Dozens of patriotic images are on display at Norman Rockwell Museum in a new exhibition, “Over the Top: American Posters from World War I,” opening November 8 and running through January 25. This timely exhibition explores the role of illustrated images in rallying Americans to the cause, and shaping public perceptions of the war.
Although their civilization endured merely two centuries, the unparalleled sophistication and complexity of the Aztec empire is revealed through the artifacts unearthed from this remarkable Fourteenth Century Meso-American culture. The relics from the period, both the sacred and the mundane, reflect the spiritual, social and economic aspects of a multifaceted culture. “The Aztec World: A Unique View of a Mighty Empire,” comprising approximately 300 objects, is on view at the Field Museum in Chicago, Ill., through April 19. The exhibition delicately balances views of both art history and the anthropological study of Aztec society. The objects themselves are drawn from the collections of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia and the Templo Mayor Museum in Mexico City, as well as the Field Museum. Additional items have been drawn from the collections of numerous other institutions in both Mexico and the United States.
As the ADA/Historic Deerfield Antiques Show opened October 11 after the worst week in Wall Street’s history, buyers came in unprecedented numbers, resulting in a gate increase of over ten percent over last year.
E. Ambrose Webster (1869–1935), the major American modernist whose landscape paintings even today remain innovative, is the focus of two exhibitions and a new 240-page monograph.
Although the field at the Elephant’s Trunk Country Flea Market was only about one-third filled this past Sunday, November 2, the parking area was overflowing with the vehicles of prospective buyers anxiously seeking an end-of-the-year “find.”
Appearing nonchalantly amid the approximately 1,000 lots offered recently at Freeman’s was a small and unassuming selection of Russian cloisonné that created quite a ruckus as pieces left the auction block.
The sixth year of B&D Johnson’s Greenwich Fall Antiques Show brought nearly 50 exhibitors to the Greenwich Civic Center on a splendid, peak fall foliage weekend, October 18 and 19. In a major collaboration among three institutions, “Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective” opens at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) on November 16.
A Korean painting by Park Soo-keun was the object of dearest desire at the October 19 sale at John McInnis Auctioneers where it sold for $460,000.
From the pensive gaze of Georgia O’Keeffe in profile to the carefree grins of Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot at the seashore, some of the most iconic portraits of artists and celebrities are part of the expansive collection of Bucks County resident Robert M. Infarinato.
A funny thing happened to Bob Baker at this season’s finale of the Rhinebeck Antiques Fair — he sold some major pieces of furniture.
While the financial markets may be down, the market for rare stamps seems to be red hot.
Thomas K. Salese, antiques dealer, auctioneer and appraiser who had a shop in Larchmont, N.Y., for almost 30 years, died October 8. He was born on February 11, 1952, in the Bronx, the son of Anthony and Eleanor Ricci Salese. A teapot by prolific colonial silversmith Myer Myers of New York City will be on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts beginning November 19.
“This must be an important sale; just look at the front row,” Bill Smith said as he got ready to start the Monday, October 20, auction of the estate of the late Richard “Dick” Withington.
The Americana Collection of Richard and Rosemarie Machmer, comprising 816 lots of strong Pennsylvania furniture, folk art and works of art, as well as a scattering of New England pieces and a good selection of Native American material, performed solidly at a recent Pook & Pook auction.
Antiquorum’s first auction of the fall season attained a total of $9,892,812 for its sale of important collectors’ wristwatches, pocket watches and clocks.
The Delaware Art Museum presents “Frank E. Schoonover: An Artist for All Seasons,” featuring more than 25 paintings from every period of Schoonover’s career, on view November 22–February 1.
Doyle’s design sale on October 8 clearly illustrated the continued strength of Twentieth Century design in the New York auction market.
George W. Breckenridge Jr, who co-founded the Atlanta Antique Gallery in suburban Chamblee, Ga., died on November 4, as a result of heart failure. He was 68 years old.
The J. Paul Getty Museum has acquired two full-scale bronze versions of the Venus de’ Medici and the Dancing Faun, cast after the Hellenistic statues in Florence by the Eighteenth Century Florentine sculptor Pietro Cipriani (circa 1680–1745).
The Gramercy Park Antiques Show opened on October 24 to a wave of optimism carried over from the success of the previous week’s Modern Show, said Michele Oswald, manager of the back-to-back Stella Show Mgmt Co. events.
For 30 years, Xavier Guerrand-Hermès of the renowned Paris-based fashion empire collected both stunning North African jewelry and historic late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century photographs by some of the region’s most prominent photographers.
A complete and authentic vampire killing kit, made around 1800, attained $14,850 in the Jimmy Pippen estate sale by Stevens October 3–4 in the new Natchez Convention Center.
Susan Lauren passed away on October 20, 2008, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital after a battle with lung cancer. When collectors gathered at Theriault’s October 11 doll auction, the mood was good cheer and enthusiasm, with prices largely soaring above their presale estimates.
Philadelphians were in a celebratory mood when USArtists opened on October 16 at the 33rd Street Armory.
Distinguished as the first institution in America to establish a collection of watercolors and drawings with its beginnings in the early 1800s, the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS) in New York City houses an extraordinary trove of some 8,500 original works on paper. While some of the works have previously been on display in a variety of exhibitions pertaining to related themes, the collection itself has never before been the subject of a comprehensive exhibition. The society has seen fit to correct that situation with a wide-ranging exploration of the historically important watercolor and drawings collection, and has subsequently mounted the landmark exhibition “Drawn By New York: Six Centuries of Watercolors and Drawings at the New-York Historical Society.” The exhibition features 190 remarkable works that were carefully culled from the N-YHS collection, many on public display for the first time. Featured watercolors and drawings in the exhibition follow a timeline of sorts, beginning with a stunning selection of Sixteenth Century works and ending with a powerful display of contemporary images – some of which relate to 9/11. The exhibition, on view through January 7, affords a rare glimpse into the extensive depth and range of the society’s holdings.
Dealers and collectors defied the prevailing economic climate as they streamed into the Greater Boston Antiques Festival for New England Antiques Show’s October 18 and 19 event.
The Morristown Armory Antiques Show is a workhorse. Close enough to New York City to attract savvy city shoppers, the show retains a country flavor and succeeds by sticking to what it does best — offering a good balance of dealers and styles of merchandise.
Four rare and prized battle flags of the American Revolution are on extended view at Colonial Williamsburg. “Captured Colors: Four Battleflags of the American Revolution” is at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum of the Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
Watch auctioneer Antiquorum set new two new auction records last weekend, November 15–16, at its sale that realized a total of $12 million. Converse and Company, antiques dealers for a generation and now an auction company, had a robust sale October 18 that mostly comprised the contents of a New Hampsire home filled with early New England antiques.
A reverse serpentine mahogany four-drawer Chippendale chest with carved ball and claw feet and retaining the original surface became the top lot of the day at Fontaine’s Auction Gallery on October 18, selling to a bidder in the gallery for $34,500.
The Harvard Art Museum has announced a major gift of German art primarily since 1960 donated by the Friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum.
Hunt Auctions, a sports memorabilia auction company based in Exton, Penn., and the official auction company of Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory, sold Babe Ruth’s final professional road uniform Saturday, November 15, for $310,500 at the fifth annual Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory Auction here.
The New Britain Museum of American Art will feature the illustrations and fine art paintings of American artists in the exhibition “Double Lives: American Painters as Illustrators, 1850–1950” December 12–February 22.
The second New York Antiques Show, conducted by JMK from October 31 to November 2 at Wallace Hall on Park Avenue, continued promoter Allison Kohler’s quest to resurrect this Park Avenue tradition.
The next exhibition in Bank of America’s Great Art Series, “Rockwell Kent: This is My Own,” will be on view at the New York State Museum November 22—May 17 in the West Gallery.
Seemingly standing at a crossroads, Treasures, the antiques show formerly a Caskey-Lees managed event known as Treasures… From The Silk Road To The Santa Fe Trail, is, after four years, still seeking solid ground on which to establish its footing.
Many auction records for works by African American artists were achieved at Swann Galleries’ October 7 auction of African American fine art.
The Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie Mansion is hosting an exhibit of works from New Jersey toymaker J. Chein and Company. There will be an opening reception on Friday, November 21, from 6 to 9 pm.
Since the dawn of time, people have drawn on walls. Take, for instance, the wall drawings of the Lascaux Cave or the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. Now, fast forward a few thousand years and adjust your sights on the walls of Building 7 in the heart of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art campus in North Adams, Mass. The interior walls of the three-story structure – nearly an acre of space – resonate with the line and color of Sol LeWitt (1928-2007). “Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective,” with 105 wall drawings, displays and preserves 40 years of work by the minimalist innovator — famous for declaring the genre “dead” and moving on to explore the extremes of conceptualism. In doing so, LeWitt advanced the notion of how art is made by separating the act of conceiving a work from the act of executing it. The drawings, which LeWitt conceived and laid out in diagrams, were executed over a six-month period by 24 of the artist’s own assistants and 30 students from Yale, Williams College, the Massachusetts College of Liberal arts and other institutions across the country.
There have been busy times at the York Fairgrounds over the years, and to those times we certainly have to add Friday, October 31. Completing the 38th year of showbiz, The Greater York Antiques Show opened to a good gate at 11 am in Memorial Hall East.
As it nears the half century mark, the Ellis Antiques Show has proven once again that it is a major draw attracting a coterie of collectors, dealers and museum and auction house staff into this city.
The 2008 IFPDA Print Fair opened at the Park Avenue Armory with a gala preview party on October 30, and it was clear from the proliferation of red dots that buyers were soon captivated by the diversity of offerings ranging from Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First.
“He was known by everyone around the Hudson Valley as a great picker,” said auctioneer Lou Roberson in regard to the late Paul Huba, whose estate was about to be dispersed during Roberson’s Auctions’ October 25 Americana sale.
The high season for Manhattan’s fall antiques and art shows hit its stride on November 6 with the gala opening of Sanford Smith’s ART20 at the Seventh Regiment Armory.
Trisha A. McElroy began her series of monthly antiques shows in Concord, N.H., on November 9.
A variety of fine art and antiques was offered at Cottone’s September 27 auction. Topping the lots was a fine Frederic Remington 32-inch Bronco Buster bronze from the McClellan family of Geneseo.
The Mass Audubon Visual Arts Center presents a new exhibition, “A. Elmer Crowell: Master of Decoys and More,” on view through January 25.
International art dealer and gallerist Jan Krugier died Saturday, November 15, at his home in Geneva at the age of 80. The life and career of Jan Lievens (1607–1674) is finally brought to light in the exhibition “Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered,” on view at the National Gallery of Art in the West Building to January 11.
Millon & Associés and the photography specialist Christophe Goeury conducted the sale of a group of 600 lots comprising more than 800 prints October 13, at Drouot Montaigne.
A recently-rediscovered show catalog for The Newtown Antiques Show dated September 18–21, 1969 sparks a trip down memory lane. The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is introducing an exhibition of newly discovered Indian paintings from the royal court collection of Marwar-Jodhpur. “Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur” is on view until January 4, before continuing on an international tour through December 2009.
“The good news is that we have the goods,” said Gene Shannon 24 hours prior to the drop of the hammer at Shannon’s fine art auction on October 23 that achieved an impressive $2.87 million.
Skinner, Inc, set a new world record for an illustration by Aubrey Beardsley at its fine books and manuscripts auction November 16 when Beardsley’s “The Climax” fetched $213,300. An odd mix of materials, Native American and Inuit arts, along with a huge selection of vintage clothing, made for an interesting auction at Whitaker-Augusta the weekend of October 24 and 25.
The Delaware Antiques Show was upbeat at its November 7–9 edition in a show that looked just fine, neatly packaged in the Chase Center on the Riverfront. This is the story of a house that never really was, but instead was the incubator that hatched the design concepts for some of the most influential buildings of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. The house was the collaboration of two idiosyncratic talents, a homeowner and an architect/designer, each engrossed in the pursuit of architectural perfection. They began with the aim of simply renovating an existing house located on the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio, but the creative partnership of the architect and the homeowner caused the project to expand and contract exponentially. The architect was none other than Frank O. Gehry, and the homeowner, Peter B. Lewis, chairman of an insurance company. The story of the house is on view in “Frank O. Gehry: Design Process and the Lewis House” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through April 5.
A Monday night auction at Clarke Auction galleries was lit up by a large Beauford Delaney painting that established record price paid at auction when it sold for $176,250.
“It’s an explosive combination,” said auctioneer Tim Gould in regard to a rare pair of paint decorated Maine arrow back armchairs that were sold at his Americana auction on November 1. Color, rarity and condition caused the chairs to leave the auction block with a bang.
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