Palaces for the People: Guastavino and the Art of Structural Tile

Editorial StaffArt

The pan roast is back. The herring is coming. The famous Oyster Bar restaurant in New York’s Grand Central Terminal reopened last Thursday after a four-month renovation of its 101-year-old interior, particularly a thorough cleaning of its ceiling of interlocking vaults covered with terracotta tiles by the Guastavino firm.  Seeing the tiles fully cleaned and all the edging light bulbs …

Lost imperial Easter Egg found

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In a story that is the stuff of fairy tales, one of the missing imperial Fabergé Easter Eggs made for the Russian royal family has been found and will be on public view at Court Jewellers Wartski in Mayfair, London, in the run up to Easter. The magnificent Third Imperial Easter Egg had turned up in the hands of an …

End Notes: Photographer Bill Gekas

Editorial StaffOpinion

We enjoy exploring the ways in which contemporary artists look to the past to inform their work. We are especially intrigued by the photography of Australian Bill Gekas, whose primary inspiration for these images of his daughter is clearly the Dutch old masters. Digital photography is his tool, but his evocative images are also the result of astute bor­rowing and …

Surprises at the Armory Show

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King by Alice Neel (1900-1988), c. 1954. India ink on paper, 13.33 by 11 inches. The Estate of Alice Neel, Courtesy Aurel Scheibler, Berlin. The modern section of the Armory Show on Pier 92 (March 6-9) opened with a significant surprise: an installation curated by Susan Harris, Venus Drawn Out: 20th Century Works by Great Woman Artists. Pier 92 had …

Seen and Heard

Editorial StaffExhibitions

TRANSITIONS London-based Asian art specialist Ben Janssens, who was injured in a cycling accident last August, has resigned as chairman of the European Fine Art Fair after seven years. He will continue serving on TEFAF’s board of trustees and as chairman of its Antiquairs section. Willem van Roijen succeeds Janssens, replacing acting TEFAF chairman Robert Aronson. Joshua W. Lane (left) …

A major exhibition offers a fresh look at William Glackens

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“Armenian Girl” by Glackens, 1916. Oil on canvas, 32 by 26 inches. The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia and Merion, PA. The Soda Fountain by William James Glackens (American, 1870-1938), 1935. Oil on canvas, 48 by 36 inches. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Joseph E. Temple and Henry D. Gilpin Funds 1955. Installation view at Nova Southeastern University’s Museum of Art, Fort Luaderdale. Photograph by Steven …

Late bloomers: The Purple Foliage Workshop

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The second quarter of the eighteenth cen­tury is thought of as the golden age of Chinese export porcelain, and with good reason. This is the period just following the intro­duction of the famille rose enamel, a period of innovation and experimentation when European porcelain manufacture was in its infancy and Eu­rope was crying out for the very best that the …

At the Met: Carpets of the East in paintings from the West

Editorial StaffExhibitions

The cross-disciplinary exhibition opened on March 11 at the Metropolitan Museum explores the way carpets moved and were used around the globe by pairing three seventeenth–century Islamic rugs with Dutch paintings of the same period. The Magazine ANTIQUES spoke to exhibition curator Deniz Beyazit, the assistant curator in the Department of Islamic Art, to understand the origins of the project, …

Asia week New York

Editorial StaffCalendar

Gallery events Chinese Porcelain Company: “Contemporary Chinese Ink”; March 14 to 22 “Early Chinese Ceramics”; March 14 to 22 Erik Thomsen Gallery: “Japanese Paintings and Works of Art”; March 15 to April 25 Joan B. Mirviss: Japan in Black & White: Ink and Clay”; March 14 to April 25 Peter Pap at Kentshire Galleries:  “Art in Bloom – Antique Rugs from Private …