Concord Abbott & Downing coach, $132,500.
Trade News from around the World
The global reach of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum stretched further on January 15 with the announcement of a three-way collaboration by the New York-based Guggenheim, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, writes Celestine Bohlen of The New York Times. The new arrangement follows the recent partnership of the Hermitage and the Guggenheim, which is to result in a joint exhibition of works in Las Vegas this year. The three-way relationship will allow a steady exchange of exhibitions, collaboration among museum staffs and the sharing of other resources, museum officials told the Times.
Two men were charged January 7 with receiving stolen goods in connection with last month’s theft of paintings by Rembrandt and Renoir from Sweden’s National Museum, a news agency reported to the Associated Press. The two were among eight people arrested so far for the theft at the National Museum in downtown Stockholm. In the incident, three men walked into the museum, pointed guns at unarmed guards and snatched the three small paintings off walls. They fled on foot to a waiting boat moored across the street from the waterfront museum.
Pottery collector/dealer Joel Schatzberg recognized a crock valued at up to $10,000 on eBay – and held at Sandpiper Antiques, Durham, N.C. – as one that had been stolen from his Greenwich, Conn. home in 1986. Anna Eakes, who was selling the crock on consignment for another dealer, refused to send the crock to Greenwich police; detective Stokes Barnes from the department was forced to retrieve it in person. Schatzberg, who took pictures of every piece in his collection, said he knew the crock was his from the etching of a kingfisher carrying a fish in its beak. If a stolen rdf_Description is discovered by its original owner, the law requires the new owner to return it. “That’s why you have to be careful with what you deal with,” Barnes told AP.
EBay has acquired a majority stake in South Korea’s largest online auction business, Internet Auction Co. Ltd., for about $120 million. The deal gives eBay a foothold in a major online auction market in Asia and access to Internet Auction’s 2.8 million registered users. EBay bought just over 50 percent of Internet Auction from three of the Korean company’s major shareholders: Sung Moon Kwon, The Will-bes & Co. and KTB Network Co., according to a statement eBay released late January 7 to the Associated Press.
The Bellevue Art Museum, Washington, designed by internationally renowned architect Steven Holl, is being hailed as second in the region only to Frank Gehry’s “Experience Music Project,” reports Jeff Switzer of the Eastside Journal to AP. In December, the museum received an Honor Award from the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Architects, placing tops among 150 regional entries. But beyond making an award-winning architectural statement, the new $23 million museum building is intended to become the city’s cultural center.
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, Santa Fe, N.M., scheduled to open in July, will be dedicated to the study of American Modernism and will focus on the famous painter, her circle of friends and their work. The center will house staff offices, a 10,000-volume library and an archive for O’Keeffe’s personal objects. Research on O’Keeffe and her milieu is central to formulating a definition of Twentieth Century American Modernism, said Barbara Buhler Lynes, the director of the new center. Buhler Lynes told the Associated Press that O’Keeffe and the O’Keeffe Museum provide an appropriate backdrop for scholarly research on American Modernism because O’Keeffe’s life (1887-1986) runs parallel to what most scholars agree is the modernist period in art and culture.
Spanish painter Esteban Vicente, 97, a pioneer of the New York-based school that made Jackson Pollack and Mark Rothko famous, died January 11. The artist, who had lived in the United States for the past 50 years, died at his home in Bridgehampton, N.Y., Jose Parreno, assistant director of the Esteban Vicente contemporary museum in Segovia, Spain, told AP. Born January 20, 1903 in the central Spanish town of Turegano, Vicente lived in Paris as a young man, where he knew Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst. In the 1950s, he set up a studio in New York with Willem de Kooning and was an active member of “The Club,” a forum instrumental in the formation of Abstract Expressionism, also called the New York school or action painting.
Lucille Stewart Beeson, who made generous donations to Samford University, Cumberland School of Law and the Birmingham Museum of Art, died at age 95 in Birmingham, Ala., on January 8. Known for her philanthropy, Beeson donated her entire Wedgwood pottery and porcelain collection, which she began assembling in 1947, to the museum in 1975. According to the Associated Press, Lucille and her husband, Dwight, along with other members of her family, gave more than $100 million total to the university.
Robert Carter Slack, age 58, of Atlanta, Ga., died December 18 of an aneurysm at Piedmont Hospital. Mr Slack, a New York native, was a 37-year Atlanta resident and businessman. He co-founded Great Gatsby’s Auction House and Antiques in 1983. He is survived by his sons, Brett Slack and Cary Milligan and his brothers, Ron Slack and Richard Slack, all of Atlanta.
Linda S. Ferber, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art and chair of the department of American art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, N.Y., is trying to locate “A Harvest Field,” by William Trost Richards (American, 1833-1905), for an upcoming show. The work measures 34 by 59 inches. Call Ms Ferber at 718/638-5000, extension 265 or 267 with information; it is hoped the work will be included in a Richards exhibition set to open at the Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pa in September 2001.
The Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., has appointed Denise Miller to a newly created position- deputy director for programs and external affairs at the gallery. The director of The Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago for the past 16 years, Miller assumed her new post in December.
Gabriella De Ferrari, who recently served as project director of the Wadsworth Atheneum’s Architecture and Project Planning Committee, has been elected to the Hartford, Conn. museum’s Board of Trustees. An art historian and museum professional by training, De Ferrari is a former assistant director of the Fogg Art Museum and a former director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. She is also a philanthropic advisor and fiction writer. Her books include the novel A Cloud on Sand (Knopf 1990), Gringa Latina, a “fictional” autobiography (Houghton Mifflin 1995), and a book-in-progress on Machu Picchu (to be published by Knopf). On the curatorial side, the Wadsworth Atheneum has appointed Ulrich Birkmaier as Paintings Conservator and Trina Evarts as Assistant Curator of American Decorative Arts.
The Tremaine Foundation, Meriden, Conn., has announced the recipients of the Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award. The four institutions receiving Exhibition Awards for the year 2000 are P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City ($50,000), the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston ($100,000), the Baltimore Museum of Art ($100,000) and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond ($100,000). The biennial Exhibition Award – established in 1998 to honor Emily Hall Tremaine, a life-long collector of contemporary art – rewards innovation and experimentation at the curatorial level by supporting thematic exhibitions that challenge audiences and expand the boundaries of contemporary art.
Craftsman Auctions, which recently merged with David Rago, will launch a new series of sales at Fontaine’s Auction Gallery. Jerry Cohen and John Fontaine will feature paintings, prints and photographs in the venture, set to debut on May 6 in Pittsfield, Mass., at Fontaine’s.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tex., has acquired “The Last of the Tribes” (1867-74), a marble sculpture by American artist Hiram Powers. The 66-inch sculpture, which depicts the partially nude figure of an American Indian woman, was purchased with funds provided by the Agnes Cullen Arnold Fund. It is on view in the Kilroy Gallery of the Audrey Jones Beck Building, 5601 Main Street.
London’s DMG Antiques Fairs, one of Europe’s largest organizers of antiques and collectors fairs, has joined with Travel Management Group to provide the Spring Antique and Heritage Tour of Southeast England, which runs from April 23 to 29. This tour will focus on the Detling International Antiques and Collectors Fair and the Ardingly International Antiques and Collectors Fair, known as the largest fair in the South of England.
