THE PHILADELPHIA ANTIQUES SHOW‘s hardworking committee, on the job since 1962, this year welcomes the show’s new director Catherine Sweeney Singer. From this pairing expect a fresh take on tradition, the best of the past proffered with invigorated ideas for the present. The gala preview is April 25, and the show runs through April 29.
Limning a portrait of a place and its people, Historic Deerfield, organizers of this year’s loan show, is exhibiting more than thirty eighteenth- and nineteenth-century objects from its collections of Connecticut River Valley fine and decorative art. Many of the items selected by curator Amanda E. Lange have unbroken histories in Deerfield and nearby communities in western Massachusetts. Highlights include Ralph Earl’s 1799 portrait of Dr. Ebenezer Hunt of Northampton and a pole stand with a screen embroidered about 1810 by Sarah Leavitt of Greenfield.
Associate chairman Leslie Anne Miller will debut her book Start with a House, Finish with a Collection (Scala Arts Publishers). With photographs by Gavin Ashworth and a foreword by Ron Bourgeault, it combines the story of Miller and husband Richard B. Worley’s collecting (see our January/February 2010 issue) with scholarly discussion of select works by the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Montgomery-Garvan Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts, Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley.
Philadelphia Antiques Show, Pennsylvania Convention Center • April 25-29 • thephiladelphiaantiquesshow.org historic-deerfield.org
Historic Germantown
Close to downtown, Historic Germantown promotes sixteen historic properties, among them Stenton, built by James Logan; eighteenth-century Cliveden, site of the Battle of Germantown; and Johnson House, a stop on the Underground Railroad. freedomsbackyard.com
Studio furniture at Moderne
A retrospective exhibition of studio furniture by master woodworker David N. Ebner opens on April 25 with a reception and book signing at Moderne Gallery from 6 to 9 pm. “Ebner’s designs will always be fresh and classic,” says gallery founder Robert Aibel. Roughly sixty examples of case and seating furniture, mirrors, and occasional pieces made by the Bellport, New York, craftsman between 1965 and 2014 will be on view through June 30. modernegallery.com
Preview Pook and Pook
Preview Pook and Pook’s April sale of period furniture, fine art, and accessories at its Downingtown, Pennsylvania, salesrooms beginning on April 19. Studding the April 25 and 26 auction is property from the RittenhouseSquare estate of Marie Devlin Schwarz as well as Shenandoah Valley pottery and other folk art and some choice museum consignments. pookandpook.com
Early Hebrew books
The Rosenbach Museum and Library, which last year merged with the Free Library of Philadelphia, houses some of the oldest books printed in Hebrew. Tours of the trove, rarely on public view, are planned for 3 to 4 pm on April 18 and 27, led by curator Judith M. Guston. Visitors are invited to examine such rarities as the first printed Pentateuch (printed in Bologna in 1482 and shown here), along with other ancient and rare objects that contextualize these volumes. Tickets $15; reservations requested. rosenbach.org
Breakfast at Freeman’s
The historic Philadelphia auction house Freeman’s, just off Rittenhouse Square, is hosting a continental breakfast and a preview of its May 2 sale of American furniture and folk and decorative arts on Sunday, April 27 from 8:30 to 10:30 am. To attend, telephone (267) 414-1250. One highlight, estimated at $8,000 to $12,000, is a full-length dressed miniature of a little girl of about 1790 attributed to Mary Way of New London, Connecticut. freemansauction.com
Ongoing shows
Native American voices at Penn
Native American Voices: The People-Here and Now, a new long-term exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, challenges stereotypes and speaks to the ways in which communities are maintaining religious, political, linguistic, and artistic independence. Nearly three hundred objects representing eighty-five North American tribes will be rotated through the display over the next five years. penn.museum
Philadelphia design treasures
“On the Leading Edge: Decorative Arts in Philadelphia, 1720-1880,” curator Alexandra Kirtley’s reinstallation of Gallery 286 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reacquaints visitors with such stars of the collection as the celebrated “Fox and the Grapes” high chest of drawers and dressing table of 1765 to 1775, whose carved central drawers illustrate a scene from Aesop’s Fables; and an 1816 klismos chair signed by decorator John Philip Fondé. New acquisitions include a recently discovered Bonnin and Morris pickle stand, a promised gift to the museum; a 1710 to 1725 spice box on stand; a painted bracket table of about 1810; and a block-printed bedcover made by John Hewson, about 1790 to 1810. philamuseum.org
The Gross Clinic returns
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has installed The Gross Clinic (co-owned with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) in its newly refurbished Gallery 111. For the next three years Thomas Eakins’s masterpiece will be surrounded by paintings and sculptures by American artists who trained or exhibited in Europe and by others whose work appeared with The Gross Clinic at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 and Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Featuring prizewinning silver, ceramics, and glass by Tiffany and John La Farge, the salon style installation re-creates the cosmopolitan ambiance of a late nineteenth-century art gallery, according to Kathleen Foster, the museum’s Robert L. McNeil Jr. Senior Curator of American Art.
The Athenaeum celebrates 200
Founded in 1814, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, housed in an 1845 Italianate revival style brownstone by architect John Notman, collects American architecture, art, and design references for the period 1800 to 1945. A bicentennial display, Useful Arts and Useful Knowledge: The Founding of the Athenaeum, includes portraits of founding members plus books and other items dating to 1814. philaathenaeum.org
Still lifes at PAFA
Through August 23, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts museum is exhibiting From Trompe l’Oeil to Modernism: Still Lifes from the PAFA Collection, featuring approximately twenty paintings from the permanent collection by Arthur B. Carles, Stuart Davis, Alexander Pope, and others. pafa.org
Philadelphia and the Civil War
The Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia examines the city’s role in America’s bloodiest conflict in a new long-term exhibition titled Broken Bodies, Suffering Spirits: Injury, Death and Healing in Civil War Philadelphia. muttermuseum.org
Ceramics and costumes at Winterthur
This year’s Ceramics Conference at Winterthur, April 24-25, considers how porcelain and pottery have been acquired, used, and collected over the past four centuries and features speakers from the U.S. and abroad. Henry Francis du Pont’s country estate shares more than a passing likeness to the fictional Downton Abbey. View costumes from the hit BBC series at Winterthur through January 4, 2015. winterthur.org
April 27: Collecting mid-century modern panel
Collecting mid-century modern furniture is the subject of a panel discussion from 2 to 4 PM at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Moderated by Lisa Tremper Hanover, the museum’s director and CEO, the panel will include David Rago, Todd Merrill, Robert Aibel, and James Zemaitis. The program coincides with the survey show Paul Evans: Crossing Boundaries and Crafting Modernism, which travels to the Cranbrook Art Museum after closing at the Michener on June 1. michenermuseum.org
Violet Oakley in Wilmington
Through May 25, an exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum celebrates the genius of illustrator, stained-glass designer, mural painter, and activist Violet Oakley, who completed her wartime altarpiece The Angel of Victory, a recent gift to the museum, one week after the Pearl Harbor bombings. delart.org
Wyeth studio tours
With enough stamina, it is possible to visit the Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, studios of N. C. and Andrew Wyeth and the N. C. Wyeth house in a single day. Operated by the Brandywine River Museum, where A Date with Art: The Business of Illustrated Calendars and N.C. Wyeth’s America in the Making remains through May 18, the guided tours contrast the work habits of the extroverted N. C. Wyeth and his intensely private son, whose collection of toy soldiers is a tour highlight. brandywinemuseum.org
Through May 31: American masters in Greenville, Delaware
Adjacent to the Hagley Museum in Greenville, Delaware, the Somerville Manning Gallery specializes in American art of this century and the last. Through May the firm is hosting its fifth American Masters exhibition, featuring paintings by three generations of Wyeths and their contemporaries, from Maurice Prendergast to Helen Frankenthaler. somervillemanning.com
