By midsummer, when the Maine Folk Art Trail is in full swing, collectors and vacationers will be able to view one of the broadest slices of Americana local to this state that has ever been presented. The 11 museums participating in the event have dug deeply into their troves to present works that comprise a comprehensive survey of folk art as it evolved in Maine during the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Influenced as much by geography as social position, by need as much as the need for self-expression, the works by schoolgirls and sailors, carvers, quilters, cabinetmakers and painters offer rare insights into the activities of daily life. Besides the art, the Maine Folk Art Trail invites a tour of the state from Down East to the upper regions of Penobscot Bay and as far west as Bridgton. Fortunately, the exhibits run well into the late fall, giving visitors ample opportunity to do the trail in several small bites.
Rufino Tamayo’s “Trovador (The Troubadour),” which achieved $7,209,000 at Christie’s May 28 Latin American art sale, more than doubled the previous world auction record for the artist and eclipsed the previous record for the category, held by Frida Kahlo’s “Roots,” which sold for $5,616,000 in May 2006. Every spring this sleepy hamlet becomes a mecca for bicycle enthusiasts and collectors from across the globe. The father and son team of Copake Auction presented its 17th annual bicycle sale and swap meet here April 11–12.
Enjoying a climate-controlled atmosphere, Nan Gurley and 50 high-end Americana exhibitors, most of them from New England, set up on May 15 to showcase a wide range of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century furniture, folk art, textiles, toys, hooked rugs, paintings, architectural and decorative antiques. The James A. Michener Art Museum will celebrate the iconic influence of Bucks County’s waterways, the Delaware River and Delaware Canal, as a powerful pull on regional landscape artists in “New Hope: Art and the River,” on view June 13–October 5.
The Museum of Modern Art is presenting “Ateliers Jean Prouvé,” an exhibition that provides a historical view of workshop mass production as practiced by the French architect and designer Jean Prouvé (1901–1984), and of the collaborations within his ateliers that took designs for furniture and architecture from ideas to industrialized products. Neal Auction Company’s May 3–4 auction of fine art and antiques garnered considerable interest from around the country and abroad and totaled $2.75 million.
Anne d’Harnoncourt, director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, who led the institution since 1982, died June 1 at her home in Center City, of natural causes.
“The Pier Shows have not been sold,” Irene Stella announced to concerned dealers as she circulated among the booths at a recent major antiques show.
On May 23, the Bristol Police Department responded to a report of larceny at the Blithewold Mansion, of a 1908 Art Nouveau bronze fountain from the north side garden of the mansion. Bold and beautiful, the New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show has no rivals in Manhattan, one reason that it each year mesmerizes visitors with its freshness. Opening June 10, this exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art highlights the diversity of British watercolor painting, showing both landscapes and figurative works by some of the principal artists who worked in the medium.
In the 51st consecutive edition of her Antique Textiles Vintage Fashions Show and Sale at the Sturbridge Host Hotel Conference Center May 12, Linda Zukas again sold out the show. Arguably today the most famous artist in the world, Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was a brilliant, idiosyncratic painter who uncompromisingly recorded the painful saga of her life in numerous compelling images. In contrast to the great, sweeping murals by Diego Rivera and others, for which Mexican art is best known, Kahlo’s distinctive, jewel-like paintings are small and highly personal. Some 90 percent of her vividly detailed compositions draw on her personal life, in strange, often shocking self-portraits filled with symbolism and reflections on pivotal, often painful moments in her troubled life. Known for years — if at all — as Rivera’s long-suffering wife, Kahlo emerged on her own as a global celebrity in the wake of a groundbreaking 1983 biography by Hayden Herrera and a movie based on the book. It is fitting, therefore, that marking the centennial of the artist’s birth, Herrera should curate “Frida Kahlo,” a comprehensive survey of her work that is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through September 16. It comprises more than 40 of the Mexican artist’s self-portraits, portraits, allegorical and symbolic paintings and still lifes, drawn from collections all over the world.
A group of paintings by one of the most brilliant and complicated of all of the American modernists will be on view June 14–August 24 at the Amon Carter Museum in the special exhibition “Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism.”
The auction market seemed exceptionally sound at CRN Auctions April 27 sale, where a packed gallery and jammed phone lines defied conventional economic logic. The offerings were choice and desirable and the results attested to their strength.
The de Young Museum is hosting Dale Chihuly’s first major exhibition in San Francisco, June 14–September 28. “Chihuly at the de Young” includes 11 galleries of new and archival works representing the breadth and scope of the artist’s creative vision over the last four decades.
Jones and Horan Auction Team’s sale of April 26 and 27 contained more than 650 lots, and the highest prices were achieved by two scarce American pocket watches.
Carl Rodger Brechlin, 53, of Meriden, auctioneer and owner of Nest Egg Auctions, died unexpectedly May 30 while on a river running trip with friends and family members on the Potomac River in Harper’s Ferry, W.Va. Fine weather greeted antiques lovers at the season opener of the Rhinebeck Antiques Fair. The show, which ran Memorial Day weekend, May 24 and 25, concluded with many of its 200 exhibitors pleased by the knowledgeable crowd
Leading Sotheby’s Old Master paintings sale May 7 was a hitherto unrecorded set of four landscapes representing “The Four Seasons” by the Flemish master Sebastiaen Vrancx that sold for $1.87 million — a world auction record for the artist.
On May 27, Frances Eastburn reported to the Sheffield police that a Daniel Ridgway Knight painting was missing from her home, along with two boxes containing antique china. A holiday long weekend, spectacular weather and 150-plus dealers resulted in an antiques show that dealers and collectors hope is merely the first of a new generation at the Topsfield Fairgrounds.
Jasper Johns’s “Corpse And Mirror II” will be on loan to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts June 27–September.
What began as an annual foray into the world of fine art in 2005 has grown into a twice-a-year endeavor at Clarke Auction Gallery that conducted its fourth annual fine art sale on May 19. In 1969, two years after John T. Kirk’s influential presentation “Connecticut Furniture: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn., the Litchfield Historical Society documented and displayed furniture made in Connecticut’s northern and westernmost county. The society recently revisited the project, exploring the topic through a contemporary lens and applying the latest research techniques and interpretive methods. The result is a much expanded and more nuanced view of furniture making in the region before the Industrial Revolution. Now something of a collector’s item, Litchfield County Furniture: 1730-1850 listed 49 cabinetmakers, Elijah Booth of Woodbury and Silas E. Cheney of Litchfield prominent among them. It also highlighted the distinctive diagonal braces that some Litchfield cabinetmakers used to reinforce the underside of the bases of case pieces. While some of the original findings still stand, it was clear that the research was dated, said Catherine Keene Fields. The historical society’s director sought funding from the Connecticut Humanities Council and elsewhere to implement the new study. The resulting exhibition, “To Please Any Taste: Litchfield County Furniture & Furniture Makers, 1780-1830,” continues at the Litchfield Historical Society through November 30.
As Memorial Day traditionally kicks off summer, so, too, the Brandywine River Museum antiques show starts off the summer antiques show circuit in good stead.
“We were delighted with the show; attendance was up from last year, and all of our exhibitors are planning to return next year,” Gretchen Davis, show manager, said at the close of the 11th annual Historic East Berlin Antique Show. The Frist Center for the Visual Arts opens “Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975” June 20.
Newport estates were a surefire draw for dealers and collectors at a May 28 auction conducted by Gustave J.S. White Auction Co., at Newport County Auction Gallery. Carefully gathered antiques and accessories provided bidders with much choice at Hap Moore’s May 31 sale, attracting a strong crowd that remained energetic to the very end.
About 100 ancient weapons of the renowned Guttmann collection were the highlights of Hermann Historica’s 54th auction, filling the auction room with bidders and suspense as soon as the sale began.
A bidder on the phone from Texas and another in Fontaine’s Auction Gallery’s saleroom battled over a Howard #61 astronomical floor clock on June 14, pushing it to a final price of $195,000. In connection with the 2008 Glens Falls centennial, The Hyde Collection celebrates “A Glens Falls Legacy: The Pruyn Family” with two related exhibitions on view through August 24.
Alfred A. “Reo” Giangrande, age 67, died at his home on May 30. He was born in Boston on February 3, 1941, to Richard Giangrande and Caroline (Ghelfi) Giangrande. The exhibition “Silversmiths to the Nation: Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner, 1808–1842,” on view at Winterthur Museum & Country Estate July 4–September 21, is the first to focus solely on the work of the Philadelphia silversmith firm, and will feature more than 100 objects created by Fletcher & Gardiner.
Dealers came from 17 states to take part in the ever-popular Greater York Antiques Show and Sale for May 30–31. The central role that French art and artists played in shaping American painting in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century is nowhere more evident than in the field of Impressionism. The up-and-coming US artists who flocked to Paris to study after the Civil War were exposed to developing French styles and fanned out into the countryside to practice their craft. Many returned as converts to the Impressionist aesthetic. From the flowering of naturalistic landscapes in the 1840s to the onset of the Barbizon School, through Impressionism’s golden age later in the century and beyond Postimpressionism into the 1920s, Americans followed the French lead in transforming landscape painting with innovative techniques and unconventional styles. Impressionism came late to America, but once established, it became enormously popular with painters and collectors. “Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism,” a fascinating exhibition organized by the Brooklyn Museum and drawn from its impressive collection, explores landscape painting as practiced by French artists and their American counterparts during this time. Comprising 40 paintings, it is on view at the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colo., through September 7.
A fine art auctioneer’s instincts, an international database of stolen and missing artworks and a quick response by the Houston Police Department sped the recovery of an Andrew Wyeth watercolor on paper,“A Bridge, Race Gate (Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania).” The Connecticut Firemen’s Historical Society Fire Museum reports that a circa 1880–90 six-panel engine lamp with a red glow panel on the front containing the words “Gardner 1” is missing from the museum.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has received a major private collection of rare American folk art and other antique objects from Juli Grainger of Winnetka, Ill. The objects were created in various parts of the United States during the Nineteenth Century and are conservatively valued at $1.7 million.
If one had to sum up the Cold Spring Antiques Show edition on June 8, diversity would be the word likeliest to spring to mind.
The Delaware Art Museum will present “Garry Knox Bennett: Call Me Chairmaker,” featuring 52 one-of-a-kind sculptural chairs created by a contemporary studio furniture maker, June 28–September 21.
On May 16 and 17, Green Valley Auctions, Inc, held its eighth annual spring auction of glass and lighting highlighted by a 17-inch-high Boston and Sandwich Glass Co. cut double-overlay Moorish windows banquet lamp that fetched $6,780.
Textiles were the main draw at Grogan & Company’s June 1 sale, where a group of five tapestries from an unidentified Massachusetts institution took high honors.
A lot of people never thought they would see a final sale at the venerable F.B. Hubley Auction Galleries. Its last sale came on June 4 auction, however, marking the end of an era. Contemporary art has been breaking records worldwide recently, and Ivey-Selkirk Auctioneers felt a tip of the market trend with its Modernism auction May 17–18 totaling sales of $1.5 million.
The largest comprehensive retrospective of the photography of Lee Friedlander (American, b 1934) will be on view at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), June 29 –September 14.
Condition was everything at Morphy’s $2.6 million spring toy auction, with a battle royale waged for premier examples of early American toys and folk art.
The Annual Outdoor Ridgefield Antiques Market marked its 46th anniversary here June 7 at the historic 1896 Lounsbury House, bringing more than 70 antiques dealers from all over the Northeast.
Appearing in a wide variety of styles and forms throughout the progression of the nation, the American flag has served as a unique and powerful symbol representing the freedoms and liberties celebrated by its citizens for more than 200 years. An icon of its nation’s history, the flag, until it was standardized in 1912, often possessed folk art qualities as the patriotic pride of its makers was expressed within the loose guidelines adopted by Congress in 1777. In a celebration of the American flag, the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia, Penn., is hosting the exhibition “The American Flag: A Work in Progress,” on view through August 22. Consisting mostly of Nineteenth Century examples, all of which have been culled from the collection of Dr Jeffrey Kenneth Kohn, the flags on view serve to educate the public in regards to the numerous transitions that the stars and stripes have undergone, as well as to illuminate the folk art qualities of the various interpretations.
Started 18 years ago, Heartland Antiques Show marked its June 7 edition with about 150 exhibits from dealers gathered predominantly from the nation’s “Heartland,” but with some representation throughout the country.
For two decades now on the first weekend after Memorial Day, Morgan MacWhinnie has managed about 50 antiques dealers on the grounds of Bridge Hampton Historical Society’s Corwith House for a short weekend antiques market.
“Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840–1940,” an exhibition on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through September 1, tells the story of photography’s first 100 years through the work of 13 key figures who helped shape the aesthetic and expressive course of the medium.
An early drawing of the summer theater circuit by the late Al Hirschfeld fetched $84,000 at Swann Galleries’ American Art auction June 12.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art will be the first venue to host “To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum,” on view July 13–September 7.
Nostalgic and contemporary styles combine as the expertise of an English pottery designer meets the changing tastes of baby-booming postwar America in "J. Palin Thorley: Modern and Traditional Design in Twentieth Century Ceramics."
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