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
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)
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
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
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, …
Preservation: The Stanton-Davis homestead
By Katrine Ames Here in this shell of a house, This house that is struggling to be, Hope must have been The first to move in, And waited to welcome me. But hope isn’t easy to see. This lovely tribute to the White House in Leonard Bernstein and Allan Jay Lerner’s 1976 musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would make a perfect anthem for …
A Romanov Dynasty Celebration
By Cynthia A. Drayton Mikhail Romanov was crowned Czar in 1613. The Romanov family then ruled Russia for the next three hundred years until the 1917 assassination of Nicholas II. To mark the four hundredth anniversary of the Romanov’s ascension to the throne and the family’s patronage of both Fabergé and the decorative arts, there are exhibitions, an auction, and …
Current & Coming, January-March
For sheer variety of form, color, period, and place of origin it is difficult to match the offerings at the annual New York Ceramics Fair, where thirty-three tightly packed booths represent virtually everything in the world of fired clay-from purely utilitarian objects to those meant solely for aesthetic contemplation. Most of the dealers are from the United States, though there …
Last Chance: Shows Closing this Weekend
Last Chance: Shows Closing this Weekend Connecticut New Britain New Britain Museum of American Art: “Courier & Ives: Impressions of America”; to April 15 Florida West Palm Beach Norton Museum of Art: “Cocktail culture”; to April 15 Georgia Athens Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia: “To Make a world: George Ault and 1940s America”; to April …
Jewels and Gems in Boston
Brooch designed by John Paul Cooper (1869-1933), English, 1908. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; gift of Susan B. Kaplan. Jewels and more jewels are to be found in the new Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which opens on July 19. Jewels, Gems, and Treasures: Ancient to Modern, the inaugural …