The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

What’s the best way to get rid of old portrait paintings?

Perspective by
Columnist
April 16, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. EDT
Alexandria, Va., editor and writer Jamie Gold with two of eight old family oil paintings that wound up with her. Her great-grandmother Adelaide is on the left, and her grandmother Madeline is on the right. She doesn't have room and wonders about the best way to get rid of them. (John Nelson)
4 min

The other day I almost bought a neon sign to hang in our living room. When I say I “almost bought” one, I mean I bid $275 on a sign that eventually went for $4,000. I wasn’t even close.

Even so, I’d already planned where I was going to put it and how I was going to hang it. It was a really cool sign, about 3 feet tall by 2 feet wide. Its fretwork of thin glass tubes was bent and shaped to resemble an old-fashioned bellows camera. I guess it was once hanging outside a camera shop back in the Speed Graphic era.