Hilary Swank’s portrayal of pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart in the new film Amelia has been turning heads—but the real star of Mira Nair’s biopic might just be the gorgeous vintage planes. As the film’s visual consultant, Toronto-based Paul Austerberry spent months researching classic aircraft. He talked to The Magazine ANTIQUES about that process, and explained why flying a late-1930s eight-seater …
My MESDA
Sometimes you have to move every object in a collection to fully appreciate it. In January the curatorial team at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts did just that. We moved virtually every exhibited object in the museum’s galleries and opened our new 45-minute guided tour, called Southernisms: People and Places, in one week’s time. Exhausted, and with sore …
Endnotes: Duck call
This Canada goose clearly lost its bearings, migrating all the way to South America in the twentieth century before returning to the United States this past August. A routine e-mail inquiry to Christie’s in New York resulted in the exciting realization that it was only the fourth decoy of its type to come to light. What makes it so special …
Chicago and the arts and crafts movement
October 2009 | “Chicago is the only American city I have seen where something absolutely distinctive in aesthetic handling of material has been evolved out of the industrial system” – C. R. Ashbee During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Chicago stood at the crossroads of the handcrafted and the machine-made, aspects that came to define the American arts …
A la mode: Homewood Museum
Always envious of the grand historic interiors featured in our Great Estates column, we wanted to take a cue from the period décor and find ways to recreate the look in even the smallest apartment. A recent peek inside Homewood Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, which boasts boldly painted floorcloths, elegant Federal period furniture, and stunning juxtapositions of color, seemed the …
Photography in New York
The New York dealer of fine photographs Hans P. Kraus Jr. celebrates his gallery’s twenty-fifth anniversary this year with a display of iconic works entitled Silver Anniversary: 25 Photographs, 1835 to 1914, opening today. Even readers who are less familiar with photography dealers will recall Kraus’s impressive booth at the 2009 Winter Antiques Show at the Park Avenue Armory, which …
Guest Blog: The Curated Object
As part of our recurring series of guest bloggers (see our earlier feature with Art Inconnu here) we are pleased to introduce Joanne Molina, editorial director of The Curated Object—a non-profit media project that promotes fine and decorative arts exhibitions worldwide. We asked Molina to share a “curated” list of current and upcoming exhibitions that aren’t to be missed! Exhibition …
In conversation with….Shirley Mueller, Chinese export porcelain collector
Shirley M. Mueller is a passionate collector and scholar of Chinese export porcelain who has written numerous articles on the subject (see below). We recently spoke to Mueller, who is as a lender to the current exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick about her collection and what …
The present learns from the past
September 2009 | The Shelburne Museum and The Magazine ANTIQUES have a long history together. Within a year of the museum fully opening in 1953, Alice Winchester, the magazine’s editor, introduced it to her readers as “one of the…most unusual museums” in the country, its “collection of collections” assembled over a lifetime by Electra Havemeyer Webb, whom she described, with …
William Blake at the Morgan Library
For the first time in nearly a decade the Morgan Library has organized an exhibition devoted solely to the perpetually inspired British romantic watercolor painter, poet, and engraver William Blake. William Blake’s World: “A New Heaven Is Begun,” which is on view through January 3, 2010, brings together more than 100 examples of Blake’s own illuminated texts, engravings, and poetry …
