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Trade News from around the World

The Jewish Museum, New York City, has announced a $25,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of a missing Marc Chagall painting worth an estimated $1 million. The work, “Study for ‘Over Vitebsk,'” is part of the museum’s recently opened “Marc Chagall: Early Works from Russian Collections” exhibit. The painting was reported missing by museum officials last week, following a party in the museum the night before, authorities told the Associated Press. The eight-inch-by-10-inch oil painting shows a winter scene of Chagall’s home town of Vitebsk, Belarus. The 1914 work features an old man, carrying a walking stick and beggar’s sack, who floats in the sky as if part of the landscape. Anyone with information is asked to call the FBI at 212-384-1000 or 718-286-7100 or the New York Police Department’s major case squad at 212-374-3955. The case number is 119.

The Art Museum at Princeton University, N.J., has reached an agreement with the heirs of Frederico Gentili di Giuseppe allowing it to keep an Italian Renaissance painting that was taken from the collection of a Jewish resident of Nazi-occupied France during World War II, reports AP. Financial terms were not disclosed. The circa-1500 painting, “St. Bartholomew,” has been in the Princeton collection since 1994. The university acquired it from New York dealers French and Co., which also participated in the compensation agreement with the family. Gentili di Giuseppe died of natural causes in 1940. In 1941, his art collection was sold at public auction in Paris under the order of a French court. In 1998, the man’s heirs brought legal action to nullify the auction sale. The Court of Appeals of Paris held that the then-living heirs of Gentili di Giuseppe had been prevented from attending to the administration of his estate and voided the sale of five paintings.

Collectors Henry and Jimmy Weldon, of Amagansett, N.Y. and New York City, have donated their collection of mid-Seventeenth to early Nineteenth Century English pottery to Colonial Williamsburg, Va., officials said June 12. The collection of more than 725 rare objects is worth more than $5 million, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates the living history museum, told the Associated Press. Henry Weldon, who immigrated to the United States from the Netherlands, said Colonial Williamsburg is “America’s museum” and that he wanted to “recognize the wonderful things America has done for me and to repay my debt through this gift to the nation.”

Margaret E. C. “Pegge” Howland of Heath, Mass., has donated over 500 pieces of her collection of sanded majolica to The Jones Museum of Glass and Ceramics, Sebago, Me. Sanded majolica is a form of Victorian pottery made in Europe and the United States between 1850 and 1900. Many of the finest examples in her collection were crafted in England, France, Portugal and Poland. Some of the more famous potters in England represented in the collection include Samuel Lear (Hanley 1877-1886); Thomas Forester (Longton 1883-1995); and Wardle & Co. (Hanley 1871-1910).

A Hellenistic Greek bronze, “Head of a God or Hero,” dating from the Second Century BC, has entered the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and is now on view in the Audrey Jones Beck Building. Called “one of the most significant examples of sculpture in the Hellenistic Greek tradition anywhere” by David Gordon Mitten, Harvard University’s George M.A. Hanfman Curator of Ancient Art, “Head of a God or Hero” is a gift to the museum from Isabel B. and Wallace S. Wilson.

Pieranna Cavalchini has joined the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Mass., as Visiting Curator of Contemporary Art to direct its artist in residence program and plan contemporary exhibitions. Cavalchini has organized numerous exhibitions, film series and concerts internationally and in the US encompassing an impressive range of artists and venues.

The artist members of the National Academy of Design, New York City, have announced the selection of Gregory Amenoff as their new president. A member of the Academy since 1994, Amenoff is represented by the Salander O’Reilly Gallery in New York, and is a professor of art at Columbia University. He replaces painter Raoul Middleman, who has presided over the Academy since 1998.

Phillips Auctioneers North America has announced the appointment of Dennis J. Scioli as senior international jewelry specialist. Scioli began his auction career at Sotheby’s in 1965 and in 1969 was named head of the jewelry department. He left Sotheby’s in the fall of 1981 and for the last 20 years has been a private dealer.

Butterfields Auctioneers, San Francisco, Calif., has made five new staff appointments, introduced a new specialty department, and expanded its customer service division. On June 1, the company announced the appointments of Peter Loughrey as director of Twentieth Century Furniture and Decorative Arts and Deedy Loftus as director of the new Arts of the West Department. In addition, Dr Martin Gammon, has joined the firm as Specialist in Books, Manuscripts & Entertainment Memorabilia; Burke Owens has been appointed as Wine Department Specialist; and Andrew Hudson is the new representative in Portland Oregon.