In real estate, it is location, location, location. But when it comes to antiques, the buzzword is ethics, ethics, ethics. At least it is to the Antiques Dealers’ Association of America (ADA), which was formed in May 1984 as a nonprofit trade organization to “make more professional the business of buying and selling antiques.” Dealers selected for membership in the association don't take this honor lightly and knowledgeable buyers look for the ADA logo when buying from dealers.
It is nearly impossible to drive to the Antiques Show and Sale at the Adirondack Museum without stopping a number of times as you get closer. Once you reach the village of Blue Mountain, vendors line the road leading to the museum. Of course, the show was the main attraction during the September 19–20 weekend. Among the summertime rituals of art collectors, Barridoff Galleries’ annual sale of American and European art is a given, and this year’s event conducted by Rob and Annette Elowitch was, as always, a visual treat.
A smallish mahogany tall clock by the Quaker artist Allen Kelley of Sandwich, Mass., one of only a few known examples by that maker, was the lot of considerable interest at Blackwood March’s September 16 sale, where it fetched $8,050.
A medium chocolate amber California Clubhouse Whiskey bottle, made circa 1872-74 and one of only nine examples known, soared to $30,240 in a recent online and catalog auction at American Bottle Auctions.
As its major fall exhibition, the Frick Collection is presenting “Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection,” featuring more than 60 works on paper from the holdings of the Fondation Custodia, Paris.
Charles DuBack first came to Maine from New York City in the mid-1950s, proving to be a turning point in his artistic career. On view at the Portland Museum of Art, October 10–January 3, “Charles DuBack: Coming to Maine” features 20 paintings and collages focusing on DuBack’s rarely shown but pivotal work from the late 1950s.
The Princeton University Art Museum presents “Gifts from the Ancestors: Ancient Ivories of Bering Strait,” a major exhibition bringing to light the artistry and life practices of the hunters who worked across two millennia in what are now the American and Russian sides of Bering Strait.
Ohio Historical Museum was again the site for Stella Show Mgmt's co-produced Country Living Fair, September 18–20 that promoters said boasted strong crowds and strong sales.
When John Cotton Dana established the Newark Museum Association in 1909, his stated goal was “to establish in the City of Newark, New Jersey, a museum for the reception and exhibition of articles of art, science, history and technology, and for the encouragement of the study of the arts and sciences.” For Dana, the hand crafted and the mass produced were each of value. Dana’s dreams and his legacy are the soul of the exhibit “100 Masterpieces of Art Pottery, 1880-1930,” a celebration of the first century of the Newark Museum, Newark, N.J. It comprises some 100 pieces of art pottery and porcelain drawn from the museum collection, with the exception of two pieces on loan from the American Decorative Arts 1900 Foundation. The exhibit follows the evolution of the American art pottery movement from the Gilded Age to the emergence of studio pottery at the beginning of the Depression. The exhibit includes American, European and Asian examples, delineating the influences of one upon the other.
The exhibition “James Tissot: The Life of Christ” will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum October 23–January 17, marking the first time in more than 20 years that any of the Tissot watercolors, a pivotal acquisition that entered the museum’s collection in 1900, have been exhibited.
Clarke Auction concluded its strongest summer season with its September 14 sale — one of its highest grossing auctions ever, according to founder and owner Ronan Clarke.
While attendance numbers were not as strong as hoped for, dealers in large booths offered an interesting selection of merchandise at Cord Shows’ second annual Putnam County Antiques Fair on September 20.
A Babe Ruth game-used bat, dating to the 1918 Boston Red Sox World Championship-winning season, realized $537,750 at Heritage Auction Galleries’ October 1–2 Signature sports memorabilia auction. Clarke County Fairgrounds again hosted the Springfield Antiques Show and Flea Market Extravaganza September 18–20 for more than 2,400 exhibitors who offered their inventories.
A new exhibit of fine antique furniture, “Convenient and Fashionable: Furniture of Inland Massachusetts 1790–1830,” will open at Old Sturbridge Village October 24 featuring rarely seen pieces from its collection.
“We were thrilled with the results,” commented Jeanne Bertoia in the days following the second auction session of the Donald Kaufman collection of toy automobiles, sold at Bertoia Auctions September 25 and 26.
“This show is like a big family reunion,” said show manager Jim Dunn of the Bromley Mountain Antiques Show. “It’s a nice group of people to do business with.” On September 2, Dallas Auction Gallery hosted an auction that saw an important Chinese Ming Zhengde imperial blue and white porcelain table screen and a Zitan table soar.
A single-owner sale packed the house on October 4 at Grogan & Company for the Asian art collection of the late Frederick Rush Innes of Boston.
The Black River High School gym was bursting at the seams for the 45th annual Ludlow Antiques Show as a long line of good-humored customers filed into the preview to find the rare, the beautiful, the old and the quirky.
Paintings and drawings, including recent works, by Philip Pearlstein, considered one of the nation’s leading figurative artists, are on view in the Chauncey Stillman Gallery of Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts through November 24.
The grand finale of five separate antiques shows in the Vermont Antiques Week schedule, Antiques in Vermont did itself proud on the show’s 25th anniversary.
The life, work and legacy of one of the greatest novelists in the English language, Jane Austen (1775–1817), will be the focus of a new exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum from November 6 through March 14.
Donald Kaufman, who co-founded K-B (Kaufman Brothers) Toys and was widely acknowledged as a leading collector of antique toys, died peacefully of natural causes at his home on October 12. He was 79. The ski lifts at Okemo Mountain Resort may have been still, but inside the base lodge there was plenty of activity as 35 dealers prepared for the 3 pm opening of the Okemo Antiques Show on Friday, October 2. The Saco Museum announces the purchase of a mid-Nineteenth Century landscape of the Saco River in Limington, Maine, by painter William Russell Smith (1812–1896).
Silver soared at Sollo Rago’s Real Modern sale on September 12 at the Rago Arts and Auction Center, where a rare Elsa Tennhardt / E.&J. Bass Company cocktail set achieved $31,720 and a Danish silver ice bucket fetched $4,880.
A spectacular outdoor light show by Barbara Bouyea alerted area residents that Bryan Memorial Town Hall was where they wanted to be on Friday evening, October 2 — opening night for the 23rd Washington Connecticut Antiques Show.
While just outside there were breathtaking views of the charming village of Weston, the views inside at the 51st edition of the Weston Antiques Show were just as breathtaking.
The highlight of Neal Auction Company’s September 12 and 13 estates auction was a John James Audubon (American, 1785–1851) Havell engraving, “Blue Crane, or Heron,” which achieved the world record price of $82,250.
The Delaware Art Museum presents two exhibitions devoted to Maxfield Parrish (1870–1966). “Fantasies and Fairy-Tales: Maxfield Parrish and the Art of the Print,” the first traveling exhibition of Parrish’s color lithographic prints, will be on view October 31–January 10.
When an iconic Arshile Gorky painting whose whereabouts had been unknown for the past 80 years made its way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art a few years ago, the excitement it generated became the inspiration for the first major survey of the artist’s work in 30 years. Coupled with an abundance of new scholarship, “Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective,” now open at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, explores the self-taught master’s stylistic evolution and positions him as the last great Surrealist. “Woman with a Palette,” believed to have been created in 1927, had not been seen by curators or the public since Gorky’s friend, Mac Vogel, removed it from the artist’s Union Square studio sometime in the early 1930s. In an exclusive interview, Vogel’s daughter, Louise, recounted the history of the painting.
The board of directors of the Antiques Dealers’ Association of America this week announced that the recipients of the Award of Merit for 2010 are noted preservationists, scholars and collectors Richard and Jane Nylander. The Antiques Dealers Association of America (ADA) celebrated its silver anniversary in understated fashion, glitter dusting an ornamental gourd here and a discrete blue swag there.
A vivid painting by Twentieth Century artist Friedel Dzubas (1915–1994) upstaged a strong lineup of early Southern antiques to become the top-selling lot at the Case Antiques Auction on September 26.
“An auction to remember,” said Christie’s top jewelry specialist about the firm’s October 21 sale that saw its marquee lot, the Annenberg rectangular-cut diamond of 32.01 carats, achieve a record auction price of $7,698,500. The innovations and artistry of Louis Comfort Tiffany are explored in an exhibition of his blown glass works at The Corning Museum of Glass through October 31.
The Florence Griswold Museum presents “Call of the Coast: Art Colonies of New England,” an exhibition developed in collaboration with the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine. Featuring 73 works drawn from the collections of the Portland Museum of Art and the Florence Griswold Museum, the exhibition is on view through January 31.
Hudson Valley Auctioneers had a whopping good sale on September 21. “We had a full house and every phone was in service; we even had to use cellphones on some lots,” Theo de Haas, manager, said.
For more than 30 years, James D. Julia has conducted an annual major end-of-summer auction, usually at various coastal resorts. This year, Julia’s decided to bring this major auction home, and saw solid results.
“Albrecht Dürer: Impressions of the Renaissance,” an exhibition organized by the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, will feature 41 works celebrating the world of Albrecht Dürer.
Marburger Farm Antiques Show, September 29–October 3, was the gathering place for about 400 exhibiting antiques dealers.
The Norton Museum is celebrating the life, architecture and landscape of New York City with two concurrent exhibitions: “George Segal: Street Scenes,” through December 6, and “New York, New York: The 20th Century,” through December 27.
The Original Round Top Antiques Festival is the big draw and a large part of why several thousand antiques and collectibles dealers and many more shoppers descended on this area September 30–October 3 for a week of antiques shows.
Ralph Willard, antiques dealer turned antiques show manager, continued his charming country antiques show in the small village of Round Top, September 29 through October 3.
Twice each year for 42 years now, there have been antiques shows in this tiny village in the Brazos Hills with more fields and shows than ever could be imagined — more than 40, perhaps as many as 60.
Stunning dolls collected during his lifetime by W. Richard Wright made believers of several cynics when they were on view at Skinner’s Marlborough gallery in the preview of the October 10 sale.
Before rock-and-roll became cliché, it had many handmaidens. Among the most willing were the professional photographers who played a collaborative role in pushing through the societal changes that rock-and-roll demanded. From frenetic performance photographs with light and line acutely defined to private, near-voyeuristic moments, rock photographers created an art form as unique as the times they documented. While the works of individual photographers have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other prestigious institutions, the genre itself has never been accorded an overview in a major museum. Viewed in context with other genres that have made the transition from commercial photography to art photography, it is time for rock-and-roll to be accepted into the pantheon. That is the motivation behind the exhibition, “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present,” on view through January 31 at the Brooklyn Museum.
Collectors and dealers gathered eagerly for the Willis Henry Auctions Shaker sale on the grounds of the Fruitlands Museum on October 3, and they gave careful scrutiny to each of the 307 lots. It has been two years since the auction house’s last Shaker sale, and anticipation levels were high.
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