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One of the most successful women artists of her generation, Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872–1955) specialized in sculpted images of women and children that are both accomplished and moving. At a time when the field of American sculpture was dominated by male sculptors seeking commissions for large, public monuments, she excelled by designing intimate works for domestic interiors and gardens. A much-admired and avidly collected sculptor in her day, Vonnoh’s name and work have faded from public view. Her resurrection has culminated in a welcome retrospective of her oeuvre, “Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women” on view at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Ala., from February 7 through May 10. Showcasing 35 of her best pieces, it will examine her distinctive achievements and explore her place as a role model for female artists.
An 1836 house sampler set a record price for a Tennessee sampler at auction, selling for $28,125 at the December 6 Case Antiques auction.
On the 20th anniversary of the Obey Giant campaign, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston opens the first museum survey of Shepard Fairey, the influential street artist.
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is presenting an exhibition that includes a number of paintings designated as partial gifts to the museum by an anonymous New Mexico collector. “Modernists in New Mexico: Works from a Private Collection” will run February 13 to May 10.
A highly anticipated annual event for Ed Nadeau, his auction gallery and the large contingent of buyers that are always in attendance, the well-received New Year’s Day Auction at Nadeau’s was once again transformed into a celebration.
“Why not make it an antiques weekend?” queried show promoters David and Peter Mancuso in their advertisements; “Take in the New Hope Antiques Show and stay awhile” they proclaimed. Their campaign was effective, as a large and anxious crowd was on hand for the January 17 opening of the two-day show.
On a cold but dry Saturday, January 10, the 55th annual Papermania Plus opened to a large and enthusiastic crowd that was on hand to delve through the wide variety of ephemera and related materials offered.
Treadway Gallery said it was pleased with the results of the December 7, Arts and Crafts/Art Nouveau sale. At the John Toomey Gallery, 1,100 lots crossed the block, with nearly 90 percent selling and many exceeding presale estimates.
The White Plains Antiques Show, January 10 and 11, offered a comfortable antiquing experience with dealers set up in the high school's cafeterias and smaller rooms, and there was a wide range of merchandise to peruse.
The National Galleries of Scotland and the National Gallery, London, have announced that Titian’s “Diana and Actaeon” has been acquired for the nation from the Duke of Sutherland.
Boston-area dealers and collectors in the know keep the Antique Co-op and Auction House in their sights for the treasures that show up there.
Scheduled as the first of the major auctions conducted during Americana Week, Bonhams got the ball rolling on January 22. With yet another first, the inaugural furniture sale was conducted in the auction house’s new and stylish Madison Avenue showroom.
Charleston, S.C., played all the leading roles at Brunk Auctions’ January 3 and 4 sale. No other locale represented in this 977-lot sale came close to the prices on paintings and furniture that originated in the historic capital of Southern antiquities.
On January 29 and 30, Freeman’s conducted its important English and Continental furniture and decorative sale. The sale featured early Italian furniture, English and French silver, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century French furniture and decorative arts, a large collection of bronzes and several German porcelain plaques.
To complement its permanent collection, Historic New England recently acquired two paintings related to its core focus: to acquaint visitors with New England’s historic homes and possessions.
In “Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater, 1919–1949,” on view through March 22, the Jewish Museum tells the little-known and tumultuous story of this vanguard artistic flowering, which thrived on the stage for 30 years before being brutally extinguished during the Stalinist era.
Martin J. Keane, a respected fishing antiques expert, collector and dealer, died peacefully at his home on January 30.
Ralph E. Carpenter, a respected connoisseur and collector of American decorative arts, a leader in architectural preservation and the author of an influential early study of colonial New England furniture, died in Newport on February 2. He was 99. Amid trepidations, market woes, reports of cautious buying and the overall chilling news surrounding the US economic climate, many exhibitors at the Caskey-Lees-produced New York Ceramics Fair were smiling after its five-day run here.
The American Antiques Show shone at its January 22–25 edition where dealers worked hard to showcase lots of great material on the floor.
The Winter Antiques Show, which previewed on Thursday, January 22, and continued through February 1 at the Park Avenue Armory, demonstrated this season, its 55th, why it is the reigning favorite among America’s top antiques shows.
At Stella’s popular Antiques at the Armory, January 23–25, the show boasted a good opening gate populated by people looking to buy the right thing at the right price.
On February 17, the Morse Museum will open a new long-term exhibition from its collection featuring more than 50 decorative objects — including furniture, lamps and metalware — from the Arts and Crafts movement in America.
For admirers of Abraham Lincoln, all roads lead to the US capital starting this month. It was here that the unschooled politician from the western frontier guided the nation through its greatest crisis, preserved the union, freed the slaves — and was assassinated. It is fitting, therefore, that a number of museums in Washington, D.C., have organized special exhibitions to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Great Emancipator. Leading the way is the National Museum of American History with a comprehensive exhibition, “Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life,” that will be on view through 2011. This revelatory show features more than 60 objects associated with Lincoln’s life, plus more than 50 portraits, photographs and cartoons. This year’s anniversary events offer renewed opportunities to explore the enigma of the complex man many consider the greatest of all Americans.
An eleventh-hour settlement will ensure that two iconic Pablo Picasso works stay on in Manhattan museums, where they have hung since the 1960s. Americana collectors who have never attended the Original York Antiques Show will find themselves in for a surprise when they finally walk through the doors of this highly regarded event. It ranks among the finest shows of its type in the country. It is bright, big, bountiful, but forget about the “B” words: this show earns an A+.
Regardless of the state of the economy, one thing is certain when it comes to the Tolland Antiques Show: people turn out for this one-day event in the upper region of Connecticut, and usually come away with an antique or two. The line to get into the Greater Boston Antiques Festival on a biting cold Saturday morning on January 17 wound around the building. Inside, buying was brisk and the numbers of visitors toting shopping bags was notable.
The Princeton University Art Museum presents “Myth and Modernity: Ernst Barlach’s Images of the Nibelungen and Faust,” on view February 21–June 7. This is the only US venue for the exhibition.
Thirty-eight works of art in various media from one of Miami’s most celebrated young artists, Hernan Bas, will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. This exhibition will be on view February 27 to May 24.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has received major works of art as gifts in honor of the late Anne d’Harnoncourt, the museum’s director from 1982 until her death in June 2008.
As the repository of the world’s largest and most comprehensive permanent collection of whaling prints, the New Bedford Whaling Museum is staging a classic whaling prints exhibition showcasing the benchmark masterpieces in the museum’s collection that will open February 27.
The bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, February 12, became a celebration at Christie’s as Lincoln’s original, handwritten reelection speech of 1864 sold for $3.44 million and set a new auction record for any American historical document. “George Washington At Princeton” was one of a series of political likenesses that captured headlines at Christie's Rockefeller Center salesroom, where Americana Week totals reached $6,456,351, including private treaty transactions.
The 20th New York sale, organized by partners Baldwin’s Auctions (London), F.R. Künker, M&M Numismatics and Dmitry Markov was January 7 and 8, in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel as part of the 37th annual New York International Numismatic Convention.
Grueby, Teco, Rookwood, Marblehead, Saturday Evening Girls… The list of American art potteries from the Arts and Crafts period amassed by the Two Red Roses Foundation is boundless; however, the representative works on view in a current exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in St Petersburg, Fla., showcasing the collection is intentionally limited. The reason is simple: the closely cropped examples are representative of the best of the best. The desired end result: to focus the eye not only upon iconic forms of what has been termed by some close to the exhibition as an overlooked era in American history, but also on the movement in its entirety. The foundation and its founder, Rudy Ciccarello, brought together 80 objects to form the exhibition “Beauty in Common Things: American Arts and Crafts Pottery from the Two Red Roses Foundation.” On view through April 26, it presents approximately 80 superb examples of pottery from the American Arts and Crafts movement.
The sale of important Americana at Sotheby’s kicked off January 23 and brought in $6,183,500 by the end of the next day. George Washington prevailed on Presidents’ Day weekend here where a miniature watercolor on ivory portrait of the president painted by Robert Field in 1801 brought $336,000 at Skinner’s Americana sale on February 15. Yale University Art Gallery’s renowned collection of American fine and decorative arts is traveling for the first time outside New Haven, Conn. Nearly 200 works illuminate the nature of the American creative experience from colonial beginnings to its coming of age at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. On view are paintings by John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, John Trumbull, Edward Hicks, Albert Bierstadt, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins; silver by Paul Revere and Tiffany; furniture by P.E. Guerin and Alexander Roux; candlesticks by Jeremiah Dummer, and photographs by Eadweard Muybridge and Carleton E. Watkins, among others. “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art 1660–1893 from the Yale University Art Gallery,” now on view at the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Wash., through May 24, tells the tale of a young nation struggling to forge its own identity culturally, politically and geographically.
The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University presents “From the Temple and the Tomb: Etruscan Treasures from Tuscany,” a comprehensive exhibition of Etruscan art, on view through May 17.
The Original Miami Beach Antique Show ran January 22–26 with the flagship affair filling the massive convention center here with exhibitors in oversized spaces offering collections from every continent.
Neal Auction’s February 7 and 8 estates auction got off to a solid start with the first lot across the block, setting the tone for the auction where many of the choicest items trumped their estimates. There was plenty of furniture, art and fine accessories to bid on at New Orleans Auction Galleries’ February 7 and 8 major estates event, but it was a “girl’s best friend” that shone the brightest in the sale.
Robert Kent Sheldon, 73, well-known antiques dealer and retired building contractor, died February 20 at his home in Newtown, Conn., following a five-year battle with cancer. The Charleston Museum continues to shed light on the subject of lighting with the planned March 1 opening of an exhibition devoted to the modernization of lighting.
“If you have the right things, you’ll have a good show here,” was the comment overheard in the lunchroom at Dan Morphy’s February 7 Antique Toy, Doll & Advertising Show, better known as the York Toy Show.
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