The Magazine Antiques

Current & Coming | By The Magazine ANTIQUES

Edward Hopper

October 17, 2011  |  Of Edward Hopper shows there is no evident end and that is not a bad thing. This summer the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine, is opening a massive Hopper show on a small Hopper theme-the artist's oil sketches, paintings, water­colors, drawings, and etchings from his nine summers in Maine between 1914 and 1929. Some forty-five works in all will be borrowed from the Whitney Museum of American Art as well as from twenty other institutions and one private collection. In addition to being a celebration of Maine's allure for artists, the exhibition also constitutes an argument to the effect that Hopper was as much Hopper among lighthouses, fish­ing boats, and fog as he was in his urban paintings of anomie and isolation. Visitors to Bowdoin will be able to judge the merits of this argument for themselves, aided by a substantial catalogue of articles by several scholars and one celebrity (Steve Martin), which in itself constitutes a significant addition to our understa…» More

Current & Coming | By The Magazine ANTIQUES

Jewels and Gems in Boston

October 17, 2011  |  

Brooch designed by John Paul Cooper (1869-1933), English, 1908. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; gift of Susan B. Kaplan.

Jewels and more jewels are to be found in the new Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which opens on July 19. Jewels, Gems, and Treasures: Ancient to Modern, the inaugural exhibition, includes approxi­mately seventy-five examples, drawn primarily from the museum's own jewelry holdings with a few select loans, that together represent four millennia of personal adornment and the brilliance of the jeweler's art. They range from ancient Egyptian, early Kerma culture (modern Sudan), and Mayan pieces to con­temporary studio jewelry, with the greatest number representing the most famous names in jew­elry history-Lalique, Tiffany and Company, Van Cleef and Arpels, and the like. In addition to the …

Current & Coming | By Staff

Williamsburg Forum 2011

October 25, 2010  |  Colonial Williamsburg will convene its sixty-third annual Antiques Forum between February 20 and 24, 2011. The theme this year, Decorative Arts Forensics: How We Know What We Know, is intended to shed light on some of the fascinating advances in techniques for historical research and scientific investigation that have opened new avenues of verification for curators, collectors, and scholars. The forum will bring together a group of widely recognized authorities, who will present recent findings on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century furniture, metals, ceramics, glass, clocks, musical instruments, and architecture. In addition to Colonial Williamsburg curators and conservators, scheduled speakers include garden historian Paul F. “Chip” Callaway; Robert Hunter, ceramics scholar; Lynne Dakin Hastings from James Madison’s Montpelier; Tom Savage from Winterthur; Daniel Kurt Ackermann from MESDA; and noted antiques dealer and auctioneer Leigh Keno. Optional hands-on workshops with the…» More

Current & Coming | By Staff

Fantastic Mr. Shearer

Fantastic Mr. Shearer

A man with a mission, the elusive late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Virginia cabinetmaker John Shearer often professed his British loyalties in carving and inlay. Even when he did not, his furniture displays an idiosyncratic style that has long intrigued scholars and collectors-and made Shearer the subject of two articles in our April-May 2010 issue, written in anticipation of the exhibition of his work that recently opened at the DAR Museum in Washington, D. C. Entitled "A True North Britain": The Furniture of John Shearer 1790-1820, the show is guest curated by independent scholar Elizabeth A. Davison, who also wrote the related book to be published next year. It remains on view in Washington until February 26, 2011, and will subsequently be shown at Colonial Williamsburg. "A True North Britain": The Furniture of John Shearer 1790-1820 · DAR Museum, Washington · to Febraury 26, 2011 · www.dar.org/museum