Catherine the Great in Georgia

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Censer, Russian, late seventeenth century. Silver and parcel gilt. Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens, Washington, D. C. Crowned empress of Russia in 1762, Catherine II was determined to change the perception through­out Europe that Russia was a cultural backwater. Having lived at court since 1744, when she became engaged to the future Peter III, Catherine had immersed herself in Russian …

West and Copley in Houston

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

 Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), 1778. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ferdinand Lammot Belin Fund. An adventurous exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston should alter our views on the influence of ear­ly American painting and painters. American Adversaries: West and Copley in a Transatlantic World explores the way in which two colonial painters …

The Lunder Collection is unveiled at the Colby College Museum of Art

Editorial Staff Art

On July 13, the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, reopens, unveiling its nationally-acclaimed collection of more than 8,000 works of art. The addition of the Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion, a sparkling glass structure designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners Architects, on the quintessential New England college campus, will display the impressive inaugural exhibition, The Lunder Collection: A Gift …

Micah Williams

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Micah Williams is best remembered as a gifted colorist who portrayed the middle-class residents of New Jersey and, briefly, New York City with an eye for telling detail. Active only from about 1815 to 1835, the prolific artist has long interested the Monmouth County Historical Association in Freehold, New Jersey, home to the largest public collection of his work. Museum …

Angels & tomboys

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Much to our chagrin, we are late in drawing attention to an important exhibition originally organized by the Newark Museum. Angels & Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th-Century American Art opened in Newark last September and has since traveled to the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Tennessee and to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, where it remains …

French Twist: Masterworks of Photography from Atget to Man Ray

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

As with painters and sculptors, ambitious young photographers from around the world flocked to Paris between the World Wars. Some used photography to document the old ways of life; others, to celebrate the new. Some have enjoyed continuous acclaim, while others were forgotten for decades. Some saw themselves as part of a movement, such as surrealism, modernism, or a new …

Reginald Marsh’s New York

Editorial Staff Art

Just when twenty-first-century New York has all but erased its louche past-dives, burlesque halls, raffish markets, and public spectacles-with well-mannered parks, high-rise condominiums, and corporately branded entertainment venues, the New-York Historical Society has resurrected it in Swing Time: Reginald Marsh and Thirties New York. It’s nice to have the old New York back. Marsh was born far above the city’s …

Nina R. Gray (1956-2013)

Editorial Staff Opinion

  We at ANTIQUES are saddened by the death of Nina R. Gray, an independent curator of American decorative arts, on May 20, at home, after a brave battle with cancer. Nina’s contributions to our field were legion, ranging from her early meticulous cataloguing talents, which allowed other scholars access to long-overlooked material-and provided Nina with what Margi Hofer, Curator …

Moser: Designing Modern Vienna 1897-1907

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

  The exhibition opening today at the Neue Galerie in New York City focuses on the decorative arts, furniture, and graphic design of Koloman Moser (1868-1918), beginning with his co-founding of the Vienna Secession in 1897 and culminating with his departure from the Wiener Werkstätte in 1907. Poster for “Frommes Kalendar,” 1899 by Moser. Execution: Albert Berger, Vienna. Colored lithograph …

Japanese bamboo art: A living tradition

Editorial Staff Art

Basket weaving is one of the most ancient of all decorative crafts. It is thought that the idea to create vessels by interweaving twigs was conceived around the same time as the idea to chip shards of flint into arrowheads. Fragments of Neolithic-age pottery reveal that long before the invention of the wheel, potters molded clay around woven basket forms, …