Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2018/ No.40 i American Fine Art Magazine

Celebration in the Park New York City Parks held celebrations at multiple public monuments. The firm Aegis Restauro has conserved the Peter Cooper Monument in Cooper Triangle, which honors the founder of Cooper Union. The parks service also celebrated local World War I heroes at the Clinton War Memorial in De Witt Clinton Park in conjunction with the Government of Flanders Biennale Marking the 70th anniversary of the exhibition of the collection of Peggy Guggenheim in the Greek Pavilion at the 24th Venice Biennale, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents an homage exhibition, 1948: The Biennale of Peggy Guggenheim. The show celebrates the landmark event, the first display of a comprehensive modern art collection in Italy after dictatorial regime, and remains on view through November 25. Vis-à-vis In Hirschl and Adler’s…

The first owner of record of Nedra and Richard Matteucci’s home on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, was Juan José Prada, a descendant of a soldier in the Santa Fe regiment of the Spanish army. Parts of it date back to the 18th century. By the time the Matteuccis purchased the property in 1990 it had become accustomed to being a home for art. Margretta Stewart Dietrich, widow of Nebraska governor and U.S. Senator Charles Henry Dietrich, purchased the property and assembled what is now a large compound in the 1920s and ’30s. She became an advocate for the Pueblo and Navajo and was a patron of Native art. Her sister, Dorothy Stewart, was an artist who painted a mural that still graces a breezeway. Done in 1935, it depicts…

The pervasive sunshine and sparkling-blue waters of summertime have long inspired people to examine the world around them. In a new exhibition, Hawthorne Fine Art will display a group of paintings that highlight the exhilaration of the season. “We found that each work presents summer as a time of leisure and contemplation of nature’s beauty. The season also seems to foster a closer relationship between figures and their natural environment,” says Jennifer C. Krieger, managing partner of Hawthorne. The works on view come from Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Wilson Knapp, Alfred T. Bricher, John Henry Hill, Eastman Johnson and many others. Water—from seas, lakes and rivers—is featured prominently in many of the paintings on display, capturing the cool relief from the encroaching heat of a summer’s day. Noted for his…

Realism and abstraction are frequently cast as opposing forces in modernism’s developmental narrative. For reasons that had to do less with art-historical inevitably than with geopolitics, abstraction was declared victorious in the United States after World War II. Reflecting wartime alliances, American abstraction traced its lineage to France, while the Germanic tradition of figural Expressionism was largely sidelined. To the extent that Germany’s contributions to modernism were acknowledged, Munich’s Blaue Reiter group, which experimented most overtly with abstraction, received greater attention than the comparatively representational work of artists based elsewhere in German-speaking Europe. Wassily Kandinsky’s esoteric theories, endorsed by Galka Scheyer on the West Coast and Hilla Rebay at the fledgling Guggenheim Museum (originally the Museum of Non-Objective Painting) in New York, seemed to affirm the formalist dogma that dominated…

The spring rendition of the biannual Just Off Madison event on the Upper East Side of Manhattan occurred on May 22 during New York’s historic American Art Week. The open house event featured artwork from 14 galleries and dealers spanning a dozen blocks near Madison Avenue, including Hollis Taggart Galleries, Avery Galleries, Meredith Ward Fine Art and Betty Krulik Fine Art, where guests were able to browse works and mingle with gallery owners, dealers and patrons. More than 80 people attended this spring, according to John Sanderson, David Tunick, Inc. gallery technician. For the 69th Street gallery, this was an opportunity to showcase new acquisitions as well as works from their stock that had not been previously shown before, including drawings and watercolors by Charles Burchfield, Milton Avery, David Smith…

PLYMOUTH, MA COPLEY FINE ART AUCTIONS JULY 19-20 The Sporting Sale Leading off session one of Copley Fine Art Auctions’ annual Sporting Sale on July 19 is the Donal C. O’Brien Jr. Collection of Important American Sporting Art and Decoys, Session III. Making up 150 lots, included are sporting art, Audubon prints, bronzes and books. The sale continues the next day with works from other collections and single owners, including the Davison B. Hawthorne Collection and the Ronald S. Swanson Collection of Decoys and Fish Models Among the two-dimensional highlights in the sale is a hand-colored etching with aquatint and engraving of a long-billed curlew after John James Audubon. The piece is estimated to sell between $40,000 and $60,000. Two other bird-themed sporting works are of note: Alarmed (est. $2/3,000)…

Scottsdale Art Auction preceded its normal April sale with a special auction in January that offered bidders museum-quality works from the Leanin’ Tree collection. Not only did every piece—nearly 600 of them in all—find a new home, many of them sold well above estimates. Less than four months later, on April 7, Scottsdale Art Auction was back and undeterred by the high bar set earlier in the year by its white glove sale. It didn’t achieve a 100 percent sell-through rate, but there was still much to cheer at the popular Arizona Western art sale: nearly 95 percent of the works sold while achieving more than $11 million in sales, and all to a crowded room where collectors, many returning from the previous sale, were enthusiastically bidding. “It was interesting…

Utah has a thriving market for contemporary art, fueled by a long heritage of established and emerging artists that have left their mark within the art world. This drives an interest within our community, creating new collectors who are passionate about engaging with the art, and existing collectors who are looking to push the boundaries of their own collections. We have established an astute group of collectors, and we love our connection to Western and contemporary patrons. Our focus continues to evolve as we meet the demand of our market’s interest in collecting contemporary works that push the boundaries of Western art. We are thrilled to have featured our first exhibition with Taos Modern artists Beatrice Mandelman and her husband Louis Ribak in partnership with Rosenberg & Co. in New…

Lee Glazer has been named the founding director of the Lunder Institute for American Art at Colby College. Glazer comes from the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, where she is curator of American art…Max Hollein has been named the next director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hollein currently leads the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and has demonstrated skill in building collections, diversifying audiences and broadening institutional development. He will assume the role in the summer of 2018…The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth will be renovated and expanded, opening to the public January 2019 after two years of construction. Designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the new space will double the size of the museum’s exhibition spaces and triple the…

During their lifetimes G. Arnold (1927-2017) and Carol Haynes (1929-2012) contributed generously to many types of organizations across the country through their Haynes Family Foundation. Hospitals and colleges, nature conservancies and museums benefitted from their largesse. The Hayneses enjoyed their lives and traveled widely, collecting art that reminded them of their favorite places and that gave them great pleasure. Vose Galleries in Boston is hosting the exhibition Building Connections: Works from the Haynes Family Foundation through July 14. The gallery notes, “The proceeds of this exhibition will go to four nonprofits for which the Hayneses felt a special affinity: The Barnstormers Theatre in Tamworth, New Hampshire; the Cure Alzheimers Fund; the Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vermont; and the Wellesley Historical Society in Wellesley, Massachusetts.” The artists include many of the…

Originally dubbed the Newport Antiques Show, The Newport Show has opted for a new name to better reflect its vast repertoire of art coming from more than 40 diverse dealers. At the 2018 show, which runs July 28 and 29, attendees can still admire and browse fine art, antique furniture, jewelry and other vintage accessories while also exploring photography, design and midcentury art. “We’ve changed our standards. This generation is very interested in contemporary,” says The Newport Show manager Diana Bittel of Diana Bittel Antiques, which deals in marine art and American furniture. Bittel explains that painting dealers are in high demand, including exhibitors like Carole Pinto Fine Arts and Louis Dianni in the 2018 roster. Other dealers include Arader Galleries, The Cooley Gallery, Port ’N Starboard Gallery, Rehs Galleries,…

Located in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, less than 30 miles north of Philadelphia, the James A. Michener Art Museum has a rich history in presenting exhibitions of artists of the region. These have included group shows and solo retrospectives of Pennsylvania Impressionists and New Hope Group artists. In recent years, the museum’s curators have shifted their focus to artists they believe have not been given their due, such as Rae Sloan Bredin (1880-1933), whose work is represented in a solo retrospective for the first time in 85 years. Rae Sloan Bredin: Harmony and Power, featuring 46 paintings, will hang through July 15. “Bredin is fascinating because he died so young; he was 52. He produced at a slower rate than his peers, and there is a smaller group of artwork to choose…

Important Western works from some of the icons of the genre will be available July 28 at the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction in Reno, Nevada. The top-selling Western auction in the country—it has realized more than $310 million over the last 15 years—returns this year to the Grand Sierra Resort with a number of major works from some of the defining artists of the West. The sale comes on the heels of a number of multimillion-dollar Western art sales, indicating that the market is ready for some exciting bidding, especially for the top-quality works that frequently appear at the Coeur d’Alene Art Auction. “The market is in real good shape. We’ve been watching some of the spring sales, and we’re seeing how excited consignors are, not to mention advance bookings…

It was an evening of celebration on April 29, as Freeman’s in Philadelphia brought the collection of Dorrance “Dodo” H. Hamilton to market in a single-owner sale. Not only was the room buzzing with reminiscences of the well-known philanthropist who had ties to the city, but also there was talk and awe of her collection that included American and European paintings. The sale, which featured 139 lots, yielded a robust $4.9 million and saw all but one artwork find a new home. Alasdair Nichol, chairman of Freeman’s, explains there was a lot of private interest in the sale that was only magnified through the catalog they created and the presale exhibitions the auction house held around the world. “Because the works were from Dodo Hamilton, they wanted to have a…

Ralph Waldo Emerson Meyers (1885-1948) was a close friend of Frank Waters (1902-1995), managing editor of the bilingual weekly Taos, New Mexico, newspaper El Crepusculo who wrote 27 books. His iconic novel The Man Who Killed the Deer, published in 1942, sensitively chronicled the conflict of Pueblo and Anglo culture and the conflicts of values within each. Waters created the character Rodolfo Byers based on his friend Meyers. He is first introduced as “that strange white man, Rodolfo Byers, their favorite trader for over thirty years.” Meyers moved to Taos from Colorado in 1909 to work as a fire guard. He opened The Mission Shop in Taos in 1910, which was the first Indian curio shop in town. He gained the trust of the people of the local Pueblos, moved…

Hosted by the Antiques Council, the third annual Nantucket Summer Antiques Show will gather international fine art and antiques dealers to the Massachusetts island from August 10 to 13. The show, which allows attendees to view and purchase items, includes everything from historical pieces to contemporary fare with the majority of the offerings dating from before 1980. Marty Shapiro, president of the Antiques Council, expressed his enthusiasm for the 2018 event by saying, “We are feeling very positive about the reception we have received and are dedicated to continuing the tradition of fine antiques shows on the island.” A commitment to providing an assortment of items of high quality is paramount to the show, according to the Antiques Council’s director of shows, Kaye Gregg. She says that collectors will notice,…

Eldred’s Summer Americana Auction, taking place this August on Cape Cod, will feature folk art and other Americana from the collection of Carl and Sonia Schmitt of Walla Walla, Washington, along with more than 200 paintings spanning from the 18th century to contemporary works. Highlights from the Schmitt Collection includes Ammi Phillips’ Portrait of Jane Kinney, estimated to fetch between $3,000 and $4,000, as well as portraits by Jacob Maentel and William Matthew Prior. Other notable works include a carved and painted cigar store figure of Punch as a jester (est. $100/150,000) and a Cushing & White “Goddess of Liberty” molded copper weather vane (est. $20/30,000). Outside the collection, the sale includes multiple pieces by important Massachusetts artists. Clifford Ashley’s Center Street, New Bedford, looking across to Fairhaven Massachusetts is…

Specialists in the American art department at Christie’s knew May was going to be a good month by the ninth day on the calendar, when American works from the Peggy and David Rockefeller Collection generated more than $106 million from bidders. Though it was still nearly two weeks off, the May 22 American art auction couldn’t have asked for a better lead-in. “We saw great depth of bidding, wonderful activity in the room, online and on the phones—everything was very active,” says American art specialist Paige Kestenman of the May 22 auction. “We were especially happy with the crossover from the Rockefeller sale, as bidders came out to fill in every seat with standing-room only in the back. We had great attendance and participation throughout the sale.” Bidders responded by…

When the tightly curated May 23 sale of American art began at Bonhams in New York City, the strength of the auction was felt immediately. The first two lots, by Charles Green Shaw, struck a bidding frenzy. The initial painting, titled Untitled (Abstract on White), soared to more than six times its high estimate of $10,000 to see $68,750. The second work, Untitled (Atomic Flight), sparked even more interest when it sold for $93,750 against a presale estimate of $15,000 to $25,000. It became a new auction record for the artist. “The sale did really well as a whole, especially if you look at the numbers against the presale expectations. It exceeded expectations, sell-through rates were really strong and there was great bidding activity,” says Jennifer Jacobsen, Bonhams’ director of…

MONROVIA, CA JOHN MORAN AUCTIONEERS MARCH 27 California & American Fine Art In March 2014, John Moran Auctioneers sold Guy Rose’s Windswept Trees, Laguna for a robust $480,000. During this year’s California & American Fine Art sale on March 27, the study for the painting arrived at market with a presale estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. There was strong interest from buyers in-house and on the phone, with it eventually selling to a telephone bidder for more than double its low estimate at $168,000. The work became the top lot of the sale. Coming in second was a quintessential Granville Redmond scene of the California landscape with poppies, selling within its presale estimate at $156,000. Another California landscape landing in the top 10 was William Wendt’s Shadows (est. $20/25,000), which had…