Exhibiting a near cultlike following, die hard collectors of ephemera descended upon the Hartford Civic Center August 25–26 for the twice-a-year Papermania Plus extravaganza.
Now 26 years old, the Maine Antiques Festival was the strongest of the last five years, according to show manager Paul Davis. “Shows were hurting after 9/11, but we really came back strong this year with over 250 dealers and great buying crowds at this year’s show,” he said.
The second auction in the summer series of decoy sales that takes place annually in New England during late July and early August was presented by Guyette and Schmidt at the Seaport Hotel on July 27 and 28. By far the largest and most impressive of the sales, the auction was once again a highly successful event.
Collectors, dealers and decoy enthusiasts packed up their bags for the third stop on the summer decoy auction circuit, a sale presented on Cape Cod by Ted Harmon of Decoys Unlimited. The July 30-31 auction featured close to 1,000 lots and grossed $1.5 million.
A large selection of Elmer Crowell miniature and decorative carvings had the capacity crowd sitting on the edge at Eldred’s on August 1, during the fourth and final auction conducted during the summer series of decoy sales.
James D. Julia’s June 22–23 auction of antique toys, dolls, advertising and coin-op fetched more than $1.1 million, more than 46 percent above the firm’s preauction estimate of approximately $750,000.
An exhibition, “Antiques That Speak,” currently on view at Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA) through January, features many of the society’s most important acquisitions over the last two decades.
An exhibition of more than 400 objects from 11 Native communities from the North Pacific Coast — including ceremonial masks, carvings, clothing, baskets and tools — will open at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, September 12.
The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin will present “Transactions,” on view September 11 to November 18 — part of the museum’s lineup of contemporary exhibitions this fall.
Kicking off the annual New England summer auctions devoted to the waterfowl collecting arena. Copley Fine Art Auctions established record setting prices in both the sporting art and the decorative carvings marketplaces.
The much-anticipated public opening of the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building on September 15 in Philadelphia, Penn., marked the first expansion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s (PMA) footprint since 1928. Newly renovated and expanded by Glickman Mayner Architects, the Perelman Building is just across the street from the museum’s celebrated hilltop structure. The 1927 Art Deco landmark building with a red terra cotta roof adds space and amenities to one of America’s great art museums. It showcases some of the PMA’s most comprehensive, colorful and advanced collections in elegant, contemporary galleries and offers such public amenities as a dramatic Skylit Galleria and other spaces for showing visual arts, study centers, a new library with a wealth of resources and public displays, a new museum shop, a 70-seat café and a landscaped terrace.
H. Richard Dietrich, Jr, 69, a retired executive whose lifelong love of art and history spurred his creation of one of the most important collections of early American art, died of melanoma on August 30 at his home. Marion, a lovely New England community, is home to Tabor Academy, the site for the annual Marion Antiques Show, now in its 15th year and one of the social highlights of the summer’s calendar.
In a letter to the editor, two dealers from Wellesley, Mass., raise concerns over how several exhibitors of the Philadelphia Antiques Show were dropped from the roster.
Sotheby’s has followed Christie’s lead in raising the buyer’s premium for low-end purchases.
For the first time in a decade, an exhibition of photographs by Ansel Adams will be on view in Washington, D.C. Opening September 15 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, “Ansel Adams” will give visitors a new look at the work of this important and influential artist.
“The Architect’s Table: Swid Powell and Postmodern Design,” a special exhibition at Yale University Art Gallery highlighting postmodern housewares design by architects, is set to run September 25–January 6.
A rare Stickley desk with exceptional Harvey Ellis inlay drew national attention to Kelley Auctions' regular weekly sale on September 5, attaining $214,500.
A gold medal presented to Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1854 for his efforts in Japan was a glittering draw for collectors at Bruce Gamage Jr?s annual Maine summer auction on August 27. It fetched $165,000.
More than 900 lots of merchandise ranging from a $150,000-plus painting to $100 daguerreotypes crossed the auction block during a highly successful, three-day sale at John McInnis Auctioneers July 26–28.
Northeast Auction’s omnibus Summer Americana Auction produced highs and lows over three days of selling, as unexpected bargains gave way to some spectacular prices. By the close of the sale on August 5, more than 2,000 objects changed hands for a total of $8.8 million.
The Dinah and Stephen Lefkowitz collection of American folk art and painted furniture was the marquee attraction at Northeast’s annual Summer Americana Auction, where it attained more than $2 million. An influential figure in American art from his early work as the country’s best engraver through his leadership of the Hudson River School of painting until his death at age 90, Asher B. Durand (1796–1886) was both an intellectual and visual force. The acknowledged dean of American landscapists, his poetic forest interiors and sweeping pastoral scenes and his work as president of the National Academy of Design helped set the tone for works that celebrated the relationship of Americans to nature and the wilderness. A spate of current exhibitions, headed by “Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape,” on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in Washington, D.C., through January 8, and complementary exhibitions at the National Academy of Design, and Cedar Grove, The Thomas Cole National Historic Site, illuminate Durand’s accomplishments.
Brother Thomas Bezanson, an internationally known potter, died on August 16, at his home at the age of 78.
“It’s good to see the lobby filled with people,” Melvin “Butch” Arion said as he held the doors to Memorial Hall East on the York Fairgrounds open for people to enter his Original York Antiques Show & Sale on August 31. Amid an al fresco setting under the stately white tents set up on the polo grounds, Jenkins Management concluded the second edition of its Farmington Antiques Weekend for this calendar year, September 1–2.
Between the 1970s and the 1990s, Marguerite Riordan’s booth at the Winter Antiques Show was a mandatory stop for Americana collectors. In early September, Riordan confirmed that she and her husband, Arthur, had consigned the contents of their Stonington home to Christie’s. The cataloged, single-owner sale will be a highlight of Americana Week in January. Kay Puchstein and Jon Jenkins of Jenkins Show Management, co-managers of the long-running Music Valley Antiques Market, announced their new show, Antiques at Music Valley, is set to debut during Antiques Week in Nashville in February.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art will be the only US venue for the first exhibition to explore the inventiveness and importance of the landscape painting of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) during the first 30 years of the artist’s career.
Excellent weather greeted great numbers of visitors on August 17–19 for the 36th annual Madison Bouckville Antiques Show in this little New York hamlet about 30 miles south of Syracuse.
For three years now, twice each summer, Stella Show Management has conducted its Antiques & Design in the Hamptons show for about 50 dealers as a fundraising event for the Bridge Hampton Historical Society.
Now in its 27th year conducting summer auctions on the island, Raphael Osona Auctioneer and Appraiser presented another stellar assortment of wares during the Americana, Continental, Fine Arts and Marine Auction that took place on August 4.
Northeast Auctions’ August 18–19 sale was a cool, breezy affair, with gusts of wind lifting tent flaps and prices at Treadwell House in historic Portsmouth.
Just as decoy collectors from around the country thought they would be able to unwind following a ten-day series of waterfowling auctions and shows conducted throughout the Northeast in early August, Northeast Auctions pulled the rug out from under them with the offering of the acclaimed John S. du Mont collection of Elmer Crowell decorative bird carvings.
A stellar selection of Americana was offered at Eldred’s during its 38th annual summer sale August 2–3. Always a popular event, the auction was attended by a large crowd, with strong interest expressed for a wide variety of merchandise.
The Yale Center for British Art will present “Art And Emancipation In Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario And His Worlds,” on view September 27–December 30.
Less than a century ago, Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942) was generally considered the best American woman artist. Later, she was routinely rated one of the country’s greatest women of the first half of the Twentieth Century. In 1933, she was hailed by Eleanor Roosevelt as “the American woman who had made the greatest contribution to the culture of the world.” Nowadays, however, little is heard or seen of her work. Because Beaux painted upper-class portraits in an academic, international style that fell out of favor, and because she has been overshadowed by fellow female artist Mary Cassatt — enduringly popular in part because of her links to French Impressionism — the reputation of this superb painter has declined precipitously in the last half century. A comprehensive exhibition, “Cecilia Beaux, American Figure Painter,” comprising 85 paintings and works on paper, goes a long way toward restoring Beaux’s standing. The exhibition, curated by Sylvia Yount, will be on view at the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Wash., through January 6.
In a cross marketing move, Christie’s and Guyette & Schmidt, Inc, the antique decoy auction firm, recently announced a strategic association that the firms said would create marketing and promotional advantages for the decoy market.
There was still some summer left for Brimfield in September, the last of the season’s three mega-markets conducted in some 20 or so fields, lots and front yards where vendors sell antiques and collectibles — all to reduce inventories and build up cash supplies to carry them through the winter.
Antique duck and goose decoys were sold September 20 for a record-setting $1.13 million each in a private sale brokered by Stephen O’Brien Jr Fine Arts. The decoys were made by renowned carver A. Elmer Crowell of East Harwich, Mass.
A Plains Indian beaded, quilled and painted war shirt made from two big horn sheep hides and retaining the tail and the dew claws sold for $303,000 at Skinner’s September 23 American Indian and Ethnographic Art sale.
Thousands of arts and cultural enthusiasts from the Mid-Atlantic and around the world celebrated the final days of summer at the Baltimore Summer Antiques Show, August 30–September 2 at the Baltimore Convention Center. Antiques in a Cow Pasture, the Russell Carrell flea market that started it all in this country years ago, was brought back a few years ago by Frank Gaglio of Barn Star Productions and had its most recent outing on September 9. Transportation meets art in “The Motorcycle, Italian Style: Riding the Curves with MV Agusta” at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center.
From locomotives to lipsticks, Raymond Loewy ad his industrial design firms created some of the most important design innovations in the Twentieth Century. A new exhibit at he National Heritage Museum October 13–March 23, showcases his work, placing it in the wider context of the shaping of a modern look for consumer culture.
Auctioneer Kaja Veilleux and his crew at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries welcomed more than 850 people to the auction preview during the week leading up to their annual two-day September auction. The September 1–2 sale featured just over 1,000 lots and spirited bidding was recorded across the board.
Two years in the works, C. Wayne Shultz’s Americana auction drew a full house and robust prices at the Duncansville Community Center August 24–25. On July 28, Michael and Seth Fallon of Copake Auction conducted an unreserved cataloged estate sale including a collection of country, Modern, Victorian and custom furniture and accessories, folk art, artwork, textiles, war posters, weathervanes, toys and more.
Sotheby’s announced Monday, September 24, that a circa 1755 Philadelphia mahogany tilt-top piecrust tea table valued at between $2 million and $6 million will be a highlight of its Americana Week sales in January.
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