Antiques and The Arts Weekly has just received word that antiques dealer Jackie Radwin died Tuesday, July 31. Radwin had an antiques business based in San Antonio, Texas. Funeral arrangements have yet to be announced.
There is increasing recognition that photography provides one of the best means to track the history, settings, culture and people who have contributed to America’s story. From Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner’s graphic images of the carnage of the Civil War to views of presidential inaugurations to photographs of men on the moon and portraits of influential figures, the unblinking camera has provided visual documentation of who were are, what we have done and where we are heading. Photographic portraits offer particularly interesting insights into the personalities — famous, infamous and unknown — who have shaped the country Americans know today. This is especially true with regard to African Americans, an underchronicled element in US society. American history is retold through photographic likenesses of black Americans in “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits,” a collaborative exhibition project of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Portrait Gallery and the International Center of Photography. It is on view at the ICP in New York City through September 9.
Jacqueline Schneider-Radwin, collector and passionate dealer of American folk art and quilts, died July 31, after a long struggle with cancer.
Nearly 1,000 decoys and related items from throughout the United States, Canada and the Atlantic Provinces performed well at Decoy’s Unlimited annual summer auction July 30 and 31. Paintings and painted items by popular Cape Cod artist Ralph Cahoon brought substantial prices at Eldred’s 38th annual auction of Americana and paintings August 2 and 3. Antiques Week got underway with Northeast Auctions’ $8.8 million sale on August 3–5 and everyone — even pro-American French president Nicolas Sarkozy, vacationing on nearby Lake Winnipesaukee — seemed to be in New Hampshire. Excitement continued at the final sale of the “big-four” decoy and sporting auctions during Robert C. Eldred’s Sporting and Military Items auction on August 1. As witnessed at sales throughout the previous week, decorative carvings by Elmer Crowell commanded the auction block. Delicately woven Nantucket baskets once again proved their sturdiness within the Americana market as lot after lot of the coveted items brought substantial prices at Rafael Osona’s Americana, Continental, Fine Arts and Marine auction on Saturday, August 4. Cincinnati Art Galleries’ Keramics 2007, Art Glass 2007 and Rookwood XVII Auction of pottery and art glass was held June 2–3 and comprised more than 1,500 lots.
Christie’s has once again raised its buyer’s premium, this time adjusting rates for low-end purchases.
For his July 26 sale, Dick Withington selected 100 items from his house, some as large as a secretary and some as small as a child’s cup, each piece with a “Withington Collection” tag attached, to be the first lots sold.
The Bruce Museum has announced an anonymous promised gift to its collection of a picture, “Sunlight on Newbury Marshes,” circa 1865–75, by the Nineteenth Century American luminist painter Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904).
Some of the finest examples of prints produced by the lithography firm of Currier & Ives are on view at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts through January 6 in the special exhibition, “Currier & Ives’ Greatest Hits.”
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) is presenting Nineteenth Century masterworks of landscape painting from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland in a major exhibition. On view until September 2, “A Mirror of Nature: Nordic Landscape Painting, 1840–1910” features more than 100 paintings.
High on a plateau overlooking New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee, Nan Gurley gathered about 90 dealers to offer early American antiques to the large crowds at a historic summer resort. On a sunny day in June the focus of antiques in the Delaware Valley was on the Gloucester County 4-H Fairgrounds, where just under 100 dealers from throughout the Northeast and Middle Atlantic set-up recently.
Antiques at Tiverton Four Corners was a laid back casual affair for the 40-plus dealers and visitors who gathered at Jackie Sideli’s show on July 7. Most Americans know little about the vast and diverse continent of Africa, much less the arts created there. Dark and primitive, the arts of the African peoples reflect the rituals of life, stripped to the most basic interpretive forms both conceptually and artistically. Celebrating the arts of Africa and the profound role that they have played in molding Twentieth Century Abstraction and Modernist art in the “West” is the Smithsonian’s newest exhibition, “African Vision: The Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection.” It is on view through September 7, 2008, at The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art (NMAA).
Summer Magic is the fitting name for the July 28 edition of the popular Rhinebeck Antiques Fair. Falling midway between the established spring and fall shows organized by Bruce Garrett and staff, Summer Magic is their casual, abbreviated offspring. Aptly timed to attract summer visitors, the Green Mountain Antiques Show celebrated a special anniversary July 21–22. Huge crowds greeted Cord Shows’ dealers for the 15th annual July 4 Antiques in the Church Yard. Heritage Auction Galleries conducted a two-day, grand format auction June 24–25, which realized $6,494,130 for 744 lots offered.
At Alderfer Auction & Appraisal’s quarterly fine and decorative arts auctions on June 15, Walter Emerson Baum’s “The Miller Sellersville-Winter Freidensville” sold for a record breaking $97,750, nearly $39,000 more than any other Baum has brought.
Thousands of lots of country Americana drew buyers to this Thousand Islands community for Iroquois Auctions’ three-day estate sale. The Taft Museum of Art will celebrate its diamond anniversary with special exhibitions that complement the museum’s permanent collection.
The work of Richard Pousette-Dart (1916–1992), youngest artist of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, will be on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum August 17–September 25. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will host a complementary exhibition of 25 colonial objects on long-term loan from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Robert S. Burgess Sr, 91, died August 10, at his home in Bonita Springs. He was the husband of Lee Burgess, a well-known antiques dealer. Bruce Wolmer, the longtime editor of Art & Auction magazine and an expert on the intricacies of the international art world, died Saturday, August 11, of complications from diabetes. He was 59 years old. The William Benton Museum of Art will present the exhibition, “Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession: Sculpture from The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation,” on view September 8–December 16.
The Frist Center for the Visual Arts is showing “Lyrical Traditions: Four Centuries of Chinese Paintings from the Papp Collection,” on view through October 7 in the Ingram Gallery.
Yeshiva University Museum presents an exhibition of textiles by Ita Aber, “Ita B’Ita — Ita in Her Time,” on view in the Arcade and Mezzanine through October 14. The retrospective includes approximately 75 fiber art works of varying sizes that celebrate Aber’s 60 years as an artist.
Absentee bidders were anything but absent as Noel Barrett Auctions raked in $1,235,000 at its June 16–17 antique toy auction.
Devin Moisan Auctioneers' recent auction featured a diverse selection of American and Continental furniture, silver, coins, fine art and decorative accessories.
Barridoff Galleries hosted a sale of fine American and European art at the Holiday Inn by the Bay on August 3. Featuring a great selection of artwork, the sale totaled more than $4 million.
One of the prettiest shows around, which began only last summer, returned this year July 28 and 29 to the lush 36-acre Elm Bank estate, the headquarters of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society along the Charles River.
Thirty-five antiques dealers from as far away as Florida and Michigan joined dealers from throughout the Northeast to present the 52nd annual Chatham Antiques Show on August 3–4. An attractive antiques show managed by Jackie Sideli, many of the dealers have been participating in the event for decades. The line began forming outside of the Cape Cod Dealers’ antiques show more than an hour prior to opening on a typical hot and humid afternoon on August 3. By the time entry-time rolled around, a large crowd anxiously awaited the start of the show, now in its 37th year and aptly coined “Cape Cod’s Hottest Show.”
As the sun began to set over the island of Nantucket on the evening of Thursday, August 2, one of the largest crowds in memory flowed among the handsome and elaborate displays during the preview party for the August Antiques Show, a benefit for the Nantucket Historical Association. Manhattan icon Sotheby's has filed papers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission accusing its landlord, RFR Holding LLC, of violating its lease agreement at the auction house's flagship headquarters at 1334 York Avenue by shopping the property for more than $500 million.
For the past decade and a half, Michael Gould and his wife, Marilyn, manager of the Wilton, Conn., antiques shows and executive director of the Wilton Historical Society and Heritage Museum, have encouraged people to collect. An exhibition at the New Britain Museum of American Art through October 28 documents the Goulds’ own treasure hunt and provides a template for others interested in the chase. Far from showcasing American folk art, as those who know the Goulds might have guessed, the New Britain exhibition canvasses a single, little known chapter in the history of American avant-garde art: early abstract works on paper made between 1918 and 1949 that prefigure Abstract Expressionism.
If you do not believe auctioneer Bill Mishoe has the patience of Job, consider the tug of war he has endured over a trove of Civil War letters that were first due to be auctioned three years ago and are now set to cross the block September 29. On view through August 31, 2008, The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) present “Parting the Curtain: Asian Art Revealed,” an exhibition of treasures from the museum’s diverse collection of historical Asian art, as well as works on long-term loan from the collections of Louise Gund and Warren King.
The Jewish Museum will present “Camille Pissarro: Impressions of City and Country” September 16–February 3. This exhibition includes nearly 50 paintings and works on paper — drawn primarily from New York City-area private collections — many of which have rarely been on public view.
A Faberge triangle sunburst desk clock sold for $126,500, highlighting Cowan’s Auctions spring Americana, fine and decorative arts sale on June 23. The auction, which drew more than 1,300 bidders and was also live online, generated total sales of $866,590 from 608 lots.
Copake Auction held its seventh annual textile auction June 30. The auction received good attendance and the sale exceeded everyone’s expectations.
On June 21, Sotheby’s achieved its highest contemporary art sale total in Europe, when it sold $144,319,236 worth of art. It also made auction history when Damien Hirst’s pill cabinet “Lullaby Spring” soared to $19.2 million, making Hirst the most expensive living artist at auction. .
“Start your week with a great antique” was the slogan this year as Frank Gaglio moved his popular Bedford Pickers Market from Friday, the last day of Antiques Week in New Hampshire, to Monday, the beginning of it all. Frank Gaglio of Barn Star Promotions rearranged the antiques landscape 14 years ago when he founded Mid*Week in Manchester Antiques Show, the 112-exhibitor fair that brought dozens of prominent specialists to Antiques Week in New Hampshire.
Start of Manchester Antiques Show, August 7–8 at the Event Center at C.R. Sparks, was “the biggest since we moved to this air-conditioned facility, with more dealers, more antiques and the biggest crowds,” according to Tina Bruno, co-owner and manager of the show.
“My first obligation is to my dealers, then I try to keep my own booth looking good and talk to customers, and at the moment I am also dog sitting for Michael Winslow, who has gone off to bring in another piece of furniture,” Nan Gurley said as her Americana Celebration Show opened on Tuesday morning, August 7. As technology, trade and politics advanced in the mid-Nineteenth Century, exotic distant Middle and Far Eastern countries and their mysterious cultures became readily accessible to a new and emerging class of style-conscious Americans — via travel for the affluent, the imagination for everyone else. In homes and galleries alike, chic imported decorative objects from these far-off lands became all the rage. By the end of the Nineteenth Century, Orientalism, as the new style had been coined, was everywhere, its influence permeating popular culture. A new vignette-style exhibition, “Orientalism — An Eye for the Exotic,” now open at The Morse Museum in Winter Park, Fla., is a lush installation of decorative objects that express Western fascination with the art and design of the Orient during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. It will remain on view through August 2008.
Police from the Rockland County town of Ramapo are investigating the theft of seven wood fireplace mantels from a home in Sloatsburg. The theft occurred between 4 pm on July 19 and 1:30 pm on July 20.
The New Hampshire Antiques Show celebrated its golden anniversary at The Center of New Hampshire Radisson August 9–11 as NHADA and dealers went all out to enhance the fair's "air of mystery and magic." |
