Marking the 50th year since the Reid family founded the original outdoor antiques show, all of Brimfield was basking in a golden anniversary glow May 12–17. This spring’s show featured consistently full fields, according to their respective managements, and the sight of US currency being unfurled to change hands was this trade’s version of “green shoots.”
The life and work of Georgia O’Keeffe has fascinated critics, scholars and art lovers alike since she burst onto the New York art scene in the early 1900s. On June 7, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute adds a chapter to this story with the first exhibition to explore the role of the influential American modernist painter Arthur Dove.
Concept Art Gallery's auction of Modern and contemporary fine art and Twentieth Century furniture and design on May 9 was filled with fresh merchandise from several local collections — the kind of consignments collectors salivate over.
For the third time in a year, a Howard #61 regulator was sold at Fontaine’s clock and watch auction with the most recent regulator achieving $161,000 Saturday, May 30. The formula for an appealing antiques show presentation at Nan Gurley’s Sturbridge Antiques Show was country, country and more country as evinced at its May 14 edition. The sumptuous grandeur of France’s Second Empire is celebrated as Nassau County Museum of Art presents “Napoleon And Eugenie,” a major exhibition opening on June 7.
The strength of the high-end baseball card and memorabilia market was confirmed at Robert Edward Auctions’ record-setting May 2 sale. The $10.1 million in sales represents a new record for a multi-owner, all-consignment, baseball card and memorabilia auction.
Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers saw a selective crowd of buyers for its April 30 paintings auction. Most of the major works sold that night, and a host of others found buyers in the days after the sale. Shannon reported the gross for the auction coming in just under $2.2 million.
A bronze disc sculpture, titled “Art Nouveau Dream,” was reported stolen on May 20 from in front of the Rain Soap Shop in Marbledale, Conn., where it was ensconced for more than a decade. A hunting license once issued to Hall of Famer and former Red Sox baseball player Ted Williams was reported stolen during an auction preview at Knotty Pine Auction Service. The piece of ephemera was to be offered in the firm’s May 30 sale of Part II of the living estate of Dolores Wettach Williams.
The 15th annual Tribal and Textile Arts Show at the 69th Regiment Armory, managed by Caskey Lees Inc, opened May 14 to more than 700 of the four-day show’s nearly 4,000 visitors.
From three fine public collections of their work, more than 80 paintings by the group of American artists dubbed The Eight are joined together for the first time in “The Eight and American Modernisms,” on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum June 6–August 23.
One woman’s vision and the 1949 bequest of her entire estate planted fruitful seeds in this western Pennsylvania town. The far-seeing benefactor, Mary Marchand Woods, established the Woods Marchand Foundation with the mission of bringing art and education to the people of rural Westmoreland County and nearby Pittsburgh. Ten years later (and 50 years ago this month), Woods’ vision was realized when the Westmoreland Museum of American Art opened in a new building on the grounds of her girlhood home in Greensburg, Penn. The inaugural exhibit was “250 Years of Art in Pennsylvania.” A small museum with a focus on American and regional Pennsylvania art between 1750 and 1950, it quickly built a remarkably rich and diverse collection. In celebration of its half century, the Westmoreland has launched “Fifty Years into the Vision,” a year-long gala of exhibits and events showcasing the collections.
“It went amazingly well,” said Michael Millea, in regards to the Doris Duke single-owner two-day auction the weekend of May 2 and 3, which saw the sale of 846 lots fetch an impressive $2 million.
The Bruce Museum presents its newest exhibition, “Focus on Color: The Photography of Jeannette Klute,” June 20 through September 27, featuring a series of 24 color photographs by Klute, a pioneering figure in the development of color photography.
Clarke’s sixth fine art auction on May 4 did not produce the fireworks of last October’s sale, which set a world record of $176,500 for African American artist Beauford Delaney. This auction’s flame burned lower but it produced a more sustained, consistent temperature.
Guyette & Schmidt's 24th annual spring decoy auction on April 23–24, in conjunction with the National Antique Decoy & Sporting Collectibles Show, grossed $2.1 million.
A Nineteenth Century molded copper Hamburg rooster weathervane that was attributed to L.W. Cushing and Sons of Waltham, Mass., was the first lot at the John McInnis Auctioneers May 9 sale.
The National Gallery of Art has commissioned American sculptor Roxy Paine to make a stainless steel Dendroid, as the artist calls his series of tree-like sculptures. The work is scheduled to be installed in the gallery's Sculpture Garden this fall.
“Public Treasures/Private Visions: Hudson River School Masterworks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art & Private Collections,” will be on view June 15 through September 30 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
The spring season opener of the Rhinebeck Antiques Fair ran Memorial Day weekend, May 23 and 24, bringing a full complement of 184 exhibitors to four buildings at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds.
The theft of works of art, antiques fossils, and collectibles was reported on May 7 from an estate in Gaineville, Fla. The home was broken into between May 4 and May 7. Cane collectors and dealers are a special breed, and they convene twice annually for the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century and earlier offerings put forth at semiannual auctions by Tradewinds Antiques.
Few states have attracted more important artists per capita than New Mexico. Drawn by volatile history and diverse cultures, indigenous crafts and people and warm climate and exotic scenery, painters and sculptors have flocked to the Southwestern state for more than 125 years. Moreover, the state has offered an ambience in which Hispanic, Native American and European aesthetic conventions have become interconnected. Out of these cultural interactions an unpredictable, often contradictory unity has evolved in “The Land of Enchantment.” That, at least, is the theme of a grand exhibition, “How the West Is One: The Art of New Mexico,” on view at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, N.M., through April 20. Organized by Joseph Traugott, the museum’s curator of Twentieth Century art, it comprises 47 paintings and a score of other artwork drawn from the museum’s permanent collection.
“The Illustrious Guest,” 1847, by Nineteenth Century artist, James Henry Beard, depicts legendary Kentucky statesman Henry Clay (1777–1852) as a guest at a country tavern while on the campaign trail. The work is now on long-term loan to the Amon Carter Museum.
The elegance of the Brandywine River Museum and its picturesque setting was a fitting complement to the antiques being offered inside and outside the museum’s halls during the three-day run of the museum’s antiques show, a perennial favorite, May 23–25.
Brookfield Auction Service officially launched its auction house with its first sale, May 30, at the Litchfield Fire House.
Billed as an “Auction Spectacular” and “Furniture Buyer’s Dream, Carden Family Auction Services's recent sale featured more than 150 pieces of high-quality furniture.
After a rather informal checking of watches, the doors to the Historic East Berlin Antiques Show opened on time to the largest preview gate in the show’s 12-year history “It was a success, but it wasn’t,” Bob Goodrich said several days after the close of his York One-Day Antiques Market on May 29 at the York Fairgrounds. This show, designed to fit the economy, was “what the dealers needed and most of them want us to do it again, and we will,” Bob said.
“I have great news for you,” Donna Burk, manager of the Greater York Antiques Show, said, “We had the best May show we have had in years.” More than 200 eager buyers packed into Dominick J. Navarra’s Hyde Park Country Auctions's May 17 event that offered country Americana and other desirable antiques and collectibles.
Through a retrospective of the works of Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747–1823) being presented in the Louvre’s Sully Wing from June 25 to September 7, visitors will discover the art of watchmaking at its apogee.
For centuries Freemasons around the world have adhered to the principles of fraternity, charity and truth laid out in the circa 1390 Regius manuscript. Cloaked in mystery for nearly as long, Freemasonry is the subject of new scrutiny and explication in the exhibit “The Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts: Celebrating 275 Years of Brotherhood.” The exhibit, on view to October 25 at the National Heritage Museum, Lexington, Mass., traces the history of Freemasonry in the Western Hemisphere through related objects and artifacts gathered over the three centuries of its existence, highlighting its people, places and events.
Opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 23, “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul,” celebrates the country’s unique role, as both the recipient of diverse cultural elements and the creator of distinctive styles of art from the Bronze Age into the Kushan period.
Northeast Auctions provided a springtime tonic for bidders at its May 17 auction where they enjoyed wider than usual buying opportunities. Museum-quality objects were not exactly affordable, but certainly achievable.
Kent Taylor Gilyard, founder of Gilyard’s Antique Lumber & Antiques, died June 11, at age 68. Margaret Scott “Scotty” Carter, 83, a well-known and respected antiques dealer, died Wednesday, June 10.
The Yale University Art Gallery has purchased important preparatory drawings by American artist Edward Hopper for two of his celebrated paintings, “Rooms by the Sea,” 1951, and “Western Motel,” 1957, both in the gallery’s collection.
Customers started to arrive an hour early and formed a long line waiting for the 10 am opening of the Lasdon Memorial Day Antiques Fair on May 25.
A perfect outdoor market day greeted antiques dealers and shoppers on June 7 at this year’s edition of the Darien Historical Society’s Antiques & Garden Elements show.
On May 23, Garth’s Auctions, Inc hosted its third annual Ohio Valley auction and displayed a wonderful selection of antique furniture and decorative arts.
The Native American artifacts collection of the late Herbert G. Wellington, considered by some to be the one of the most distinguished of its kind, crossed the auction block at Stair Galleries over the weekend of May 23.
The Saco Museum’s major exhibition, “A Treasured Ten: A Decade of Collecting at the Saco Museum,” will feature an array of additions to the museum’s collections July 5 through November 15.
A powerful Eighteenth or Nineteenth Century ivory figure of a woman carved in the round by a South Indian or Sri Lankan artist has been acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Saint-Gaudens collection will be supplemented with loans for the exhibition “Augustus Saint-Gaudens in The Metropolitan Museum of Art” at the museum, June 30–October 12.
A coastal watercolor painting by French Fauvist artist André Derain (1880–1954) with choppy brush strokes and pure color was the top lot at the May 17 auction at William J. Jenack Estate Appraisers and Auctioneers.
Huntington Historical Society volunteers produced the fifth annual Heritage Antiques Show May 30–31 for more than 40 exhibitors at Huntington High School.
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