After more than six years of extensive renovation, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, housed in the historic 1836 Patent Office Building, reopened to the public on July 1. What do palmetto trees, rattlesnakes and the Statue of Liberty have in common? The answer is revealed with a visit to "American Visions of Liberty & Freedom," on view at the National Heritage Museum, July 1 to October 15. Ceramics in America, now in its fifth year of publication, is a lively forum that is interdisciplinary in approach and of interest to amateurs and professionals alike. "The Culture Wars Continue" might be the unofficial theme of American Furniture 2005, published earlier this year by Chipstone Foundation, which annually wrestles with the question of how best to study American furniture. The Heckscher Museum of Art will present an exhibition of watercolors by Arthur Dove July 11 to September 3, showing the best examples of the artist's work from 1930 through the mid-1940s. Sam Fogg has been invited by the Museum fur Islamische Kunst, Berlin, to present a fine collection of Islamic calligraphy from July 14 to August 31, featuring more than 25 examples of Islamic calligraphy and illumination. Amidst the few printed words in his recently published book, Americana dealer David Wheatcroft proclaims: "It has been my good fortune to have handled some extraordinary pieces of American Folk Art over the past 25 years." Fifteen years strong, Jean Sinenberg's annual Hamptons Spring Garden, Antiques and Interior Design Show and Sale at the Bridgehampton Community House is still popular with customers. The Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C. presents the exhibition, "Artists in their Studios,"on view through October 27. The first weekend of June is the opening of antiques show season in the Hamptons. Two shows across the street from one another on the same weekend start it with great gusto. Antiques in the Valley marched through its second year in grand style on June 16-17 with a gate 45 to 50 percent above last year and some real solid sales for some of the 60 exhibitors. Paintings were the story at Kaminski Auctioneers' recent sale where William Bradford's "Arctic Sunset" sold for $471,500. Members of the Merritt family looked on, smiling, as one toy after another from the fabled archives of the Mary Merritt Doll Museum passed to new owners in Noel Barrett's $1.4 million auction. Charting the way as the top lot at the recent sale of Millea Bros., was a signed oil painting by Agathe (Rostel) Roestel that escalated to $72,450 to a phone bidder in Europe. With more than 8,500 selected pieces, Hermann Historica OHG's 50th anniversary auction was one of its largest since its founding. Festive under ordinary circumstances, Wilton Outdoors!, the open-air market managed by Marilyn Gould, started with a surprise birthday party on Saturday morning, June 17, at Allen's Meadows north of Wilton High School. The rains Saturday established new record levels for the area but even so customers came to the collections at the June 24-25 Bridgehampton Historical Society's Antiques and Design in the Hampton's Show. During and after the morning rains, customers came to the East Hampton Historic Society's Mulford Farms Antiques Show and Sale and dealers reported satisfactory sales. Show promoter dmg world media has announced that it has canceled summer editions of its West Palm Beach Antique & Collectibles Show in 2006. Author Robert A. Ellison Jr through his efforts with this recent book, brings potter George Ohr's significant artistic achievements into clear view. The Morgan Library & Museum will commemorate Rembrandt's 400th birthday by mounting two exhibitions, "Celebrating Rembrandt: Etchings from the Morgan" and "From Rembrandt to van Gogh: Dutch Drawings from the Morgan," on view July 15 through October 1. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has been given the Robert L. McNeil Jr Collection of American Presidential china, considered the finest outside the White House. A painted Tibeto Chinese Thangka dated 1479 was the climax of the 31st special auction of Asian art recently conducted at Nagel's when a Chinese buyer agreed to pay $340,000 for it. Bertoia Auctions' recent sale created a collector-charged energy not witnessed in many years and collectors thrilled at the fresh toy, bank and toy collectible offerings. The recent sale of Asian art on www.igavel.com brought a record for the site, with 148 lots selling for $864,600. Sotheby's set a record for an American Indian art object at auction when an early Upper Missouri River man's quilled and pony beaded hide shirt sold to a private collector for $800,000. The focal point for American glass collectors was Green Valley's sixth annual spring catalog sale of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century glass and lighting. Dada, one of the most interesting and influential Twentieth Century art movements, is the focus of a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) through September 11. In Wales the signs are bilingual, with the peculiar Welsh spellings atop the familiar English so it may take visitors a second glance to realize they have arrived at Hay-On-Wye, town of books. A pencil and poster paint on shirt cardboard by Bill Traylor (1854-1947) was the top lot at Slotin Auction's Spring Masterpiece Sale. One might think that the only masks to be found in Cooperstown, N.Y. are the catcher's masks at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Not so. Nearby, at the Fenimore Art Museum, 50 masks of a different order are on display. Now privately owned, Maxfield Parrish's record-setting masterpiece "Daybreak" is on loan to the National Museum of American Illustration (NMAI) through August 25, when it will enter a closed collection. "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," Gustav Klimt's iconlike portrait of a Viennese society beauty amid a glimmering pool of gold, went on public display on July 13 at New York's Neue Galerie, where it remains through September 18. The greatest jazz musicians of all time and the jazz scene of the 1940s through the 1960s are the subject of a new exhibition of photography that opens at the Bruce Museum on July 22. Delicate line drawings by Edouard Manet and brilliantly colored brushstrokes by Pablo Picasso are some of the highlights of a new exhibition, "French Book Art|Livres d'Artistes: Artists and Poets in Dialogue," at The New York Public Library. For hundreds of clock collectors and dealers, the sale of the Rhyne Clock Collection at Mebane Antique Auction Gallery last month was the only place to be. Amoskeag Auction Company's 53rd sale began promptly at 10 am with a standing room only crowd in the auction hall. "The fun's not over," Skinner's chief auctioneer Stephen Fletcher promised after a recent sale of American furniture and decorative arts that tallied $1,947,440. For the last couple of years the weather has not been very kind to the Litchfield County Antiques Show. This year, the heat was coupled with lots of rain during preview and packout. Nearly every category of antiques from Americana to majolica was represented at the long-running Two Rivers Antiques Show. The two-day sale of furniture, art and accessories, held by Pook & Pook Auction Gallery, featured items from area historical societies and museum plus collections from John Gordon and Clarence and Anna Deischer. "Waking Dreams: The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum," will open at the Frick Art Museum on July 29 with paintings, drawings and decorative art objects from the most significant collection outside the United Kingdom. Auctioneer Robert A. Doyle got the surprise of his career when he was inducted into the National Auctioneers Association's Hall of Fame on Saturday, July 15. Louis O. St Aubin, Jr, died Tuesday , July 11, in his New Bedford, Mass home. St Aubin was the owner of Brookside Antiques for more than 40 years and was an expert on Mt Washington Art Glass. "Jacob Lawrence: Three Series of Prints - Genesis, Hiroshima and Toussaint L'Ouverture" will be on view at the Heckscher Museum of Art August 19 through November 5. The Jewish Museum presents "Eva Hesse: Sculpture," the first major New York City museum exhibition of this artist's sculpture since 1972. The exhibition is on view through September 17. Twice each summer Jackie Sideli assembles more than 50 antiques dealers for a small, one-day show that has become a great tradition over the last dozen years at the Soule Seabury House. An exceptional work by J.M.W. Turner, RA (1775-1851), one of the most impressive ever painted by the artist, sold at Christie's last month for $10,987,488, the world record price for a British work on paper. These days, every Americana consignor wants his property sold in January. The result is that spring Americana sales at Christie's and Sotheby's have dried up. Or so it seems. A folk portrait attributed to Sheldon Peck, an itinerant, self-taught portrait painter of the mid-Nineteenth Century, was the top lot at Duane Merrill's July 22 auction, selling for $220,000. How Nineteenth Century American painters, who came to hone their craft in Paris and the French countryside, applied French influences to their art is the subject of a stunning traveling exhibition, "Americans in Paris, 1860-1900." The large yard of Stevens Memorial United Methodist Church was the scene again for a capacity crowd of 120 antiques dealers for Cord Shows' Antiques in the Church Yard July 4 event . A diminutive James McNeill Whistler seascape proved that good things do indeed come in little packages as the painting ascended to $1,001,000 at Cottone's July 7 auction. Cincinnati Art Galleries' auction of pottery and art glass saw a Black Iris glaze vase by Matt Daly attain $201,250, making it the second most expensive piece of American art pottery ever sold at auction. |
