The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens has made two exciting purchases that enhance its unparalleled ability to tell the story of Southern California as it was transformed from vast rural ranchlands into an international symbol of the good life. The newly acquired Ernest Marquez Collection of photographs, with prints from the 1870s to about 1950, includes rare views …
New exhibition of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes at the Frick Collection
New York City’s Frick Collection recently opened an exhibition of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes from the collection of Janine and J. Tomilson Hill. Displayed are thirty-three statuettes, sculptures, and a relief by masters of the Italian, German, Dutch, and French schools of the late fifteenth into the eighteenth century. One highlight is a pair of bronzes titled Sleeping Hermaphrodite and …
Art of the South at Colonial Williamsburg
It’s been more than half a century since the groundbreaking Loan Exhibition of Southern Furniture 1640-1820 held at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1952, and much has happened since then, not just in the study of southern furniture but of the decorative arts of the region as a whole. It is time, indeed, to revisit the subject on …
Couture at the Folk Art Museum
Among the many discussions that are not worth anyone’s time is the one about whether fashion should be considered art or not. When the American Folk Art Museum asked thirteen designers to create something based on an object in its collections, the idea was not to prove that, hey, designers are artists too, nor was it to rescue folk art …
Piero della Francesca at the Met
Four paintings (three from European institutions and one from a private collection in New York) created by Piero della Francesca for private devotion will be shown together for the first time: St. Jerome and a Donor; Madonna and Child with Two Angels; Saint Jerome in a Landscape; and Madonna and Child. The exhibition follows upon the Frick Collection’s popular showing …
Early American Guitars at the Met
Early American Guitars: The Instruments of C. F. Martin Not for guitar lovers only, some thirty-five instruments from the Martin Museum in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, display the history of the great American guitar firm from its beginnings with the Viennese style instruments of C.F. Martin Sr., who came to this country, encountered Spanish style guitars here, and combined the two styles …
Looking East at the Frist
It is interesting to speculate on what Western art might look like had Japan not opened its ports to international trade in the 1850s, sending forth a flood of textiles, woodcuts, lanterns, screens, and other objects that captivated artists from Mary Cassatt and Claude Monet to Frank Lloyd Wright, who once described himself as “enslaved” by Japanese prints. Interesting and …
Upcoming shows and fairs in New York
Armory Antique Show The Armory Antique Show is a crowd pleaser, offering a playful abundance of eclectic wares at a range of prices. Organizers promise roughly one hundred specialists in antique and vintage furniture, folk art, Americana, modern design, garden ornament, lighting, jewelry, silver, textiles, and ceramics. Under new management this year, the Armory Antique Show was recently acquired by …
Saying the V-word
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Japanese prints at the British Museum
by Carolin C. Young | Lovers in the Upstairs Room of a Teahouse from Utamakaura (Poem of the Pillow) by Kitagawa Utamaro, c. 1788. Sheet from a color wood block-printed album. © Trustees of the British Museum. Those seeking salacious content, accompanied by illuminating explanations, can explore the sexually explicit Shunga art of Japan in an exhibition also hosted by the …