When the last emperor of China, Puyi, left the Forbidden City in 1924, the doors closed on a secluded compound of pavilions and gardens deep within the palace. Now for the first time, 90 objects of ceremony and leisure †murals, paintings, furniture, architectural and garden components, jades and cloisonné †will be on view at the Peabody Essex Museum.

The Foster-Lemmens Collection, 537 lots gathered together by three generations of antiquarians, was the last of three sessions of the Annual Summer Americana Auction conducted by Northeast Auctions August 6‸.

It is hard to imagine a better managed event than the Newport Antiques Show, which opened for its fourth consecutive year at St George⁳ School in Middletown on Friday, August 13, and continued through August 15.

El Greco⁳ monumental masterpiece ⁐entecost†will be installed September 9 at the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, marking the beginning of a multifaceted three-year partnership with the Prado Museum in Madrid.

About 200 antiques dealers gathered August 13‱5, traveling from as far away as Iowa and Wisconsin, to exhibit at Maine Antiques Festival.

As patriarch of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, Gustav Stickley (1858-1942) helped transform concepts about the ideal early Twentieth-Century household. Riding a wave of concern about spreading industrialization that treated workers like machines and turned out cheaply made goods that exacerbated the excesses of Victorian décor, he offered plain, strong furnishings that were aesthetically pleasing, utilitarian †and affordable. Moreover, Stickley⁳ emphasis on good workmanship, simple design and the rewards of honest hand labor influenced US craftsmanship to this day. In an excellent overview, ⁇ustav Stickley and the American Arts and Crafts Movement†offers a comprehensive examination of this subject. Organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and curated by Kevin W. Tucker, that museum⁳ curator of decorative arts and design, the exhibition is on view at the Newark Museum, Newark, N.J., through January 2, 20ll.

A baker⁳ dozen of paintings by Frank W. Benson offered in the first hour of Copley⁳ sporting art auction July 22′3 at the Radisson Hotel set the tone for this annual event that brings decoy collectors and sporting art enthusiasts out in droves. The auction attained more than $4 million in sales.

Textiles play a more important role in our lives than many of us realize. To a great extent, our homes and their furnishings do much to shape our everyday living experience. Moreover, each country and culture creates living environments that reflect its social traditions, aesthetic preferences, political and economic circumstances and local ambience. This phenomenon is gracefully explored in ⁔he Art of Living: Textile Furnishings from the Permanent Collection,†an exhibition on view at the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., through January 11. It comprises 17 furnishing fabrics from the museum⁳ large collection, including rugs, wall hangings, chair covers, cushions and other textiles used in domestic interiors.

⁗e are 17 years old, and still going strong,†Frank Gaglio, manager of the Mid*Week in Manchester Antiques Show, said a few days after the show closed on Thursday, August 12, from his vantage point on Lake Winnipesaukee. ⁗e come up here for a few days every year after the show to recuperate and talk over plans for next year,†he said.

From September 16 to January 10, the Neue Galerie Museum for German and Austrian Art will present an exhibition of work by the Eighteenth Century artist Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.