How did politicians ever get their messages out to voters prior to the days of television? A display of political buttons and other presidential campaign materials on view at the Cape Fear Museum provides the answer. Sixteen of the 20 paintings of hummingbirds that Heade intended as illustrations for a lavish book are on loan to the university from the Manoogian Collection. A major survey of Japanese paintings by master artists from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century opens at Japan Society Gallery - its exclusive East Coast venue - on March 9. The Cleveland Museum of Art will host an exhibition highlighting the private collection of Cleveland native and Grammy Award-winning record producer Tommy LiPuma. The emphasis after 23 energetic years is still on the furniture, accessories, folk art and classic country Americana. The 220-plus exhibitors show it and they sell it. Although it has formal roots, Gramercy does maintain a strong eclectic presence that surely pleases the downtown crowds. Sanford Smith has continually groomed and manicured ADAA's The Art Show, nurturing it all along the way to achieve its current robust stature. A Sioux wood effigy feast bowl went to the US trade for $81,260, while a San Ildefonso blackware jar sold to an American private buyer for $57,360. The Sunday morning sale attracted buyers from Maine to Pennsylvania to the fashionable Park Plaza salesroom that Skinner's executive vice president Stephen L. Fletcher says is slowly but surely developing a strong retail following. Applause swept the gallery when the handsome Chinese screen sold after a heated telephone bidding contest. The Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum will present the first full-scale retrospective of Dresser's work, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the designer's passing. A rare stenciled bed cloth attracted national attention from folk art dealers and collectors at a small country auction in Maine. Top lot of Skinner's record-breaking $2.7 million sale of European and Asian furniture and decorative arts was a dark green jade mountain carved intricately with pavilions, granaries, figures, water buffalo and foliage. Brisk bidding was witnessed for many of the 1,000 cataloged lots at Ron Bourgeault's Northeast Auctions sale this past weekend, March 6 and 7, with the auction house releasing a $3.4 million total for the two days. The Tolland Antiques Show packs all of the excitement of a major country Americana event into a one-day small town New England show. The heart of the Manhattan's Fashion Center district came alive when vintage fashion dealers from all over the country brought their wares to the Seventh New York Vintage Fashion and Antique Textile Show and Sale. Works on Paper, an art show whose name explains it all, opened to an enthusiastic crowd on Wednesday evening, February 25, with a gala preview during which at least one $1.5 million sale was recorded. The High Museum of Art presents "Glories of Ancient Egypt," featuring more than 200 works of art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston that evoke the splendor of Egyptian art and funerary practices over a period of 4,200 years. In 1854, art collector Alfred Bruyas invited Courbet to spend time in Montpellier, where the artist painted his masterpiece, "The Meeting," in which patron Bruyas is seen welcoming the artist to his town. The painting is one of the treasures of the Musee Fabre and a key work in any understanding of Nineteenth Century modernity. An exhibition featuring more than 30 Roman portrait heads, stone figures and relief fragments, dating from the first Century BC to the third Century AD will be at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts from March 13 through July 4. While both shows give well-deserved play to the artist and his place in Twentieth Century American painting, they underscore the vital importance of the collector to Avery and to the institutions that hold his work. The Morris Museum travels back to the time of the flappers, bootleg gin and Model T Fords in its upcoming exhibition. Boston College will present the first exhibition to "make visible" the Latin American influences that lend Matta's work its distinct aesthetic. The Honolulu Academy of Arts will be the only venue anywhere in the world to show masterpieces from 28 Japanese collections and one American collection. The extremely rare, life-size plaster sculpture depicts the famed Eighteenth Century writer and philosopher Voltaire. On opening night, New York fine arts dealer Robert Simon sold an El Greco painting, "The Penitent Magdalene," offered at $1 million. Many of the stands serve up a polished look with English and Continental furniture popular among the Park Avenue crowd, although swank specialties also generate quite a bit of attention. The show retains many of the "polished" dealers that have been setting up in Greenwich since the early days, dealers who know what the local clientele wants and deliver the goods. "Cranberry opalescent water pitchers, sugar shakers, syrups and pickle casters are still at the top of the market and show no signs of slowing down." "Night Anchorage at Whampoa" beat its high estimate of $200,000 to sell for $309,900 to a private collector. Highlights included Captain America Comics #1 Mile High pedigree, which sold for $64,400. Large auction, large crowds and large price as Ron Bourgeault posts an impressive $3.4 million total. Large auction, large crowds and large prices as Ron Bourgeault posts an impressive $3.4 million total. On view in New Jersey, these early sewn and hooked rugs created in the humble dwellings of colonial and post-colonial America provided warmth and color to many a dark, low-ceilinged room. After gaining wide notice for his photographic exploration of the suburbs surrounding Denver and Colorado Springs, Colo., Adams turned his camera to the open spaces that had met the West's first explorers and settlers. Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum are organized into an exhibition featuring 61 paintings, sculptures and photographs. The trade has lost one of the nation's leading conservators and authenticators of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century furniture, and a fine man. Cord Shows Ltd debuted its first annual Cross River Winter Antiques Show to nearly 1,000 people. Against an economic backdrop that continues to sputter, collectors showed up to support the show with a hefty and steady gate on both days. All three paintings came from the estate of J.C. Rhodes and sold to the same dealer bidding by telephone. A dealer from Westchester County, N.Y., won an English walnut chest on chest. The Pook & Pook sale was attended by a record number of bidders with more than 700 registered. This masterful Nineteenth Century landscape painter is the subject of an overdue retrospective at the Amon Carter Museum. On view at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum is a series of dreamlike images from Ann Ginsburgh Hofkin's travels in the United States and Israel. The Mint Museum of Craft + Design presents 80 contemporary gold objects, including jewelry, hollowware, vessels and small sculptures. Original documents, photographs and items that endure in the national conscience are compelling touchstones in an exhibition currently on view at Hartford University's Museum of Political Life. Schwarz took the antiques business founded by his father in 1930 and turned it into one of the most respected art galleries in the United States. In Christie's salesrooms, 136 works of art sold for more than $1 million, led by Amedeo Modigliani's "Nu couché," which fetched $26,887,500. There were at least 2,000 visitors to the show, many who came both days. Marilyn Gould's last show in Wilton had been scheduled for December 7 but was ultimately canceled due to a snowstorm. "One of the dealers suggested I change my name," she said with a chuckle, "so God won't know where I am." The Philadelphia Queen Anne-form pewter teapot, circa 1752, bore the touch mark of Cornelius Bradford. Picked from a New Haven home within the past month, it sold for $104,500. The auctions were closely followed by collectors, dealers and institutions worldwide and totaled $20,061,100. Although artist George Catlin sketched the tribe's chief Clermont in 1834, the material culture of the Osage remains little known among art historians today. A pair of soft paste vases with six character Qianlong sealmarks hammered at $299,200. |
