| 2008 Annual Index |
Masters of the genre such as Chet Reneson, Brett Smith and John Swan are among ten featured artists that fill the pages of The Fine Art Of Angling, by Diane K. Inman Claudia Glassman, 62, vintage textiles dealer of Brimfield, Mass., died peacefully at home on March 21, after a brief illness. The Cleveland Museum of Art announced several key acquisitions, including a set of 12 fan paintings by the Twentieth Century Chinese artist Fu Baoshi, a Gothic bible, a Régence console made in Paris in the 1720s and an important self-portrait by Max Beckmann.
Crocker Farm’s March 8 auction of American stoneware started off gangbusters right from the get-go.
The popular Ephemera 28 show, March 15–16 at the Hyatt Regency, presented by the Ephemera Society of America, has become the pinnacle of paper shows, with dealers traveling from England and Europe to display their stock. It is also an interesting and exciting walk through history.
To celebrate the firm’s 20th anniversary and its successes, Grogan’s departed from its usual single-session auction format to host an action-packed and exciting two-day sale on March 1 and 2.
It was clear at the preview of I.M. Chait’s second annual Asia Week sale in New York City that the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based gallery had established itself as a player in the round of highly popular Asia Week events.
A dramatic and sweeping oil on canvas rendering of the Grand Canal in Venice under a full moon by Elliott Daingerfield (American, 1859–1932) soared to $83,950, becoming the top lot and setting a world auction record for the artist, at a March 1 sale of the estate of Mariam Cannon Hayes.
Fashionable Chelsea, in West London, has tradtionally been home to numerous antiques fairs over the years. The New Britain Museum of American Art is presenting an exhibition featuring 60 works of California Impressionist art in “All Things Bright and Beautiful: California Impressionist Paintings from the Irvine Museum,” on view through June 29.
There are numerous weekly street markets throughout Paris, and the 800- exhibitor, ten-day and 100,000-visitor event in Chatou, a town on the western outskirts of Paris, marks the start of that season. Forecasts of wicked weather and a shaky US economy were disconcerting, but proved no match for the superb property offered at Rago’s Craftsman Auction weekend March 8 and 9.
A new exhibition featuring nearly 50 miniatures from the Morgan Library and Museum’s hunting manuscript by Gaston Phoebus is on view April 18–August 10.
In Antiques I Have Known, Corinne Griffith’s thoroughly silly account of collecting in the 1950s, the Hollywood starlet who became interested in antiques after her third husband gave her a Confederate flag more or less accurately describes the Kindig shop, with its offhand grandeur and much remarked coating of dust, and its junior proprietor, Joseph K. Kindig III: “a tall, slim, very aristocratic, intelligent looking young man with reddish blond hair.” At 84, Kindig is no longer young or his hair blond. He is well-spoken and insightful with a wry sense of humor and an understated manner that can be intimidating. Kindig III loves beautiful things, especially Eighteenth Century Pennsylvania architecture and furniture. In recognition of his contributions to the field, the Antiques Dealers Association of America (ADA) is honoring Kindig with the 2008 ADA Award of Merit, to be presented at a dinner in his honor on Saturday, April 12, in conjunction with the Philadelphia Antiques Show at the Navy Yard. In the three years since Karen DiSaia assumed management of the Connecticut Spring Antiques Show, March 8 and 9 at the Connecticut Expo Center, the 35-year-old fair benefiting the Haddam Historical Society has steadily found its footing. Tim Chapulis of Tim’s Inc, always packs them into the Litchfield Firehouse for his Cabin Fever auctions, which start off his auction season every year. On March 22, though, he had a record crowd, squeezing in more than 500 potential bidders for the event, now in its 16th year.
“Wedded Bliss, The Marriage of Art and Ceremony,” an exhibition on view at the Peabody Essex Museum April 26–September 14, explores the wedding as impetus for the creation of art in cultures around the world.
Longtime antiques dealer Sally Larkin Case died at her home on March 18. She founded Deacon's Horse Antiques and was a regular at top antique shows along the East Coast. Humorous and insightful photographs exploring the quirky relationships between dogs and their owners will open at the James A. Michener Art Museum on April 26.
Knotty Pine, one of New England’s oldest and most respected antiques markets, will close its doors on May 18.
A heavily carved oak hall seat attributed to R.J. Horner, one of only five or six known to exist and in pristine condition, sold for $46,000 at a single-owner collection sale February 16 at Hal Hunt Auctions.
A few new dealers among the many perennial favorites invigorated the Greenwich Antiques Show at its March 29–30 presentation at the Civic Center here. Fine paintings from a Cape Cod collection found favor at George Costopulos’s February 28 sale, where the oil on Masonite painting “Seesaw,” by Cape artist Ralph Cahoon realized $28,750.
The highly anticipated Elephant’s Trunk Flea Market opened for the season this past Sunday, April 6. Despite chilly weather, more than 100 dealers were on hand, anxious to set up their wares and get the season off to a “brisk” start.
The exhibition “Asa Ames: Occupation Sculpturing,” on view at the American Folk Art Museum from April 15 through September 14, is the first devoted to the three-dimensional portraits carved by the elusive artist between 1847 and his death in 1851.
Ceramics experts had long suspected that soft-paste porcelains were produced in Philadelphia prior to the Revolutionary War. Early histories of the city mention the “American China Manufactory,” owned and operated by Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris from 1770 to 1772; but with scattered documentation and few surviving examples, the manufacturers were but a footnote in the annals of American ceramics until 1972. It was then that Graham Hood of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation published a slim but definitive volume of research he had conducted on the 12 known examples of wares produced by Bonnin and Morris. His conclusions proved once and for all that the American-made table wares had been delicate and desirous enough to rival the soft-paste porcelains produced by the English – which had all but monopolized the American market. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has brought together for the first time under one roof all of the remaining known examples of Bonnin and Morris porcelains. “Colonial Philadelphia Porcelain: The Art of Bonnin and Morris,” on view through June 1, also displays large-scale shards unearthed in excavations of the factory site, now hidden under the shadow of Interstate 95, as well as original orders and receipts, financial documents, ads and letters.
For the fourth year, the New York Art + Design Fair took over the Park Avenue Armory for five days, March 27–31, presenting a compelling and diverse showcase of contemporary, fine and Modern art, sculpture, furniture, and architectural and design elements.
On March 25, John Moran Auctioneers hosted its monthly fine antiques and estate sale at the Pasadena Convention Center. At the end of the evening, the sale resulted in the highest-grossing such sale in the firm’s 39-year history, earning more than $1.9 million on the 386 lots sold.
The Antiques Dealers Association of America (ADA) honored Joe Kindig this past Saturday evening, April 12, at a dinner at the Navy Yard, site of the 2008 Philadelphia Antiques Show.
“Muraqqa: Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin” opens May 3 at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. On view through August 3, the exhibition will bring together 86 jewel-like masterpieces from the renowned collection and include masterworks from the Freer Gallery’s collection of Mughal paintings
From 1962 to 1972, George Lois changed the face of magazine design with his covers for Esquire magazine. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) presents prints of 32 of the 92 covers Lois created for the magazine in “George Lois: The Esquire Covers” from April 25 to March 31, 2009.
A rare Patek Philippe platinum double-dialed wristwatch with 12 complications brought $1,503,839 at Sotheby’s on April 10, setting a world auction record for a modern wristwatch. With strong bidding in all categories, Neal Auction Company’s February 23–24 estates auction’s tally of $3.4 million underscored the market strength and collector’s enthusiasm.
A lot of some 150 beer cans more than tripled its $20/40,000 estimate to attain $126,000, at Cyr Auction March 26.
A one-day antiques show certainly concentrates the minds of both exhibitors and show patrons — and the Wilton Historical Society’s 41st annual antiques show, conducted on March 30, may be that concept’s best exemplar.
It sparkled, it glittered and it opened a lot of eyes in Boston. Color and light swept the city when AD 20/21 opened its doors at the Cyclorama building in Boston’s South End on April 3.
I.M. Chait’s second annual Natural History Auction, simulcast to Beverly Hills, Calif., on March 21, broke the record for the sale of the flashiest fossil known.
Meta Bleier, 82, who, with her husband Paul, operated Silent Woman Antiques for many years, died March 25 following a brief battle with cancer. From retro clothing chosen by Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker and a ten-year collection of Chanel bags, chic accessories and clothing proved extremely popular for the second year in a row at Vivien Cord’s Vintage Clothing, Accessories, Textiles & Jewelry Show April 5-6.
Planned in the mid-1970s as a site-specific work within the Hudson River Museum’s gift shop, Red Grooms’ sculpto-pictorama “The Bookstore” was realized as a riotous mixed-media fantasy that had a “giddy sense of reality.” Thirty years later, in a different financial climate, “The Bookstore” was reconsidered by the Yonkers, N.Y., museum and it was ultimately decided that it no longer needed to function in dual roles. Permanent space was allocated and an exhibition built around it. Enter once again the artist, who, invited by Bartholomew Bland, current curator of exhibitions, to revisit the work, said, with as much humor as truth, “I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did.” Bland saw an opportunity to mount a Grooms exhibit that would allow viewers to step into the studio and see how Grooms’ ideas take shape. “In The Studio,” which runs until May 25, bursts with new art and new information about familiar pieces. It tracks Grooms’ major periods from 1961 to the present.
On April 3, Swann Auction Galleries offered a selection of fine books spanning the centuries. The auction’s top lot, Athenaeus, Deipnosophistarum, first edition, Venice, 1514, attained a record $192,000.
Amid the whirlwind of controversy swirling around folk art collector and jeweler Ralph Esmerian, Christie’s was forced to cancel its April 15 jewelry auction, which it had prominently billed as “the most important collection of period jewels.” When promoter Marvin Getman proposed an early spring antiques show for March of last year, old hands advised against it. He persisted, and the result was a strong show. This year, Getman moved the show to the Seaport Convention Center, a newer and fresher venue than last year, and he tightened it to deliver an even sleeker and more successful event.
Claiming that he was intentionally misled by the Art Loss Register (ALR) while performing due diligence in regard to two paintings, a London dealer says the experience has cost him his business and reputation. The Jewish Museum will present “Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning and American Art, 1940–1976” from May 4 through September 21.
Enslaved craftsmen were at work across the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century South, and a new exhibition, “‘Black and white all mix’d together’: The Hidden Legacy of Enslaved Craftsmen” recovers the stories of these often nameless individuals through the masterpieces of Southern decorative arts they helped create. The exhibit runs through September 15 at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts at Old Salem Museums & Gardens.
A dagger that once belonged to Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor who built the Taj Mahal as a memorial to his beloved wife, sold for $3.3 million on April 10 at Bonhams' Indian and Islamic sale.
The cover lot of Skinner’s European furniture and decorative arts auction April 10–12 was a Khlebnikov case that set a record for the highest-priced lot ever sold at Skinner’s European furniture and decorative arts auction. The sale, which offered more than 800 lots, featuring fine silver and Judaica, realized more than $2 million.
Show patrons were exhorted to “Renew — Recycle — Redecorate” when the annual Bedford Spring Antiques Show, celebrating its 23rd anniversary as St Matthew’s Church’s main fundraiser, got underway at the Rippowam Cisqua School April 5.
More than 100 people were in house for Cowan’s spring Americana fine and decorative art auction that realized $702,629 in total sales.
Totaling $17,608,525, the highest total in auction history for the category, Christie’s presented its most exciting week of photographs sales to date.
George Bellows (1882-1925) remains one of the towering figures of turn-of-the-century American art, admired for his bravura style and the manner in which he captured the spirit and character of American city living, as well as leisure-time activities of suburbanites. Bellows’s more than 700 paintings, which so brilliantly captured the feel of early modern American life, are so acclaimed that they have tended to obscure appreciation for his graphic works, of which there are nearly 200 editions of lithographs and an equal number of drawings. Yet these lesser-known works on paper convey the same vivacity as his canvases, utilizing quick, vibrant lines that tend to leap off the page and bring scenes to life. The largest collection of Bellows’s graphic art at any institution was given to the Boston Public Library by banker Albert Henry Wiggin in 1941. From that trove, nearly 60 works on paper — drawings and lithographs — are included in the exhibition “The Powerful Hand of George Bellows: Drawings from the Boston Public Library,” on view at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine, through June 1.
Fluid and sensuous, the rococo style emerged in early Eighteenth Century France. Drawn from nature, with an extra fillip that gave it unabashed exuberance and opulent detail, rococo first appeared in Paris around 1730, under the reign of the young Louis XV, who returned the French court from Versailles to Paris. In so doing, he helped turn the tide from the imposing magnificence and ponderous ceremony of the baroque under the reign of Sun King Louis XIV to the romantic and fancifully naturalistic of the rococo. Under Louis XV and his favorite mistress, Madame Pompadour, exquisite decoration became the norm. The sensuality of the new style reflected the prevailing spirit of the rather licentious court. The recently mounted exhibition, “Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730-2008,” now on view at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City through July 6, examines the style and traces it from inception through episodic revivals to its reinterpretation in the Twenty-First Century. The exhibition, includes 370 objects from the Eighteenth to the present day drawn from the museum’s own collection and from a range of public and private collections.
“L. Brent Kington: Mythic Metalsmith” is on view at the Illinois State Museum Chicago Gallery through August 1.
Bloomsbury’s sale of modern first editions, literature and history, economics and law on March 13 was a big success, emphasizing once again that Bloomsbury is the natural home of first editions.
The Bowers Museum presents “Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China’s First Emperor,” the largest loan of terra cotta figures and significant artifacts to ever travel to the United States from the tomb complex of China’s first emperor, Shi Huangdi (259–210 BC). The exhibition opens May 18 and runs through October 12.
Although Stanley was well represented, Brown Auction Services’ 32nd annual auction of fine tools on April 5 focused on patented metallic and transitional planes. Overall results were strong and the total for 748 lots was $447,309 with an average price of $598 per lot.
Opening May 6, “Masterpieces of Modern Design: Selections from the Collection” in the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will showcase many of the most significant works in the Metropolitan Museum’s modern design collection.
On April 24, Charles A. Manghis, a Nantucket scrimshaw artist and dealer, was charged in US District Court, along with a Ukrainian citizen, with smuggling, making false statements and conspiracy involving the importation of sperm whale teeth and elephant ivory into the United States in violation of an international treaty and a federal law that protects endangered species.
Gregory Scott Berry died at his home in Westminster in mid-April after suffering a heart attack. He was 59. Harold Rothstein, a collector inspired by Eighteenth Century American arts, architecture and lifestyle, died at his home in Bucks County, on April 13. He was 86 years old. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has completed the funding of its share in the joint acquisition of Thomas Eakins’s heroic “The Gross Clinic” through deaccessioning Eakins’s “Cowboy Singing,” which has been jointly acquired by the Denver Art Museum and the Denver-based Anschutz Collection, as well as two oil sketches for Eakins’s “Cowboys in the Badlands.”
Tradition was upended this year when the 47-year-old Philadelphia Antiques Show abandoned the tried and true, starting fresh at the Navy Yard, six miles from the 33rd Street Armory, its longtime home.
A carved and painted Punch cigar store figure attributed to the shop of Samuel Robb brought out dealers and collectors from near and far to Pook & Pook when it attained$187,200.
Poulin’s Auctions had its most successful firearms sale to date, grossing $1.5 million March 7–9. The sale featured the first session of the important military collection of the late Bruce Stern of Trumbull, Conn.
Unlike years past when the Westchester Glass Club’s Collectors Glass Show and Sale had to endure almost biblical bad weather, this year’s 32nd annual show on April 12 and 13 had clear skies and great selling. Visitors filled the Civic Center to enjoy and buy from the 50 or so dealers who came from across the country to this premier glass event.
Philadelphia dressing tables, New England hutch tables and writing armchairs, decorated Pennsylvania dower chests, and life-size carousel animals were the order of the day at the Original 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show, turning up by the handful at the small but select fair that kicks off Antiques Week in Philadelphia.
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