense of wonder at images and objects that resonate with him, that he can’t wait to share. He’s determined to spread the gospel that good design is the everyday art that surrounds us and is accessible to everyone.

And an Artrovert travels to the ends of the Earth, because he can’t get enough of beautiful and interesting things that excite his sense of curiosity and wonder.

Nicholas "Nicho" Lowry

Nicholas Lowry–”Nicho” to his many, many friends–is an art dealer, auctioneer, and appraiser. He’s part expert, part enthusiast. Nicho is like an eccentric uncle, childish yet erudite, restrained but eager, delighted to share with you the things that excite him: design in its myriad forms. He’s a third-generation president of his family’s auction business, and has been a fixture on PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow” for 30 years. His custom-tailored plaid suits and signature Dali-esque mustache make him instantly recognizable to fans. He loves talking to people on the Roadshow, at parties, in galleries–that’s the extrovert part of the Artrovert.

Nicho’s New York apartment is a museum in its own right. It’s a modern day wunderkammer, a cabinet of curiosities, stuffed with his idiosyncratic collections–of posters, busts of famous people from Beethoven to Elvis Presley to Napoleon to Uncle Sam, suits of armor, taxidermy, toy tin robots, contemporary oil paintings, antique technology. and of course dozens of bespoke English suits. He’s deeply knowledgeable and has connections everywhere. And his passion takes him across the globe in search of great art, fascinating people, unique experiences, and of course cold refreshing drinks.

03SEASON 01

USA

Chapter One — The Graphic Identity

“The Four Freedoms aren't just paintings — they are a blueprint of American values.”

From Stockbridge to Washington D.C.: a stop at the Norman Rockwell Museum, an afternoon at the Summer Arts & Crafts Show, the one surviving original of We Can Do It! at the National Museum of American History, and a vexillologist in suburban Maryland reading the suburbs' flags like sentences. With Emory Douglas, former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, offering a political counterpoint.

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ANYWAY???

Why does a 1917 recruitment poster still define the American image? Nicho sits down with Judy Cutler at the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, Rhode Island, then ducks out for a corn chowder (dairy-free) and a cold beer.

LONDON

Bulldogs, bespoke & Cool Britannia

From the bulldog stare and Keep Calm wartime stoicism to Sex Pistols safety pins and 1960s Carnaby Street; a finale on Savile Row, where Nicho commissions a tweed jacket loud enough to be heard from across the Atlantic.

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TOKYO

From Hokusai to Harajuku

The Japan that whispers — restrained pottery and simple design — sitting one street over from the Japan that screams: Hello Kitty, manga, Harajuku, vending-machine maximalism. Plus: why collecting Japanese design in America has never been easier.

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GERMANY

Bauhaus, blackletter & the affordable masterpiece

Political posters from the 1920s and 1930s that still hit like a hammer. Fraktur and the long shadow of gothic type. Porsche, BMW, Audi, Mercedes — and the Bauhaus vision of design in everyday life, where you can still pick up a beautiful home object without remortgaging the apartment.

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PRAGUE

Mucha's children, in motion

A city best known as the birthplace of iconic Art Nouveau through Alphonse Mucha, whose modern-day heirs are driving an explosion of creativity in posters, advertising, and motion design.

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SAN FRANCISCO

Counter-culture & Silicon

From psychedelic Fillmore posters to the birth of West Coast screen design. Exploring the city that taught typography to glow and interfaces to feel.

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PARIS

Affiches & Ateliers

The city where street posters became high art. Hunting down original Chéret lithographs in subterranean galleries beneath the rue de Seine.

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