A rare lawyer’s occupational shaving mug was bid to an impressive $7,762 at Wayne Yoder’s April 16 sale at the DeForest Comfort Inn.
“Paintings From the Reign of Victoria: The Royal Holloway Collection, London” will be on view May 7 to July 26 at the Yale Center for British Art.
Freeman’s ended its two-day American furniture, decorative and folk arts, American design and American Indian art sales April 20 that coincided with the Philadelphia Antiques Show and the 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show.
An Adams-Carter Class III 1804 $1 coin sold for $2.3 million April 30, as part of Heritage Auction Galleries’ Platinum Night Auction at the Central States Numismatic Society’s annual convention. Eclectic posters designed through the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s are on display at the James A. Michener Art Museum through August 2.
The quirks of a new venue seemed all but sorted out as the Philadelphia Antiques Show returned to the Navy Yard on April 17–21 for a second time.
Increased advertising and promotion helped boost the gate at Barn Star Productions' popular Philadelphia fair, the 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show, which ran April 17–19.
What sort of gift is fit for a tsar? The Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery offers some stunning examples in its exhibition, “The Tsars and the East: Gifts from Turkey and Iran in The Moscow Kremlin,” on view May 9–September 13.
Retired undercover FBI Special Agent Robert K. Wittman, who was the senior investigator for the Art Crime Team, has traveled to more than 20 countries following up leads on stolen artworks. He is regarded as one of the most famous art crime investigators in the world today — nicknamed by his peers as a “modern-day Indiana Jones.” Wittman is personally responsible for the return of more than $225 million in art and antiques and has been instrumental in apprehending, prosecuting and convicting numerous individuals in these crimes. Having retired this past September after 20 years of service, he is now free to discuss the stings, recoveries and events from his career as an FBI agent — or at least some of them.
A seemingly endless variety of glass was represented at the Westchester Glass Show April 18 and 19 from art glass and Victorian to pressed and Depression glass. Collages by Connecticut photographer George Jacobi are on view at the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts through July 12 in “Alternative Visual Energy.”
The first major exhibition of photographer Jaromír Funke’s work outside of Europe in nearly 25 years is on view at the National Gallery of Art through August 9.
Chip Kretsch, co-owner of Ponyexpress Antiques in Flemington and at General Heath’s, Adamstown, Penn., died suddenly on April 11. He was 64. American silver took top billing at Pook & Pook Inc’s two-day auction of Americana the weekend of April 24.
“The Extravaganza at Kutztown is the place to Buy, Sell, Trade Antiques and Collectibles,” touts the management of Renningers, and they are words that ring true. The opening event of the season took place April 23–25, with a full field of sellers set up and huge crowds in attendance.
The second weekend of each month year round, Scott Antique Market comes alive with more than 2,400 dealers inside two enormous buildings and several hundred more outside on the parking lots offering their inventories.
On view through August 2, the Speed Art Museum presents “English Silver from the Age of Matthew Boulton, The James C. Codell Jr Collection.”
The highlight of Tim’s auction schedule for the past 17 years has been the annual Cabin Fever Auction, always attended by a large and loyal base of customers.
“I’m feeling pretty optimistic,” commented fine art auctioneer Gene Shapiro going into his April 23 Russian art auction at the Metropolitan Pavilion. “Things are getting back to the way they were, buyers are aggressively going after the better pieces.” His foresight proved true, with active bidding seen throughout the evening.
Stanton Auctions’ spring sale was filled with well-known names such as Frederick S. Church, Tiffany, Wave Crest, Daum Nancy, Galle and Mettlach. “We had an auction of collections,” said Peter Stanton Imler, owner and auctioneer.
Mainland Chinese dealers converged on the sleepy town of Dedham in pursuit of a group of Chinese jades from the collection of the late Donald and Pauline MacDonald, and they drove the prices to a grand total of $585,063 at Grogan & Company’s April 19 sale.
There are motorcycle shows, and then there is Oley. Formally known as the Perkiomen National Meet and Motorcycle Show, this event is welcomed into this small town annually, as are the thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts that descend upon the fair grounds at the Oley Fire Company.
Seventy-five years ago, Americans were beset by an economic crisis that may seem all too familiar today. The national economy, in the wake of the stock market crash of October 1929, had fallen into an extended depression. A quarter of the labor force was unemployed, while an equal number worked reduced hours. Increasing numbers of people were homeless and hungry. Some 10,000 unemployed artists faced poverty. Recognizing that artists not only needed employment but that art was essential to sustaining America’s spirit, the Treasury Department organized the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) in late 1933. Regional committees recruited artists who eagerly went to work all over the country. From December 1933 to June 1934, PWAP employed 3,749 artists who created 15,663 paintings, murals, drawings, prints, sculpture and craft objects to embellish public buildings at a cost of $1,312,000. Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the PWAP, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in Washington, D.C., has organized an exhibition, “1934: A New Deal for Artists,” consisting of 56 paintings, each by a different artist, and on view through January 3.
Reportedly when William Penn designed an urban plan for Philadelphia, he envisioned a city within a vast expanse of parkland, rife with private gardens. It is suiting, therefore, that one of the nation’s premier antique garden and architectural auctions should take place there, every April, hosted by the historic city’s budding Kamelot Auctions.
“We knew from the start that it would not be like it has been in the past, but in the end it was better than anyone expected,” Catherine Sweeney Singer, show director, said of the Antiques Garden Furniture Show and Sale at the New York Botanical Garden. Despite a distinguished New England provenance, it was a southern Hepplewhite walnut hunt board made in coastal North Carolina that achieved $33,350 from a North Carolina collector on the phone at CRN Auctions’ April 25 sale.
Due to the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, May 25, advertising deadlines for the issue of Antiques And The Arts Weekly dated May 29 are as follows: EARLY AUCTION: Wednesday, May 20, 10 am DISPLAY: Wednesday, May 20, 10 am REGULAR AUCTION: Thursday, May 21, 10 am The paper will be mailed Tuesday, May 26.
From June 2 to August 23, The Frick Collection will present a focus exhibition dedicated to the colorful and often controversial artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903).
The first major exhibition of furniture and decorative art by the protean American craftsman and designer Charles Rohlfs begins its five-venue national tour at the Milwaukee Art Museum June 6–August 23.
Antiques dealer Paul Scott is recovering from a fall at Boston Medical Center after suffering a fractured neck and bruised spinal cord.
Bidders came drawn by the toothsome offerings of jade at Skinner’s two-day April sale of Asian works of art on April 24–25, but it was a Turkish jeweled saber that captured much attention — and the most money.
For more than a half century, Robert Frank has repeatedly broken accepted rules and flouted well-worn conventions to expand the expressive potential of photography. He has pioneered in a revolutionary approach to photography that combines autobiography, emotion and poetry with gritty reality. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking publication that changed the course of Twentieth Century photography and helped America see itself more clearly, the National Gallery of Art has organized “Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans.” After recently closing in Washington, D.C., the exhibition is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through August 23.
Hudson Valley Auctioneers's April 27 sale saw an excellent pair of pine blanket boxes in their original blue paint fetch $1,955 each. They were just the tip of the iceberg in an auction that saw furniture, once again, giving a hint of better things to come. Carol A. (Thomas) (Yurkanin) Powers died suddenly May 17 after a 13-year battle with breast cancer. A lifelong resident of Sterling, she ran Blacksmith Antiques and Gifts from 1981 to 1997.
A new exhibition at Colonial Williamsburg’s DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum explores the rich history of stoneware in Britain’s American colonies and the new nation from the first English settlements through 1800.
Steven M. Fusco, owner and auctioneer of Estates Unlimited, was very pleased with the results of his recent auction, which drew a very sizeable crowd and resulted in some strong prices throughout.
“Despite fewer exhibitors,” the increased attendance reported at the 16th annual International Art Fair, “yielded twice the business and interest for the dealers on the floor,” according to fair promoters.
During two extended trips to Mexico made between 1923 and 1926, American photographer Edward Weston created some of his earliest Modernist photographs, which form the core of the exhibition “Viva Mexico! Edward Weston and His Contemporaries” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Museum deaccessions and couture from the estate of early Twentieth Century socialite Doris Duke proved to be excellent fodder for Charles A. Whitaker Auction Company’s 16th consecutive specialty vintage clothing and textile sale.
Recognized throughout the world as an icon of Modernist architecture, the white ribbon of sculpture that is New York’s Guggenheim Museum has always been a part of the show. Now, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the building is the biggest thing in a show on its creator, Frank Lloyd Wright. Granted, there have been great Wright exhibitions before, but none has focused on Wright’s interior space the way “Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward” does. Its organizers view this 50th anniversary exhibition as an opportunity to project Wright’s relevance to a world faced with unique architectural challenges. On view at the Guggenheim in New York City through August 23, the exhibition is a joint project of the museum and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the only organization established by the architect as the repository of his life’s work. It is not intended to be a retrospective. Rather, it is positioned as a collection of 64 projects that offer fresh perspective on Wright’s driving principles and innovations.
Recognized throughout the world as an icon of Modernist architecture, the white ribbon of sculpture that is New York’s Guggenheim Museum has always been a part of the show. Now, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the building is the biggest thing in a show on its creator, Frank Lloyd Wright. Granted, there have been great Wright exhibitions before, but none has focused on Wright’s interior space the way “Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward” does. Its organizers view this 50th anniversary exhibition as an opportunity to project Wright’s relevance to a world faced with unique architectural challenges. On view at the Guggenheim in New York City through August 23, the exhibition is a joint project of the museum and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the only organization established by the architect as the repository of his life’s work. It is not intended to be a retrospective. Rather, it is positioned as a collection of 64 projects that offer fresh perspective on Wright’s driving principles and innovations.
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