Coming as a surprise to many in the antiques trade, antiques show promoter Meg (Wendy) Geslin has parted ways with Manhattan Media after a brief merger with the company. Frank Gaglio, manager of Rhinebeck, N.Y.-based Barn Star Productions, has some good news for his loyal roster of dealers — the shows that have been evicted from the Manchester Quality Inn will go on, it is just the new venue that is uncertain at this point.
“Beyond the Maker’s Mark: Paul de Lamerie Silver in the Cahn Collection,” featuring de Lamerie silver from one of the most important collections in private hands, is on view at the Minneapolis Institute of arts through April 19.
The words new and antiques rarely go together, but the Bedford Hills Antiques Show mixed up its familiar presentation with several new dealers and at least one of its veteran dealers showing in a new location, invigorating this longtime show with a fresh look.
Grogan & Company Fine Art Auctioneers and Appraisers recently conducted its annual fine Oriental rugs, carpets and textiles auction that netted $800,000 from the sale of 127 rugs.
Sotheby’s February series of Impressionist and Modern art and contemporary art sales concluded on February 5, having realized a combined total of $98,884,169.
In just its sixth year, the Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show has grown to enjoy enormous popularity. Said to be the “largest show of its kind in the United States,” the annual show opened for a five-day run on February 13.
The Seventeenth Century really was a Golden Age for the Dutch. Dutchmen of this era were extraordinarily proud of the histories and appearance of their cities. The plethora of canals, bridges and causeways that crisscrossed major communities, plus omnipotent churches, windmills and fortifications, added to their charm and posed intriguing challenges to architects, city planners and artists. The burst of artistic creativity spawned by this civic pride is documented in a beautiful exhibition at Washington, DC’s National Gallery of Art, “Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age.” On view through May 3, it utilizes 48 paintings and 23 atlases, maps and illustrated books to document the enduring appeal and aesthetic achievements of Seventeenth Century Dutch cityscape artists. Visitors to this memorable exhibition travel back in time, carried on the wings of superbly painted, imaginatively composed and historically insightful canvases of timeless appeal.
A founder of the Taos Society Artists, Ernest L. Blumenschein (1874–1960) was a man of many parts: an illustrator in the Golden Age of American illustration, a classically trained painter, an early champion of Modernism, a fervent supporter of Indian culture and an independent artist whose style and vision set him apart from his compatriots. Blumenschein used vibrant colors, bold forms, Modernist motifs and a commitment to social issues to convey fresh images of the American Southwest. Whether painting a cerulean sky or a Native American in colorful garb, he animated his canvases with strong designs, expressive light and palpable emotion. The artist’s colorful and inventive works are showcased in a welcome exhibition, “In Contemporary Rhythm: The Art of Ernest L. Blumenschein,” on view at the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Ariz., through June 14. With 66 pieces, “This exhibition is the largest and most comprehensive effort ever made to assemble, analyze and celebrate Blumenschein’s remarkable work,” says exhibition curator Peter H. Hassrick, director of the Denver Museum of Art’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art.
The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture is presenting “English Embroidery from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, circa 1580-1700: ’Twixt Art and Nature” through April 12.
Thirty dealers shared the gymnasium of Mid-Vermont Christian School on February 14 for a day of showing and selling. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has purchased an extremely rare Virginia Indian peace medal produced by order of Governor Thomas Jefferson in 1780. It will go on view March 28.
From door greeters to top-shelf antiques displays, the Guilford Antiques Show put in a solid performance February 21 and 22.
Buyers that poured through the gate at Nashville's pair of fashionable antiques shows, Antiques at Music Valley and the Tailgate Antiques Show, February 19 and 21, were treated to a hearty helping of country infused with an upbeat attitude.
Matters presidential captured bidder interest Presidents’ Day weekend, when George Washington dominated the action at Skinner’s Americana sale February 15. The previews were crowded and extra chairs were needed for the sale.
A choice collection of Native American items plus an important group of paintings and coins were among the highlights of Thomaston Place Auction Galleries’ recent sale.
South Shore, Mass., estates and collections attracted a standing-room-only crowd to the Willis Henry Auctions on February 7 where bidding was brisk and steady. A number of the historic objects across the block had presidential provenance and drew wide interest.
Maryhill Museum of Art will reopen for its 69th season Sunday, March 15. The opening exhibition, “Hudson River School Sojourn,” features 34 paintings by Hudson River School artists Jasper Francis Cropsey, Asher Brown Durand, William Hart, David Johnson and Jervis McEntee, among others.
“Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique” explores the master techniques and artistry of the three prominent designers –– and the rivalry between them. The exhibition is on view in San Francisco through May 31.
A congregation of Catholic nuns headquartered in upstate New York is suing a Santa Fe, N.M., art dealer and a local appraiser for fraud in the sale of a painting by Nineteenth Century genre artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau. The Grand Rapids Art Museum presents the work of Frank Stella in an exhibition by one of the great living American artists. “Moby Dick: Frank Stella and Herman Melville” is on view through May 3.
The impending nor’easter snowstorm being forecast by weather reporters and confirmed by Pennsylvania dealers en route to the Cross River Winter Antiques Show may have resulted in a couple of booth cancellations, but it did little to deter the buying public.
The larger than usual crowd waited eagerly for the opening of the 41st annual Holliston Antiques Show, and then surged into the high school gymnasium where they rushed the dealers who awaited them.
Richard (Dick) E. Kramer, owner of Richard E. Kramer & Associates, an event management company known for its Heart of County Antiques Show, died Wednesday, March 11, while in Nashville, Tenn., overseeing the opening of Heart of Country. He was 78 years old.
W. Samuel Tarlton, well-known antiques dealer and historical preservation professional, died on March 12, at Mayview Convalescent Center; he was 87 years old. He was a former partner in Craig & Tarlton, Inc, and owner of Glenwood South Antiques and Fine Art. The peculiar convergence of curiosity, history, persistence and technology has placed a formerly fairly obscure name in the canon of American furniture masters —Salem cabinetmaker Nathaniel Gould — and established him firmly as an Eighteenth Century furniture maker of superb artistry. The unraveling of the mystery of Nathaniel Gould began more than two years ago when antiques dealer Todd Prickett called on independent furniture scholar Kemble Widmer to research a bombé block front mahogany desk-and-bookcase, circa 1780. That it was a Salem piece was clear; Prickett knew that it related closely to the desk-and-bookcase in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the only known signed Gould piece. Similar pieces were attributed to another Salem cabinetmaker, Henry Rust. Widmer, who has studied Gould for more than 20 years and never believed the Rust attributions, enlisted the help of Joyce King, a researcher and colleague of more than two decades, and the two were off and running. An Internet search led them to the Massachusetts Historical Society where ledgers, the estate inventory and several examples of Gould’s furniture remain on view at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, through April 30.
Two allied, medically oriented organizations united again for the 47th Benefit Antiques & Fine Arts Show at the Science Museum of Virginia, February 6–8. After setting a new industry record for yearly sales in 2008, Rock Island Auction Co. started off the new year with its February 6 and 7 regional sale reaching a record-setting $2.2 million — doubling any other previous regional sale in Rock Island history.
A Tiffany Studios whirling leaf hanging fixture with a 22-inch dark green glass shade flecked with patterns of leaves in bright fall colors sold for $28,750 at Savoia’s Auction on March 1.
The three-day sale of the collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé at the Grand Palais, offered by Christie’s in association with Pierre Bergé & Associates auctioneers on February 23–25, realized $483,835,144.
A German-made clown car from 1909 brought a record $103,500 at Bertoia’s March 19–21 auction of the Donald Kaufman Collection of antique and vintage toys. The Textile Museum’s April 4 to September 6 exhibition, “Constructed Color: Amish Quilts,” will feature a selection from one of the finest group of Amish quilts in the world.
William Jenack’s auction on February 8 achieved strong prices on a variety of select items including a New York carved, gilt and ebonized Grecian Revival sofa, circa 1825, which fetched $28,750.
Even though French bronzes were among the glories of royal châteaux, they have received relatively little scrutiny from scholars. “Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution,” on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through May 24, brings together a large number of fine examples.
A good-sized crowd ponied up to the Morristown Armory entrance Saturday morning, February 28, as buyers anxiously waited to get on the floor of the Morristown Antiques Show that opened for its two-day run here.
Paul Revere’s 1768 copperplate engraving of the British troops landing at Boston, the first such image to come to auction in nearly a century, sold for a record price of $469,000 at Northeast Auctions on March 22. Jane Cieply, 73, of Lake Barrington, known for more than 35 years in the antiques and folk art world for her business Hypoint American Antiques and Folk Art, died March 17 at Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, Ill.
The galleries of the Onassis Cultural Center have been transformed into evocations of ancient Greek sanctuaries for the exhibition “Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens," on view through May 9.
Huey Lewis and the News told us back in the 1980s that the “heart of rock ‘n’ roll is in Cleveland.” He forgot to mention that the soul of rock ‘n’ roll is in San Francisco, where it all started back in the 1960s, when it was good to be groovy but better to be psychedelic. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the complex imagery and hand lettering of the psychedelic rock posters that called the faithful to the Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom for concerts and happenings. Commissioned by rock promoters Chet Helms and Bill Graham, the posters were created by a small group of mostly untrained graphic designers. Recently, the Denver Art Museum acquired more than 800 rock posters from the collection of David and Sheryl Tippit. More than 200 will be featured in “The Psychedelic Experience: Rock Posters from the San Francisco Bay Area,” running March 31 through July 19.
On February 22 and 24, Jeff Zimmerman presented a two-day, winter antiques auction that featured more than 1,000 lots of antiques, fine art and decorative accessories at his Time & Again Auction Gallery.
Sanford Smith’s Works on Paper, at the 67th Regiment Armory February 26 through March 2, is always a popular venue as the show rings true to its name, thus allowing collectors access to watercolors, drawings, prints, photography and architectural drawings at affordable prices. |
