Richard “Dick” Dees May, co-owner and manager of May’s Antique Market, died peacefully at his home on December 23. For the past 30 years Dick has been a fixture of Brimfield Week, conducting the highly successful Thursday market three times annually. Now recognized as a major figure in Twentieth Century art, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was a complex and private Austrian artist who created heavily ornamented, sensual, often erotic images of elegant women and patterned landscapes. As co-founder and first head of the Secession in 1897, he was a central figure in the cultural life of Vienna’s Golden Age and provided a link between Nineteenth Century Symbolism and Twentieth Century Modernism. Although he gained a measure of international renown, there was little American interest in Klimt in the decades following his death. Starting in the 1960s, his reputation began to grow, eventually boosted by the efforts of major collectors Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky. Today, Klimt enjoys a virtual cult status and his work is widely familiar in America. Lauder and the late Sabarsky, co-founders of the Neue Galerie museum of German and Austrian art in New York City, assembled the largest and finest trove of Klimt works outside Austria. Eight paintings and more than 120 drawings comprise the current exhibition, “Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections,” which fills all gallery space in the museum through June 30.
On December 1–2, 52 antiques dealers, along with many old Saint Nicks, converged here for the fifth annual Christmas Antiques Show managed by Ellen Katona and Bob Lutz. Antiquorum’s second Geneva autumn sale on November 11 realized $8,125,495. The catalog comprising 307 lots realized sales of 80 percent by lot and 124 percent by value. The fall/winter season of fine arts sales in Bonhams’ New York City salesroom began with a sale on November 7 headlined by a newly found painting by John William Godward, the auction of European paintings totaled more than $2.6 million and included multiple bouts of competitive bidding.
An ongoing saga regarding the implementation of additional permits and fees charged to Brimfield Week vendors seemingly went by the wayside this past Monday, January 7, as the town’s board of selectmen decided not to increase the $30 vendor’s fee charged by the town and not to pursue the enforcement of a state issued “transient vendor” license.
The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College will present “Sean Scully: The Art of the Stripe” in an exhibition exploring the development of colorful stripes in Scully’s work over four decades.
Lyman Allyn Art Museum will present a new exhibition, “Tradition et Innovation: French Art from the Lyman Allyn Art Museum,” opening on January 19 and on view throughout 2008.
Mebane Antique Auction Gallery’s annual Americana event on December 14 drew bidders from all over the country and across the pond.
After setting two auction records at R&R Enterprises earlier in 2007, original artwork from Charles Schulz’s beloved Peanuts comic strip is still flying high at the New Hampshire auction firm.
The Norton Museum of Art will present “A Show of Hands: Photographs and Sculpture from the Buhl Collection” from January 12 through March 25. The works, focusing on the human hand as inspiration, will be arranged chronologically with works from 1840 to the present, spanning the history of photography.
Allison Eckardt Ledes, editor of The Magazine Antiques, died at home of cancer on January 8. She was 53.
The November 30 sale of rock and pop memorabilia at Christie’s totaled $864,938 and saw Hank Williams’ notebook of 13 lyrics set a world auction record at $145,000. The November 30 sale of rock and pop memorabilia at Christie’s totaled $864,938 and saw Hank Williams’ notebook of 13 lyrics set a world auction record at $145,000. Antique smalls of all shapes and media caught the eye at Cord Shows Ltd’s 22nd annual Antique Stocking Stuffers Show and Sale at the Greenwich Civic Center on December 9.
“The New Year is here, come celebrate the best” proclaimed promoters Newman Chittenden and Martin Fasack in regard to their popular East Coast Fine Arms Show. Close to 100 exhibitors packed the exhibition area over the weekend of January 4–6.
Lisson Gallery is presenting an exhibition of new work by Lawrence Weiner, one of the most significant and influential artists of his generation, February 6–March 15, as well as Austrian artist Florian Pumhösl’s first major solo exhibition in London.
A collection of Renaissance statuettes will go on view at the National Gallery of Art, in “Bronze and Boxwood: Masterpieces from the Robert H. Smith Collection,” January 27–May 4.
The Holiday Antiques Show on Thanksgiving Weekend, November 23–25, had record numbers for attendance and exhibiting dealers at its 26th meeting. A carved and painted possum trot doll executed by the renowned folk artist Calvin Black (1903–1972) and mounted on a stand with a homemade tag reading “Miss Sherion Rose Possum Trot,” sold for $92,000 at a folk art sale November 10 by Slotin Auction.
Swann Galleries' November 29 auction of art, press and illustrated books, and Nineteenth and Twentieth Century literature featured many standouts, including a signed advance-proof copy of Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls that attained $96,000.
Americana Week in New York City offers a full slate of auctions, shows, exhibitions, seminars and special events.
On November 17, the 12th WestLicht Photographica Auction ended with a sensation — the most spectacular lot of the auction, an 0-series Leica no. 107, which was sold for $492,500, the highest sum ever achieved at an auction for a 35 millimeter camera or Leica.
More than 40 original Audubon watercolors depicting birds that once flourished but are now gone forever or are threatened with extinction — along with species that have come back from the brink — will go on display as part of “Audubon’s Aviary: Portraits of Endangered Species,” the fourth installment of the New-York Historical Society’s five-year Audubon exhibition series.
Fun and fanciful forms that once graced the tops of barns and buildings dotting America’s landscape, weathervanes were quick to become highly sought-after examples of Americana. Today, they are the backbone of virtually every important folk art collection. The diverse range of forms, created in an equally diverse range of materials, run the gamut from commercially produced molded copper examples to handmade wooden and sheet metal objects. The most familiar forms are the highly recognizable three-dimensional horses, roosters, rams and cows produced by makers such as Fiske, Cushing, Rochester, Harris and Mott. Equally desirable are the unique handmade weathervanes that were often fabricated in the backs of the barns that they would soon grace. “Wind & Whimsy: Weathervanes and Whirligigs from Twin Cities Collections” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) presents more than 60 examples in an all-encompassing exhibition representing Nineteenth and Twentieth Century forms. It is on view through April 13.
A consummate collector, Anthony Petullo often takes time out of his busy schedule to contemplate the trove of artwork that paints the walls of his home, offices and the nonprofit learning center where he houses his collection. And, like the artists of which he is so enamored, one recurring theme perpetually defines Petullo’s art experience; the similarities he notes between himself and the outsider and self-taught artists — and the differences they mutually share with the academic art world. “I am a lot like them,” exclaims Petullo with regard to his favorite artists. In just three short years, after executing what the collector considers his first “true” art acquisition, Petullo had amassed more than 150 paintings by the most recognized and desirable outsider, self-taught, Gugging, nonacademic and naïve artists to have worked in the Twentieth Century. His collection had become the subject of a single-owner exhibition that toured the country, making stops at six different major museums, and he has since loaned works of art to numerous other shows and exhibitions as well. Today, the author, co-author or merely the subject of three books, one that has sold out twice, the collector is taking time to breathe it all in.
Robust interest and numerous battles focused particularly on Romanian ceramics and icons led the day at Auctionhouse Dr Fischer’s sales of ceramics and Russian works of art December 1.
The Blanton Museum of Art will present “The Virgin, Saints and Angels: South American Paintings 1600–1825 from the Thoma Collection,” January 29–March 16.
A Philadelphia scalloped-top tea table, the second most expensive ever auctioned, led Americana Week sales at Christie’s. The January 17–18 auctions tallied $18,147,963.
Sotheby’s 2008 Americana Week, including furniture, folk art, silver, prints and other decorative works of art, totaled $13,879,446.
Neal Auction Company said its December 1–2 holiday estates auction was a huge success, with hearty bidding in all categories.
A long-lost John Brown daguerreotype garnered national attention before the auction, yet it was a fine copy of the Maxwell Code that topped Cowan’s Western and historic Americana sale December 6–7.
“An Eye Toward Perfection,” the centerpiece loan exhibit organized by the Shaker Museum and Library, set the tone for the 54th Winter Antiques Show, which opened at the Park Avenue Armory on January 18, and continues through Sunday, January 27.
The two-day extravaganza known as Papermania Plus, the show made its 53rd such appearance January 5-6 featuring all manner of antique paper plus more. Newark International Antiques and Collectors Fair was again a huge success December 6–7, with the ten buildings at capacity and tents and fields overflowing with antiques for thousands of visitors.
Longtime antiques show manager Donald R. Coffman died in his home on Saturday, January 19. Donald was born in Swiftwater, Penn., on October 9, 1937, and was the son of Alta M. Coffman and the late Francis R. Coffman. “Art for the People: Decorated Stoneware from the Weitsman Collection” is on view at the New York State Museum through the summer of 2009, featuring 40 decorated stoneware vessels, including jugs, crocks, pitchers, jars and water coolers.
The Florence Griswold Museum presents a new exhibition titled “The Artistic Heritage of Connecticut: Highlights from the Hartford Steam Boiler Collection,” on view through April 20.
The Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary will host its second exhibition in a year of Italian Old Master paintings, “Painting the Italian Landscape: Views from the Uffizi.” Opening January 26, the show will feature more than 40 paintings from renowned artists such as Botticelli, Nicolas Poussin and Canaletto.
What better way to start a new year than by buying something old? The venerable Birchwood Manor Antiques Show proved, in the first of its two annual outings in 2008, that good antiques and art continue to attract buyers.
On February 16, nearly 100 paintings, watercolors and prints generated by a diverse group of creative individuals known as the Fort Worth Circle will be on view at the Amon Carter Museum in the special exhibition “Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s.”
A Japanese bronze sculpture from the late Nineteenth Century was reported stolen at the Winter Antiques Show on January 26 at the Park Avenue Armory. Joan Murphy, 59, died December 28, after a long battle with cancer. She was a regular exhibitor at many antiques shows and known for vintage clothing from the early to mid-Twentieth Century.
The Smith College Museum of Art will presents the exhibition “African Beaded Art: Power and Adornment” February 1—June 15.
The first exhibition to explore photographs made from paper negatives — calotypes — in Great Britain in the 1840s and 1850s, “Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840–1860,” will be on view February 3–May 4 in the West Building photography galleries at the National Gallery of Art.
As a result of the agreement negotiated by Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Ministero per I Beni Culturali e Ambientali, the Republic of Italy is lending the Metropolitan Museum three ancient Greek vases for a period of four years.
Philip Conisbee, senior curator of European paintings and curator of French paintings at the National Gallery of Art, died of complications arising from lung cancer on January 16. Margaret Mattison Coffin, 89, died Tuesday, January 22, at the United Helpers Nursing Home. Sandra J. Brant announced January 23 that she is resigning as publisher and chief executive officer of The Magazine Antiques and selling her stake in Brant Publications, owner of Antiques, Interview and Art in America. Her buyer is her silent partner and former husband, Peter M. Brant.
With just about 800 lots on offer, James D. Julia’s November 30 and December 1 auction grossed almost $1.7 million. Included in the array was a selection of Tiffany glass, lamps and desk accessories, fine art glass, French cameo and Victorian glass.
Nagel’s 406th auction of art and antiques on December 5, which totaled $4 million, began with an unexpectedly lively round of bidding for an “enamel box in a case."
On January 11, Pook & Pook, Inc set a new auction record of $351,000 for an exceptional sgrafitto plate attributed to George Hubener, one of the most renowned of the identified potters.
Property from the collection of Mr and Mrs George Fenimore Johnson, a total of 112 lots, was sold January 19, at Sotheby’s, bringing in $3,470,254, Thrift Shop Charities hosted the 53rd Washington Antiques Show at the Omni Shoreham Hotel January 11–13, with the previews on January 10. With 45 dealers and numerous special programs over the weekend, the show “surpassed the previous totals for the weekend,” according to co-chair Lynne Pace Robinson.
Antiques returned to Mystic January 5–6 when Trish McElroy hosted the new Mystic Antiques Market at the Hilton, with more than 50 dealers filling ballrooms to overflowing with antiques and customers.
Two buildings, exhibition halls with more than 2,500 booth spaces, were sold out for the weekend of January 12–13 for the DC Big Flea Antiques & Collectibles Market.
Of all the notable artists who have lived and worked in Connecticut over the years, few of the most deserving have received less public recognition than Charles Ethan Porter (1847-1923). An academically trained African American painter, championed by Frederic Church and Mark Twain and admired by other influential figures, he overcame perpetual obstacles of poverty, prejudice and the notion that blacks were incapable of making art of lasting importance. Porter’s obscurity is in marked contrast to the attention paid to such Nineteenth Century black artists as Edward Bannister, Robert Duncanson, Edmonia Lewis and Henry O. Tanner. In recent years, with the surge of scholarship about African American art, there has been renewed interest in Porter and his oeuvre, culminating in a welcome and rewarding exhibition at the New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA), “Charles Ethan Porter: African-American Master of Still Life,” on view through March 16.
Sunlight streamed into the White Plains High School through banks of windows and skylights, casting a clear bright light onto 45 room settings at the White Plains Winter Antiques Show January 12–13.
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