Barbara Babcock Millhouse answers some question about her grandparent’s home, now the Reynolda House Museum of American Art.
Melting pot modern
Creating an American style in the 1920s.
Growing Interests: Expanding the collections at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum
In 1926 John D. Rockefeller Jr. formally embarked on the project that would become the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation by purchasing Philip Ludwell’s house of about 1775 on Duke of Gloucester Street. That acquisition, the first “antique” in Colonial Williamsburg’s collection, came to play a pivotal role in the founding of what would eventually be the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.
A charmed life
English inspiration, American creativity, and a bit of historical luck are joined in the author’s house and gardens Several years ago English friends came for lunch at my house, now called the Gordon-Banks house, in Newnan, Georgia, some forty miles southwest of Atlanta. They walked down a wide hallway onto a porch that overlooks a terrace and what the English …
The allure of Leeds House: An unparalleled private collection finds its ideal home in Philadelphia
Last winter, one of America’s great private collections slipped quietly from its urban home of nearly two decades in upper Manhattan to the splendor of a historic estate in Philadelphia. Preparing to move the peerless arts and crafts furniture, metalwork, glass, and ceramics, not to mention the sculptures, paintings, and works on paper, consumed the prior autumn months. Art handlers …
Talking antiques: Winter Antiques Show
We asked exhibitors at the Winter Antiques Show to highlight one exceptional object in their booths and describe it as they might to an interested collector. Here are the things they chose, along with some of their comments. ALLAN AND PENNY KATZ This artful rendering of a birdcage in the shape of the United States Capitol Building was undoubtedly made …
Ahead of the curve: The Newark Museum now and then
In a better world we would all be thronging the doors of the Newark Museum; in the best of worlds Ulysses Grant Dietz would be there to meet us, taking us through the galleries with fellow curators Christa Clarke and Katherine Anne Paul. But this is Newark-not a destination for many out-of-town museumgoers (though it should be), so Ulysses Dietz …
Farther afield: Highclere Castle: The real Downton Abbey
The staggering luxury of Downtown Abbey’s turreted house and lush grounds have mesmerized audiences as much as any of the adventures of the Crawley family and their staff The real Downton Abbey is Highclere Castle, located in Berkshire at a crossroads between Winchester and Oxford, Bristol and London. The property’s thousand acres of parklands include the remains of an Iron …
Japanese screens
By Ruth Davidson; Originally published in January 1971 For the enchantment of visitors to Asia House Gallery this month and next there will be on view byōbu, or Japanese painted screens, from twelve museums and private collections in New York. Arranged so as to suggest their appearance in a Japanese house, the twenty six screens will be shown in two …
Breaking ground: British folk art at the Tate
In 1768, when the British Royal Academy of Arts was established, it emphatically distinguished the fine arts from crafts by exiling the latter, declaring that “no needlework, artificial flowers, cut-paper, shell-work or any such performances should be admitted.” By 1948 artworks from outside the mainstream still had not overcome this prejudice, prompting the designer, writer, and folk art enthusiast Enid …