Under editor Jeff Schaire, Art & Antiques published two stories that earned a great deal of publicity in the mainstream media.

But the magazine's greatest publicity coup was Schaire's story on Andrew Wyeth's so-called Helga paintings, hitherto unknown nude portraits that landed the discovery on the covers of both Time and Newsweek, having raised the implication that artist and subject were in an intimate relationship documented, and the possibility of a large body of as-yet-unknown Wyeth masterpieces.

The magazine's prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s was reflected in a 1991 case of theft at the Macklowe Gallery, a dealer in Tiffany lamps, jewelry, and antiques, especially items in the Art Nouveau style.

At the close of the business day, a robber was able to gain access to the gallery on upper Madison Avenue simply by claiming to be a bike messenger with a parcel from Art & Antiques and was able to abscond with about $80,000.00 worth of jewelry.

In his contemporary commentary on the period, the writer Tom Wolfe saw Art & Antiques and other publications as part of what he called a "plutographic" movement.

Why else do you think people subscribe to magazines like House and Garden, Architectural Digest, Town and Country, Connoisseur, Art and Antiques?

Under founding editor Jeffrey Schaire, Art & Antiques began a tradition of publishing an annual issue devoted to the "100 Top Collectors."

Notable writers have included Hilton Kramer, former art critic for The New York Times, and authors such as John Updike, Françoise Gilot, and Hugh Kenner.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, editor Jeffrey Schaire strived to bring in notable authors, in the hope that the magazine would be unpretentious and interesting for a general audience.