The complete collection of around 5,000 objects matches up in quality - if not in quantity - with great institutional collections. A special exhibition at the American Textile History Museum presents all the fun and fantasy of a tropical paradise through the art of classic Hawaiian shirts. Through six exhibitions, The Albany Institute of History & Art explores the beauty, technique and legacy of decorative arts that uniquely link the Capital Region to the international community. During the past year, CMA acquired and received as gifts a number of significant items. In addition to interesting smalls, jewelry and glass, the show offered a large number of decorated room settings, each with its own unusual highlights. The nation's capital has many traditions -- some political, some related to historical events, and some as refreshing as cherry blossoms. Are you ready? We've got the scoop on all the activities for 2004. The firm conducted its first-ever motorcycle auction featuring Harley-Davidson, Indian, Moto Guzzi, BMW, Triumph, and Norton. The Aldrich sold more than 300 objects representing the remainder of its collection in order to further the Ridgefield, Conn.-based museum's mission of exhibiting the work of living artists. At Christie's, prints and multiples totaled nearly $5 million with 90 percent sold by dollar. The sale added one more result to a year that had already been flamboyant on the print front. The Textile Museum highlights the powerful aesthetics and significant trends characteristic of Navajo weavings. The main focus of the show, beginning January 19, will be on Dutch and Flemish Seventeenth Century paintings. This Dallas Museum of Art exhibit is part of "Quilt Mania," a citywide collaboration among 11 area cultural institutions. Objects in the exhibition, on view in New Orleans, were selected to illuminate the Pharaonic concepts of the afterlife, sustenance and renewal, and the relationship with the divine. The winds howled, snow blew, cars and trucks slipped and slid, but the show still went on - collectors, dealers and some promoters are a hardy bunch. More than 40 dealers gathered for the annual Wethersfield Antiques Show and enjoyed two busy days and a well-attended preview party. The Delaware Valley College proved to be a location for fertile sales during the 74th Bucks County Antiques Dealers Association Show. The three-day event featured a vast offering of rare lamps, as well as French and English cameo glass, Tiffany, cut glass, Victorian art glass and many examples by Lalique and Steuben. Other offerings included a Teague's Nocturne radio, which fetched $103,840.The radio had a price tag of $350 in 1936. The bottle, with a dark purple bottom section, lightening toward the middle and darkening again at the shoulders and mouth, was termed "exceptional" by auctioneer and American glass expert Norman Heckler. What was a simple recording of the construction of a building turned out to be a story played out against the sky above 1930s New York City. The scope of the exhibition is from circa 1480 until the 1950s, with the majority of the works dating from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. For 500 years, the teapot has served as the spouted, steaming engine of hospitality and has evolved as a work of art, as this Mint Museum of Craft and Design exhibit proves. The Bruce Museum presents, in partnership with the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 38 Dutch masterpiece genre paintings in the 'Age of Vermeer.' The Peabody Essex Museum's 31st annual antiques show made a spectacular return to the museum this year after a three-year stint at Salem State College. In the 18 years since Sanford Smith launched his inaugural Modernism, the show has seen dramatic growth in both stature and maturity. If you want to see a bunch of happy people, go to the Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street, and visit the Winter Antiques Show, on view until January 25. Nonstop bidding via the Internet and ten telephone lines was noted by Antiquorum, as well as an exceptionally large number of written bids. The Haraden-Ropes family Chippendale bombé chest of drawers realized a record price when it was knocked down to Albert Sack, bidding on behalf of a Northeast Auctions client. The third highest lot was a rare carved and painted pine American eagle by Wilhelm Schimmel, which brought $108,000 from Marietta, Penn. dealer Harry Hartman. Three remarkable women who lived and worked together to become leading American Victorian-age illustrators are the subjects of a welcome exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum. There to record the scene, and so many others during the subsequent months, was 26-year-old Army photographer Raymond D'Addario. Prints by Paul Sandby, considered one of the most influential English landscape artists working during the latter half of the Eighteenth Century, are showcased at the museum. Kodner Gallery will feature 100 works by artists who spent years traveling, exploring and illustrating the Western expansion. One of two events under the Stella Management banner, the show was the subject of a great deal of attention from the throngs of dealers and collectors in the Big Apple during Americana Week. This year's event, which opened to a packed house, was a barn-burner, with excellent business reported by exhibitors across a spectrum of specialties. Sales were robust through the course of the ten-day show, especially for dealers in a broad spectrum of American furniture, painting and folk art, who benefited from the influx of collectors in town for Americana Week. The Ch'ien Lung period piece was consigned by a private Connecticut collector who traded in China and Japan in the 1930s. The event marked the return of a partnership between Jerry Cohen and David Rago, who, along with Suzanne Perrault, put together an exciting three-session sale. The charming, realistically modeled piece is one of only two or three known to exist. The rare Renaissance period carved marble fireplace surround attributed to the workshop of Mathieu Jacquet sold for $247,500. |
