Alexander Autographs reported that its recent auction demonstrated a dramatic resurgence of interest in African Americana — ranging from inspirational documents, letters and signed photos to chilling relics from the slave trade.
Teddy Roosevelt’s aim was true in Bertoia Auctions’ Toys for All Seasons sale, as an early Schoenhut boxed set titled Teddy’s Adventures in Africa swept top-lot honors in the $1.8 million event.
Genre paintings, those intimate depictions of everyday life, have great appeal to collectors. At Christmas, none was more charming than Timoleon Lobrichon’s painting, “Jouets.” It was the crown jewel at Brunk Auctions’ recent sale.
The Jewish Museum is hosting a focused exhibition, “Theaters of Memory: Art and the Holocaust,” through February 1.
Deep insight and a highly personal approach to beauty and harmony of design are the hallmarks of the sumptuous Brock collection of aristocratic furniture, decorative objects, drawings and paintings showcased in an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) January 22 through May 17.
“Claus Mroczynski: Sacred Places of the Southwest,” the current and final exhibition at the James A. Michener Art Museum’s New Hope satellite in Union Square, includes 49 black and white photographs of Native American ruins and Southwest landscapes.
Judy Herdeg is seeking assistance in locating two Eighteenth Century Queen Anne dolls that went missing from the US Air baggage claim at the Philadelphia Airport on November 8. They are each about 16 inches tall. Stuart Evans, a pioneer in the collectibles business, died January 4 at his home in Puerto Rico after suffering a stroke. He was 80. One of this historic maritime city’s most favored traditions is the Peabody Essex Museum Antiques Show, which has set up shop the day after Thanksgiving every year since 1972.
Boasting over 130 dealers, the 27th annual Williamsburg Holiday Antiques Show was the largest in its history. It recently filled the Kingsmill Marriott Hotel ballroom with period antiques of Williamsburg style and design. One of the most intriguing aspects of American folk art is the continuing discovery of talented self-taught artists who, in many cases are virtually unknown to national audiences and the collecting community. Such is the case with Ulysses Davis (1913–1990), arguably the nation’s best self-trained woodcarver, who created sculptures in spare time from working as a barber in Savannah, Ga. The first comprehensive Davis exhibition in years, “The Treasure of Ulysses Davis,” is on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Ga., through April 5.
The Birchwood Manor Antiques Show continued its New Year’s tradition by offering an impressive antiquing experience at its January 2–4 event at the elegant manor whose ballrooms were eminently suited to displaying fine antiques.
Considered by many “The First Family of American Painting,” the three generations of the Wyeth clan comprise many facets and multiple skills. The least recognized artist in the Wyeth family was Carolyn, who was known for her feisty, hard-edged personality. Her paintings, vivid in color, solid in structure and straightforward, drew on intensely personal perceptions and perspectives. Carolyn Wyeth’s work is the subject of a welcome exhibition, the first in three decades, at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Penn. On view January 24-March 15, “Unique Force: The Art of Carolyn Wyeth” comprises some 40 paintings and drawings that span her career, plus numerous portraits of her.
Highlights from Charlton Hall Galleries’ recent grand estates auction included a rare copper weathervane in the form of a ram, which was most likely made by Cushing & Sons, Waltham, Mass.
Good things came in pairs at a CRN Auctions sale where the highlights were the fine Eighteenth Century Italian furniture that came from a Chicago collector with a very good eye.
The first exhibition to focus entirely on the radiant late interiors and still life paintings of Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) will open January 27 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hidden from public view no more, some noteworthy artworks from the holdings of private collectors on Long Island are on exhibition at Nassau County Museum of Art January 18 through March 15.
Antiques dealer Sally Schell Whittemore, 54, died Wednesday, January 7, at her home.
The Greenwich Civic Center was filled right out to the lobby with very small antiques, collectibles and jewelry at Cord Shows Ltd’s 23rd annual Stocking Stuffers Show and Sale.
An Aztec stone skull, Maya glyphs and ancient gold keros (drinking vessels) are a few of the rare and important objects that will be on view when the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County throws open a cache of centuries-old riches in a new exhibition.
Auction Team Breker's recent sale of technical antiques once again brought superb high prices and top sales quotas.
The Bruce Museum showcases 45 masterpieces of modern sculpture in its major winter exhibition, “Innovations in the Third Dimension: Sculpture of Our Time,”opening Saturday, January 24.
Fun and free of the mainstream stereotyped image of a gun show, the East Coast Fine Arms Show is a fanciful event that expands beyond the normal expectations, preconceived notions and paramilitary phobias. By the end of the day, results at Heritage Auction Galleries added up to more than $5 million in its vintage comics and comics art signature auction.
Morphy Auctions’ recent sale of the Arthur Richmond Americana Collection maintained a steady course to finish at $495,000.
Three important series of black and white landscape photographs will be showcased in “Oceans, Rivers, and Skies: Ansel Adams, Robert Adams and Alfred Stieglitz,” on view through March 15 at the National Gallery of Art.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present a rare pair of portraits of African American sitters whose heritage can be traced back to the city’s first mayor, Humphrey Morrey (circa 1650–1716), appointed to his office by William Penn in 1691.
On December 17, before a buoyant room of collectors who had traveled from around the world, Sotheby’s sale of property from the Delmonico collection of important Judaica achieved $7,721,438.
By the time Antiques and Art at the Armory opened Thursday, December 4, at the Seventh Regiment Armory, its promotional banners had been billowing atop light poles outside the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for several weeks. Andrew Wyeth died in his sleep at his home, surrounded by his family, early in the morning of January 16, after a brief illness. Bloomsbury Auctions announced that on Saturday, January 17, one of its founders, David Stagg, died after a battle with cancer at London Bridge Hospital. Virginia W. Van Doren, 92, died suddenly at home on January 12. She was an antiques dealer and known for kitchen primitives. America’s main streets and crossroads have long been fertile ground for image-makers. Where billboards and golden arches now stand, Federal eagles and Greek muses once lent a sense of the theatrical. Originally created primarily for the service of commerce as trade stimulators, these figural wooden carvings and metal castings have today transcended into the arena of American folk art. “Sidewalks to Rooftops: Outdoor Folk Art,” on view at Colonial Williamsburg’s expanded and newly reopened Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg, Va., features more than 89 pieces of outdoor folk art. Through the exhibition, commerce and personal expression have been given a venue in which they can once again perform their silent, attention-getting acts before a welcoming public. The exhibit, on long-term viewing through 2013, offers an insightful look at America’s carvers, virtuosos adept at transforming wood into animated figures, caricature symbols, even puns. It is also the story of imaginative entrepreneurs on both sides of the commercial proposition who understood the value of polychrome come-ons.
A rare Herter Brothers American Renaissance carved, inlaid and ebonized bed sold during Bonhams' inaugural American furniture and decorative arts auction on January 22, kicking off the string of major auctions during Americana Week.
Greg Martin Auctions’ January 18 sale shone a bright light on one of the most famous firearms ever made — the Serial No. 1 Colt single-action army “Peacemaker” revolver, which set a new world-record price when it sold for $862,500. It was standing room only at Sotheby’s sale of Important Americana Saturday afternoon that achieved $6,183,500. The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College presents its largest display ever of the museum’s holdings of British, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Italian and Spanish art from the Renaissance to the early Twentieth Century.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art announces the acquisition of an exceptional European fashion collection that includes approximately 250 examples of fashionable dress and more than 300 accessories for men, women and children dating from 1700 to 1915.
Visitors will travel back in time to Dutch cities of the Seventeenth Century during “Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age,” on view February 1 to May 3 in the West Building, National Gallery of Art.
Sanford Smith’s 17th annual Outsider Art Fair returned this year to a new home — the midtown Mart at 7 West 34th Street — and a new date, January 9–11.
With a strong and loyal showing by customers for more than 20 years of its presenting four shows a year, the Richmond Antiques Spectacular held its first gathering of the year at The Showplace, January 3–4. A host of antiques shows have gone missing from the roster of scheduled events for 2009 over the past few weeks, with the most recent announcements coming from Massachusetts-based promoter Marvin Getman and New York City-based Stella Show Mgmt Co. Antonio Pineda’s Modernist jewelry is perhaps the most enduring of the Taxco silver masters. The maestro’s work evolved from an early post-Mexican Revolutionary style influenced by a variety of themes that surrounded him, including everything from pre-Colombian art to Art Deco to the sleek lines of abstraction. Works that were in demand at mid-century are today highly collectible and the subject of an exhibition titled “Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda” on view at University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA) Fowler Museum through March 15. The exhibition draws heavily on anthropologist Gobi Stromberg’s seminal work on the Taxco School. More than 250 silver pieces from the collections of Cindy Tietz and Stuart Hodosh are on view.
“The Fragile Art” may be the title of the 2009 Winter Antiques Show loan exhibition from the Corning Museum of Glass, but 75 far from fragile exhibitors demonstrated resilience and resourcefulness in their cutting-edge display of treasures from around the world.
Joining in the Inauguration festivities, Christie’s offered a slew of patriotic likenesses at its sale of Important American Furniture and Folk Art this past Friday, January 23.
|
