Hi, it’s James Tarmy, Pursuits’ arts and culture (and other things) columnist. I tend to write a lot about contemporary art mostly because that’s where the action is: It’s rare that a 2,000-year-old statue makes headlines.

But there are exceptions.

This weekend, the Art Institute of Chicago will open Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection, a sweeping, thematic survey of 58 objects dating from roughly the fifth century BCE to the fourth century CE.

The ultra-secret Torlonia Collection had been hidden away for about 70 years.  Photographer: Federica Valabrega for Bloomberg Businessweek

Well before the show opened, its existence made international headlines. Not only are the pieces world-class–the Torlonia Collection is widely believed to be the best private collection of Roman statues in Italy–the occasion marks the first time that the extremely secretive collection will be seen in North America. 

But that’s not the half of it. It’s not even the 10th of it! The aristocratic Torlonia family’s collection includes 622 objects, the majority of which have been hidden away for decades, carefully shielded from the public eye. Adding to the embarrassment of riches, the family also owns the Villa Albani Torlonia, a private, 20-acre neoclassical compound in the heart of Rome, where more than a thousand additional antiquities are on display.

We went inside the laboratory where every piece in the collection is painstakingly conserved. Photographer: Federica Valabrega for Bloomberg Businessweek

It all sounds kind of incredible in the true sense of the word, but I can confirm that it exists. Earlier this year I went to Rome and got a very rare glimpse of the collection in its totality.

Once I’d made it into the warehouse where it’s stored—set in the back of a building in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood—everything was clean and neatly arranged, with row upon row of spectacular statues, placed either on shelves or pallets. But the relative order of the warehouse didn’t detract from just how jaw-dropping the collection was to see in its near totality. People often call objects “museum quality”; this was an actual museum, at that moment available to an audience of one.

And the Villa Albani Torlonia was even crazier. Here’s a fun fact from my visit to the villa, which has basically been unaltered for a century: Many of the sculptures were put on rotating pedestals with cute little wooden handles, so that they spin for the visitor, rather than the other way around.

While I was in Rome I reviewed two wildly different new luxury hotels. Photographer: Chris Dalton

So, I hope you can make it to the show in Chicago. If you can’t, you’ll have another chance to see it at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, where it travels next; after that, it heads to the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal.

Or, you know, you can read my piece about it right here.

Connect with James via e-mail.

There’d be worse ways to spend it than on this massive Santa Barbara ranch with 2,000 feet of private beach. Photographer: Eric Foote

Maybe you shorted Tesla; maybe you earned it in a slightly less prescient way. Whatever the case, if you happen to be sitting on a very large pile of money and would like to put it into real estate, you could do worse than looking at Rancho Dos Pueblos, which just hit the market. Set just north of Santa Barbara, California, the 219-acre oceanfront ranch has one of the last private beaches on the coast. It also has two gorgeous houses, an exceptionally rare abalone farm (a lifetime supply of abalone? Sign me up), agricultural tracts and well over a dozen other structures, including houses, outbuildings, sheds and barns.

Every time I publish an article about million-dollar sports memorabilia (and for better or worse, I do this fairly often), I inevitably hear from readers the next day. “How could anyone spend a million dollars on … that?” they’ll write, referring to a pair of sneakers or a helmet or a jersey. “It’s just junk.”

Each jersey is coming to auction for $10 million. And no, there’s not a two-for-one discount. Source: Sotheby's

My standard response is to ask the person which collectibles are inherently valuable. A purse? You mean a molded sack of pickled cow skin? Or a watch? That is to say, a cumbersome, antiquated machine that does a fraction of what a smartphone can do … but much more slowly? Or a gold-and-diamond necklace? Meaning a string of not particularly shiny rocks, held together by a very soft, effectively useless metal? OK!

My point isn’t that status symbols are dumb, because in a lot of instances they are delightful and life-enhancing. My point is that all of these objects are valuable because we think they’re valuable; for some, sports memorabilia is no different.

Eighty for Brady? More like $9 million. Source: Sotheby's

I’d actually take it a step further. Very expensive sports memorabilia is often associated with a specific game moment that makes it extra special, imbuing the object with meaning in exactly the same way that a family heirloom is more valuable than the same piece of used jewelry in a shop window. There’s a sentimental attachment, in other words, and isn’t that the most valuable asset of them all?

Let’s not unpack (unpeel?) this one, though—a crypto tycoon paid $6.2 million for this duct-taped banana. Photographer: Sotheby's

It actually can be. Last week I wrote a piece about how “one of a kind” pieces of sports memorabilia have rocketed into a price category of their very own. “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a ticket’s worth a million memories,” a collector told me. “So if you have a jersey of somebody that you watched in the game, and maybe even during that game they said hi to you or gave you a high-five, the intrinsic value of that is so much deeper than just looking to buy something as an investment.”

The best airport restaurants in the world, according to business power travelers. Illustration by Rose Wong for Bloomberg Pursuits

You might consider this piece on airport fine dining a handy guide (and it is!). But it’s also, at least to my mind, a body blow to the argument for airport lounges. Why wait in line for a slightly nicer seat and a soggy buffet if there’s a chef behind a Michelin-starred restaurant doing barbecue around the corner?