“Authentic. Fresh. Extraordinary,” proclaimed the advertisement for manager Barry Cohen’s return to the Americana Week show circuit with a revived Antiques Manhattan. The show was all of that — and more — in its four-day run January 17—20.
Not so long ago the streets of cities and towns across America were lined with the elegantly restrained form of the cast iron hitching post. The sturdy sentinel was an eminently practical addition to the streetscape — it kept order by preventing horses from running loose through the roadways and assuring the driver or rider of finding the horse patiently waiting exactly where it had been left. A peculiarly American form, the Nineteenth Century cast iron hitching post is the subject of the new exhibit “Horsing Around: Nineteenth Century Cast Iron Hitching Posts from the Collection of Phil and Bunny Savino” on view at the Albany Institute of Art and History through May 25. Concurrently on view at the museum, another hot topic is cast iron stoves. Throughout the Nineteenth Century, the two cities at the confluence of the Hudson and the Mohawk Rivers, Albany and Troy, N.Y., supplied households in many parts of the world with stoves for heating and cooking. The exhibit, “Cast with Style: Nineteenth Century Cast Iron Stoves,” showcases more than 30 stoves from the institute’s collection that illustrate the artistry and technological innovations in stove making between 1840 and 1870.
After nine appearances in New York, the Ceramics Fair has developed a loyal, sociable following, and the opening night rush signifies the start of “Americana Week."
A Philadelphia scalloped-top tea table, the second most expensive ever auctioned, led Americana Weeks sales at Christie’s. The January 17–18 sales tallied $18,147,963.
Icons from the world of hip-hop music will be the subject of an exhibition, “Holy Hip-Hop!: New Paintings by Alex Melamid,” on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) February 8–April 20.
Immersive light environments, optical illusions and interactive sound installations will be spotlighted at the Milwaukee Art Museum, February 9 through October 2009 in the exhibition, “Sensory Overload: Light, Motion, Sound and the Optical in Art since 1945."
Like a surging tide, China’s manufacturing boom and explosive urban development inspire both awe and anxiety. “Eastern Standard: Western Artists in China,” on view at Mass MoCA, presents nuanced perspectives from more than 20 artists and filmmakers at this rapidly changing nation.
Considered by many to be the auction house’s most popular sale of the year, Nadeau’s annual New Year’s Day auction saw a huge number of phone bidders and a record number of people participating in this lively event.
Samuel Charles Pennington III, publisher of Maine Antique Digest, died February 2, several days after being admitted to the hospital there. He had been in deteriorating health, said his son, S. Clayton Pennington, editor of Maine Antique Digest (MAD). Viktor Schreckengost, an artist and prolific industrial designer whose works ranged from toys and ceramics to dinnerware and trucks, died January 26. He was 101. The shining star of Americana Week may well have been the fifth and final of the shows to open to the public over the week of January 14 — Stella’s Antiques at the Armory.
“If you think of yourself as an American-based auction company, you’re wrong. You have to think global,” stated Gass after his most recent sale on January 12. The auction at Trinity was subject to a record number of phone bidders, huge Internet action and absentee bids from all over the world.
Charged with safekeeping New York State’s most historic documents, a state employee is now charged with using his position to pilfer the state library’s archives and stealing hundreds of documents, some of which he allegedly sold during online auctions and at trade shows.
How do you make a show that is pretty close to perfect even better? It is not easy, but after 14 years at the helm of the Winter Antiques Show, chairman Arie L. Kopelman and executive director Catherine Sweeney Singer keep refining New York’s reigning favorite, which opened at the Park Avenue Armory on January 17 for 11 days.
Sotheby’s assemblage of American furniture and decorative arts in an important Americana sale, January 18–19, offered 350 lots and totaled $10,409,192.
Rose Hill Auction Gallery held one of its most successful art and antiques sales recently, playing to a full house, with standing room only, and a host of phone and absentee bidders “at the ready.”
The American Antiques Show, which returned to Manhattan’s Metropolitan Pavilion January 16–20, is steadily broadening its scope. Relatively small with only 45 exhibitors, it this year enhanced its position in both Native American art and in American classical furniture and accessories.
Early in the Twentieth Century, while American Impressionists continued to record tranquil cityscapes and pastoral vistas and genteel leisure-class activities on canvases filled with color and light, artists of the Ashcan School turned their attention — and dark palettes — to the face of urban life. Heeding the call of their charismatic leader, Robert Henri, this group of talented, rebellious painters depicted the realities of the world around them, principally New York City. One of the best of the new realists was John Sloan (1871–1951), who made his way from rural Pennsylvania to Philadelphia to Manhattan, where his images of streets, squares, gathering places and city dwellers helped define New York City in the public imagination. “Seeing the City: Sloan’s New York,” is currently on view at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Penn., through April 27. Comprising 115 paintings, drawings, prints and photographs, the exhibition offers an in-depth view of the artist’s years in New York and the city’s effect on his art.
Christmas came early here as Altermann Galleries’ December 15–16 auction made consignors and buyers alike merry with its final total of $4,436,364.
On December 19, vintage radio enthusiasts from as far away as Australia and the United Kingdom tuned in for Bonhams’ highly anticipated sale of the famed Mark Woolley collection of Catalin radios, examples dating from the 1930s and 1940s.
“Triptych 1974–77” by Francis Bacon (1909–1992) sold for $51.7 million on February 6, becoming the most expensive work of art ever sold at Christie’s in London and the most valuable postwar and contemporary work sold in Europe, according to the auction house. On December 5–6, Dawson & Nye’s sale of belongings from the estate of rhythm and blues singer Luther Vandross grossed $1.8 million, doubling its $600/800,000 estimate. The estate comprised numerous items from both Vandross’s personal and professional life.
Documents penned during the Civil War and others to and from Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt are among hundreds of stolen documents sold online that eBay is agreeing to buy back and return to New York State’s archives, a state official said. Proposed changes in the feedback system widely used by eBay buyers and sellers, and the restructuring of fees scheduled to go into effect on February 20, have met with mixed reviews by an uneasy group of sellers. The weather outside was frightful but inside the Andover Country Club, the wares at the Goosefare Antiques Show were delightful. Despite blustery conditions on January 27, a crowd swept in at opening.
By midmorning on opening day of the Greater Boston Antiques Festival, January 19, the booths and the aisles were so crowded that it was difficult to move around freely. No one was complaining, though, especially not the 160-plus antiques dealers who set up in the spacious Shriners Auditorium for the two-day event.
The Cincinnati Art Museum will celebrate the American tradition of quiltmaking through the special exhibition “Masterpiece Quilts from the Shelburne Museum,” on view February 16–June 1.
The Mattatuck Museum Arts and History Center has opened a new exhibition, “Cover Stories: Quilts and Bed Coverings from Regional Collections,” which will be on view through March 23.
MaxFeb 12th, 2008 Maximillion “Max,” the faithful canine mixed-breed companion of Terry Catalano and a regular among the crowd at Catalano’s Outer Cape Auctions, died on February 5. Nationally known artist/illustrator Cathie Bleck is featured in a retrospective of her work at the New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA), on view through April 27.
The New Hope Winter Antiques Show, a small but stylish show that has developed a faithful following over the years, was once again presented by managers David and Peter Mancuso over the weekend of January 19.
Hot-blooded stamp collectors chased a rare “invert” American stamp from 1869 depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence to a record $1.2 million at Philip Weiss Auctions this past Saturday, February 9.
A pioneer in the research of Ohio schoolgirl needlework, Sue Studebaker, 74, died January 21 after a sudden illness. Four paintings by Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet valued at more than $163 million were stolen from the E.G. Buehrle Collection by three armed men in ski masks Sunday, February 10. Despite the below-freezing temperatures that blanketed the northern regions of Connecticut on the morning of January 27, eager patrons bundled themselves up for the cold and began forming a line outside the entrance to the popular Tolland Antiques Show more than an hour prior to opening.
A memorial service for Maine Antique Digest editor Samuel Pennington has been scheduled for Saturday, March 1, at 2 pm, at the Waldo Theatre, 916 Main Street. A reception will follow at the Maine Antique Digest building at 911 Main Street. A snow date of March 2 has been set.
Aguttes Auction House, in association with the specialist Dan Coissard, set new records with its sale of fine art December 21 at Hôtel Drouot. Auctioned were ten key pieces from the private collection of André Lefèvre that sold for a total of $32 million.
A chess set designed by Salvador Dali reproducing his own fingers achieved $23,400 at Auction Gallery of the Palm Beaches January 7.
Best known for his sculptural mobiles and stabiles, Alexander Calder (1898-1976) was also a prolific, skilled maker of objets d’art, especially jewelry. During his lifetime he created some 1,800 bracelets, brooches, earrings, necklaces, pins, rings and tiaras made of brass, gold, silver and steel, often embellished with found objects like glass and wood. These diminutive, avant-garde creations were attuned to the aesthetics of the modern age, but they remained personal and idiosyncratic — unmistakably Calder. His jewelry has the same linear yet three-dimensional quality as his famous sculptures; their parts were hammered, shaped and composed in the same way. “Calder Jewelry,” on view at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., through June 15, is organized by the Norton and the Calder Foundation. It is the first museum exhibition focused solely on the artist’s extensive output of characteristically inventive, whimsical jewelry. The display of about 100 works, plus several notebooks of working drawings, documents the extent to which Calder’s jewelry has the same dynamic and dimensional qualities as his revolutionary mobiles.
Charles G. Martignette Jr, formerly of Somerville, Mass., died of apparent heart failure on Sunday, February 3. Mr Martignette, 57, lived in Florida for the last 35 years and was recognized as a world renowned art collector, dealer and historian.
The January 23 sale of Chinese Export art and the Hodroff collection, Part II, at Christie’s totaled $3,110,251 and was 90 percent sold by lot and 87 percent sold by value.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present “Gustave Courbet, Radical and Rebellious Nineteenth Century Artist,” on view February 27–May 18 in the museum’s Tisch Galleries, second floor.
the National Gallery of Art recently acquired a landmark of Dutch landscapes, “Ferry on a River,” 1649, by Salomon van Ruysdael (1603–1670), and one of the finest private European holdings of Old Master drawings — the Wolfgang Ratjen collection of 185 Italian and German drawings.
While what actually defines an Outsider artist may be debated within collecting circles for years to come, the public venue in which to acquire works by Outsiders has been definitive for more than a decade-and-a-half.
A highly desirable selection of clocks crossed the auction block this past Sunday, February 17, during Skinner’s Americana auction. The crème de la crème of the offering was a 104-inch E. Howard No. 67 oak regulator wall clock, circa 1890, that sold after an active round of bidding for $165,900. An array of sports memorabilia and cards offered by the partnership of Sotheby’s and SCP Auctions was eagerly received by hundreds of collectors who participated in the firms’ January 15–30 Internet auction.
The Taft Museum of Art will present the exhibition, “Turner Watercolors from the Taft Collections” on view February 29–May 4 in the Keystone Gallery.
Just in time for summer, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art will present “Making a Splash: American Beach Fashions, 1850–1920,” February 23–July 13, to complement the concurrent international loan exhibition, “Impressionists by the Sea,” which closes May 11.
If Americana is your thing, especially the sort that is Pennsylvanian in nature, the place to have been over the first weekend in February was the York Fairgrounds for yet another edition of the Original York Antiques Show.
Jonathan Rickard offers his remembrances of S. Robert Teitelman over the years. Visitors can step into the past and see images of Winterthur when it was the private home of Henry Francis du Pont and his family in “Double Vision: 1930s Design at Winterthur,” on view March 8–May 18.
On January 25–27, Green Valley Auctions grossed more than more than $368,000 during its sixth annual winter cataloged and uncataloged sale of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century glass and lighting with more than 3,500 pieces sold in four sessions.
A revitalized Heart of Country Antiques Show debuted Valentine’s Day weekend at Gaylord Opryland Hotel. It was as if American country furniture and folk art had been discovered all over again.
There was more than fun at the official auctions of the Florida United Numismatics (FUN) convention January 10–13 when Heritage Auction Galleries mounted its second largest coin and currency auction ever, and two coins went over the $1 million mark.
Hesse Galleries sold a stoneware cooler for a record $58,300 at auction on February 16. The cooler was part of the Margaret (Jane) Merrick estate from Cooperstown, N.Y.
Art ruled the day at Ron Bourgeault’s February Weekend Auction this past Friday through Sunday, February 22–24, or perhaps better put, art ruled all three days of the popular Northeast Auctions event. “Once upon a time, there was a prince and a princess, and that’s exactly how a description of the Murphys should begin,” writer Donald Ogden Stewart once observed of Sara and Gerald Murphy. Attractive, gifted, wealthy Americans with homes in Paris and on the French Riviera, the Murphys were at the center of expatriate cultural and social life during the modernist ferment of the 1920s. Far more than mere wealthy patrons, they were creative kindred spirits whose sustaining friendship released creative energy. The result was some of the most notable art, literature, music and theater of the Twentieth Century. The glittering and sometimes tragic lives of the Murphys and their brilliant artistic circle are rewardingly examined in “Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara & Gerald Murphy,” a fascinating exhibition on view at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Conn., through May 4.
“Once upon a time, there was a prince and a princess, and that’s exactly how a description of the Murphys should begin,” writer Donald Ogden Stewart once observed of Sara and Gerald Murphy. Attractive, gifted, wealthy Americans with homes in Paris and on the French Riviera, the Murphys were at the center of expatriate cultural and social life during the modernist ferment of the 1920s. Far more than mere wealthy patrons, they were creative kindred spirits whose sustaining friendship released creative energy. The result was some of the most notable art, literature, music and theater of the Twentieth Century. The glittering and sometimes tragic lives of the Murphys and their brilliant artistic circle are rewardingly examined in “Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara & Gerald Murphy,” a fascinating exhibition on view at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Conn., through May 4. From 1880 to the outbreak of World War I, American brilliant-cut glass was a popular luxury product among the country’s elite. More than 100 superb examples are on view in the new exhibition “The Brilliant Period of American Cut Glass” at the Mint Museum of Art through August 17.
In a world of look-alike fairs, the Nashville Antiques and Garden Show is unto itself — half antiques, half gardens (& etcetera), and 100 percent over the top.
Fred H. Bennett, 88, died February 15 at Bethel Health Care Center. A resident of Newtown since 1962, Mr Bennett was the owner of Poverty Hollow Antiques until his retirement in 1998.
The Palm Beach International Art and Antiques Fair, on display this year from February 1 to 10, has always desired a place at the table with the best European high-end shows, and is well on its way. Featuring more than 115 works of art, including paintings, photographs, sculpture and works on paper, and introducing 28 artists new to the museum, The Phillips Collection has unveiled the newest additions to its collection of modern art in the exhibition “Degas to Diebenkorn: The Phillips Collects,” on view through May 25.
Shelburne Museum director Stephan Jost recently announced the acquisition of several works to the museum’s collection, among them an important painting by Nineteenth Century maritime artist Francis Augusta Silva (1835–1886).
What was advertised as an “Art Special” turned out to be a lot more than that for the owner of Northfield Auctions, Paul Gorzocoski III. |
