The Magazine Antiques

Current & Coming | By Carolyn Kelly

Curator's Choice: A tour of TAAS with Stacy C. Hollander

January 22, 2010  |  A visit to the American Antiques Show (also known as TAAS) at the Metropolitan Pavilion is always filled with discovery, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to join a special tour of the show with Stacy C. Hollander, the American Folk Art Museum's senior curator and director of exhibitions. This year's new layout designed by Ned Jalbert, which tossed aside rigid aisles and allows for more open space and meandering sight lines, was a perfect complement to Hollander's tour, which made ready juxtapositions among the booths and picked up recurring themes across the widely varied art on view, relying on natural serendipity. Hollander quickly identified one important trend at this year's show and that is portraiture. Some of these highlights, including portraits by Rufus Hathaway and Drossos Skyllas, are included in the slideshow below and offer a taste of why TAAS, which runs through Sunday, shouldn't be missed.

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Current & Coming | By Megan Holloway Fort

Antiques season in New York

January 19, 2010  |  
Winter Antiques Show
This year's fifty-sixth annual Winter Antiques Show will feature six new exhibitors—including two who specialize in early twentieth-century decorative arts, New York's Liz O'Brien and Lost City Arts—to complement the always stunning array that is the show's signature. Its loan exhibitions are also always remarkable in the way they transform a very small space into a lively gallery that conveys the essence of the subject at hand: this year it is the collections of Historic New England. The oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional heritage organization in the country, Historic New England comprises thirty-six historically and architecturally significant properties, as well as a collection of more than 110,000 objects spanning four centuries. A full lecture program over the course of the show will cover topics related to Historic New England's collections as well as a wide variety of other subjects. A keynote address entitled "Things of Beauty" will be delivered by Peter J. Gomes of Harvard University on January 22. As always, the Winter Antiques Show is a benefit for East Side House Settlement in the Bronx.

Winter Antiques Show · Park Avenue Armory, New York · January 22-31 · www.winterantiquesshow.com

American Antiques Show
While some things are changing at the popular American Antiques Show this year—namely a redesign of the lobby and floor plan by Ned Jalbert Interior Design (Jalbert is also an expert in American Indian art and one of the show's exhibitors) and six new dealers—the show remains the only all-American antiques show held in New York during "antiques week" and features the eclectic mix of fine, decorative, and folk art objects that draws throngs of new and ex­­­­perienced collectors alike. As always, proceeds benefit the American Folk Art Museum, and the ticket price includes two-for-one admission to the museum as well as complimentary shuttle service between the show and the museum. There is also an extensive educational series for collectors, including a panel discussion on the state of the art market, a tour of the show with the museum's curator, Stacy C. Hollander, an appraisal day, and, for museum members, a visit to a private collection. 
American Antiques Show · Metropolitan Pavilion, New York · January 21-24 ·  www.theamericanantiques show.org
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Current & Coming | By Megan Holloway Fort

Cartier and America

January 6, 2010  |  Organized to celebrate the firm's one hundred years in the United States, Cartier and America, which opened last month at San Francisco's Legion of Honor, explores the history of the house of Cartier from its first great successes as the "king of jewelers and the jeweler to kings" at the end of the nineteenth century through the 1960s and 1970s, when Cartier supplied international celebrities with jewels and luxury accessories, and up to the present.

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Current & Coming | By Megan Holloway Fort

Poetry and painting

December 31, 2009  |  Among this year's best surprises is the moving exhibition Bold, Cautious, True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era, which opened during the summer at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, and remains on view at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, through January 24, 2010. Taking its title from a Whitman poem, the exhibition explores the American writer's poetry and prose to gain a deeper understanding of the transformation in the mood, the point of view, and the character of art produced in this country between 1861 and 1867.

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