Milton Esterow

Milton Esterow (July 28, 1928 – October 3, 2025) was an American art journalist and publisher. He wrote for The New York Times and co-owned the magazine ARTnews.

Background Growing up in Brooklyn, Esterow attended Brooklyn College and started writing for the New York Times while still a student. He joined the newspaper in 1945 as a copy boy and began reporting in 1948.

In the early 1960s, Esterow discovered a niche in the area of cultural news, bringing an investigative style to a part of newspaper journalism that had previously been devoted to reviews of exhibits and biographical profiles of important personalities. He became known for his reporting on artwork looted by Nazis. In a review, Stuart Fleming called it "absorbing" and "excellently researched". He left the Times in 1972 when he purchased ArtNEWS, though he returned after he sold the magazine in 2014. He continued to contribute to the paper , writing on a Royal typewriter.

ARTnews Milton and Judith Esterow owned America's oldest continually published art magazine ARTnews from 1972 to 2014. While the monthly was devoted to the American art scene in general, Milton Esterow invented a new style of investigative journalism in the art world and doubled the magazine's circulation. He is considered to have been an innovator in this field, especially as regards art theft and the restitution of works taken illegally during World War II.

Esterow worked as a writer, publisher, and editor-in-chief of the periodical, where his goal was to make it the world's largest circulated arts magazine. He sought to make the magazine's coverage accessible to a general audience. Scholarly articles with footnotes, common in the magazine before 1972, ceased to appear, while Esterow gave more coverage to personalities and the developments of the art market.

The annual feature listing the "world's top 200 art collectors" was accepted by many in the art world as a prestigious ranking. Others criticized the magazine's method of polling in order to determine "Ten Best Living Artists".

Awards George Polk Award for cultural reporting, awarded twice College Art Association Award

Book collection Esterow donated his collection of art books to Brooklyn College Library.