Innholdsfortegnelse for May-June 2020/ No. 51 i American Fine Art Magazine

Maurice Katz is a born collector, starting out with classic comic books and baseball cards and graduating to assembling a prime collection of early American modernism with his wife, Margery. “We started 45 years ago,” Maurice explains, “and we haven’t stopped.” Both took classes with renowned art historians in college, which helped refine their innate attraction to fine art. Maurice studied with the art historian Meyer Schapiro at Columbia College. “He made you delve into what art was all about as well as its role in civilization.” Margery studied with Alfred Frankenstein, the San Francisco Chronicle art critic, at Mills College. “It was my first opportunity to see fabulous American art,” she says. “After we were married, we were in a gallery on La Cienega when I spotted an etching…

As Americans take stock of what it means to be American, art holds many answers from the past. A new show at Debra Force Fine Art in New York City begins to expand on those answers with Coast to Coast: Views of America, a new exhibition that focuses on artwork created across the country. “We’ve recently acquired a number of great works with regional connections, things that really capture the American Scene and what you imagine when you think of that, such as artists Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood,” says gallery owner Debra Force. “But then we also move to other areas, including New England, Florida, Pennsylvania and the Southwest. Rather than put these works in a focused gallery show, we are going with a more…

Now open at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami is Transitional Nature: Hudson River School Paintings from the David and Lara Grey Collection, a new exhibition that features 29 impressive landscapes from an important period of American art history. The New York-based collectors, who make frequent loans to institutions, have collected artwork with a specific focus on the Hudson River School. “They are incredibly knowledgeable and take it very seriously,” says Amy Galpin, chief curator at the Frost Art Museum. “They do their homework and study everything they collect. Mr. Grey can give quite a museum tour.” The exhibition, which was curated and organized by Katherine Manthorne, an art professor at the City Museum of New York, will feature artwork from many of…

An early double portrait by Gilbert Stuart has been acquired by the Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The elegant oil on canvas, titled Anna Dorothea Foster and Charlotte Anna Dick, was painted in Dublin, Ireland, during 1790 to 1791 and depicts Anna Dorothea Foster, the daughter of former Speaker of the House John Foster, on the right, and her cousin Charlotte Anna Dick on the left. The painting was gifted to the museum by Charlotte Metz Hanes, wife of the late R. Philip Hanes, who says she is committed to supporting the arts in Winston-Salem and continuing her husband’s legacy. American businessman Philip Hanes was a major leader and patron of the arts for the Winston-Salem community and was part of the Board of Trustees…

DR. AMY GALPIN Chief Curator PATRICIA & PHILLIP FROST ART MUSEUM Miami, FL, (305) 348-2890, frost.fiu.edu What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why? This weekend I am seeing Dennis Scholl’s new film Lifeline: Clyfford Still. Still is such an enigma, and I am fascinated to see what Scholl and his team uncovered. In terms of exhibitions, Natural Forces: Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington opens at the Denver Art Museum this spring. I am interested in viewing paintings by these two legendary artists presented side by side and evaluating how landscape functions as subject in the work. What are you reading? A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida by N.D.B. Connolly. Interesting…

Today, as I isolate myself with my family, observing social distancing while the world’s economies topple like flaming dominoes, the effect of small things, even things we cannot see on, well, everything, and the inextricable interconnectedness of all things great and small, hits home. It’s an idea that really begins with Alexander von Humboldt, who is the focus of a new and crucial exhibition, Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. As “going viral” recovers its original, deadly serious meaning in our time, Humboldt’s brief six-week visit to the young United States in 1804 went viral in the current sense of the term. His visit and ideas might be said to be the vector that transformed the scientific, political and…

An upcoming exhibition at WOLFS Gallery in Cleveland explores the career of surrealist artist Clarence Holbrook Carter. The gallery, which represents the estate of the artist, showcases more than 200 works, including the artist’s eminent architectural paintings, otherworldly landscapes and symbolic portraits. WOLFS Gallery director Michael Wolf explains the significance of Cleveland as a major art destination at the turn of the 20th century, where Carter studied. “It so happens that Carter was a graduate of the Cleveland School of Art (now the Cleveland Institute of Art), and because of our long history in Cleveland we’ve become associated with the well-known artists who [attended the school]. Cleveland at the turn of the century was the biggest lithographic and printing community in the world, and artists flocked all over the world…

This year-the centennial of women’s right to vote in the United States-the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego has designated 2020 “The Year of the Woman: The Ideal and the Real.” In alignment with this theme, the museum launches its first exhibition of the new decade, Captivating Women from the Dijkstra Collection from the collection of San Diego-based collectors Bram and Sandra Dijkstra. The exhibition, which runs through May 10, will include nine American and European works of art either by women or featuring women as inspiration. Among the American artists in the exhibition are Ella Ferris Pell, Gilbert Gaul, Eric Pape and Belle Baranceanu. “All three of our temporary exhibitions this year (spring, summer and fall) will highlight works by female artists or will feature women as subjects.…

Sotheby’s recent auction, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Juan Hamilton: Passage, achieved $17.2 million in total sales, breaking well past its $13.3 million high estimate. The March 5 sale featured works from the estates of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, as well as previously unseen art and personal effects from the collection of Juan Hamilton, artist and friend of O’Keeffe. The top lot was undoubtedly O’Keeffe’s 1932 oil Nature Forms - Gaspé, which surpassed its high estimate of $6 million when it sold for nearly $6.9 million. The piece is evocative of the natural forms and organic shapes the artist experienced during her travels along the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec. A gelatin silver print by Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe - Hand and Wheel, features the braceleted hand of O’Keeffe touching the curve…

DRISCOLL BABCOCK John Driscoll, President Kate Kamp, Director We have experienced real and renewed interest in the market for American 19th- and 20th-century art in the last year, particularly the last six months. Our regular clients and new collectors are in the market for top-quality artworks across genre, with period-quality and art historical significance being the prime considerations. We have sold exceptional examples by American modernist artists—Hartley, O’Keeffe, Marin, Kent and others—as well as artists like Edgar Levy, Samuel Halpert and Tony Nell who are accessible for many collectors and museums but whose names may not be as well known. We are finding that as long as the quality is very high, people are interested. We have also seen an uplift in the market for choice Hudson River School works—Bierstadt,…

D. Wigmore Fine Art is pleased to present an exhibition of 30 paintings by two artists whose work was shaped by the landscape and Native people of the Southwest. Our exhibition presents the journey Raymond Jonson (1891-1982) and Emil Bisttram (1895-1976) took from realism to abstraction. The two joined together in 1938 to found the Transcendental Painting Group that raised them to national fame. The Chicago artist Jonson spent four months in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1922 and discovered there natural shapes and a rhythm in the landscape that he could use to develop his art. This visit resulted in Jonson and his wife, Vera, moving to Santa Fe in 1924 to build a home and studio on land they purchased. Exploring and sketching the landscape, Jonson was challenged…

Starting in March, Somerville Manning Gallery will be opening its doors to their long running American Masters: Art of the 20th-21st Centuries exhibition. After returning from a two-year hiatus they have quite the exciting collection to share, showing a transitional timeline from realism to abstraction, and 20th century to contemporary. Work by the ever-popular Wyeth family remains a permanent collection with Somerville Manning. However, the new exhibition will showcase new pieces not seen in the exhibit before. “The American Masters exhibition continues to follow the artworks of N.C., Andrew and Jamie Wyeth… analyzing their context through the timeline,” says owner Vickie Manning. “You can see the movement of other artists alongside the Wyeth pieces.” Along with the Wyeth works, there will be highlights such as a Norman Rockwell drawing titled…

Being located in Philadelphia, Freeman’s Auction is easily recognized as one of the leading firms for Pennsylvania Impressionist artwork. During its twice-yearly American Art & Pennsylvania Impressionists sales, there are always a number of pieces from the biggest names in the category coming to market. On June 7 at 2 p.m. in its new showroom on Market Street, the auction house will continue that tradition with what vice chairman Alasdair Nichol calls “one of the best offerings of Pennsylvania Impressionism to be offered on the market in many years.” This accolade, he says, is primarily because of a stellar collection of 11 works from the late Heidi Bingham Stott, who began collecting art with her husband Robert L. Stott, who passed in 2014, while living in New York City. According…