Dear Reader,

As a kid, I didn’t get to do much traveling. The family trips we took were always by car to visit relatives, somehow miraculously fitting seven of us into a big two-toned Oldsmobile. My dad used to roll down the window, just a sliver, to blow out the smoke from his cigar. On our way to Chicago, where my Italian grandparents lived, we usually passed through St. Louis. We never stayed there, but sometimes we got stuck in traffic and detoured into the city on a boulevard with shops, theaters and bright lights, with cars honking and skidding on the wet pavement in the early evening mist. I loved the handsome red-brick houses all lined up, some of them lit up with Christmas lights, as most often we were traveling during the holidays.

This is when my mom would roll down her window and sigh heavily, “I love the smells of the city.” It became a family running joke, and we teased her mercilessly with fake coughing and choking while holding our noses. 

I’m with Mom: After being raised in a tiny southern Missouri town, I loved every minute in the city. Chicago, where my mom grew up, was a thrill beyond belief—Lake Michigan was the ocean, the Chicago River, a canal in Venice, and the Chicago L was better than a Disneyland ride. 

This was the extent of my traveling as a youth, and I felt beyond fortunate to have had the experience; it enriched my life in so many ways. My exposure to the Chicago Art Institute played a huge part in my lifelong passion for the arts. The different cultures and diversity in the metropolis opened my eyes to a whole other world. Travel naturally elevates one’s tastes and experiences, even if it’s not that far from home. 

In this issue, our Ask Babs columnist answers a reader who wonders if they should be traveling to art fairs and biennials around the world to enhance their burgeoning art career. A resounding yes, Babs replies, in a cautious manner though—she recognizes not everyone has the means to go jet-setting and suggests the next best thing: visiting websites, watching films, and reading about foreign places. 

Our Summer Travels issue offers just that. New York contributor Sarah Sargent focuses on the positive in this year’s Whitney Biennial, an otherwise “meh” show. LA contributor Alexia Lewis was invited to Richmond, Virginia, to attend a ceramics arts conference where she finds the art community’s way of dealing with their glaring Confederate past surprising and hopeful. Patricia Watts takes us to Italy for the Venice Biennale; this year the art gets real. But if you’re an Angeleno just staying put, a short trip to Orange County might be worth your while. Writer Liz Goldner discovers California gold at the Hilbert Museum’s newly expanded space. The massive California scene-painting collection will certainly take you on a Golden State journey. And we invite you to take that journey with us too.