Celebrating the ‘Decodence’ of the SS Normandie

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Unlike other major exhibitions of the art deco period, DecoDence: Legendary Interiors and Illustrious Travelers Aboard the SS Normandie, which opens today at the South Street Seaport Museum, isn’t an over-the-top display. Instead, it’s a balanced, and entirely engrossing, collection of furnishings, ephemera, and architectural elements that graced the legendary ocean liner. Among the show’s highlights: photographs that document the …

Masterpiece London confirmed

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

After months of anticipation, Masterpiece London, the new art and antiques fair from the organizers of the prestigious 75-year-old Grosvenor House Fair, received the permissions necessary to confirm that it will take place on 24-29 June 2010 at the Chelsea Barracks. In spite of the bureaucratic quagmires and delays that these permissions took, those in the know have bet strongly …

After Grosvenor

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

On the heels of its seventy-fifth anniversary last June, the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair announced that it would close. Only time will tell how its absence will shift the balance of European fairs in 2010. In the meantime, Europe’s organizers unveil their plans for the coming year. BRUSSELS Held at the same time as the Winter Antiques Show …

Opening night at the 56th Annual Winter Antiques Show

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Many of New York’s most recognizable art patrons and designers came out on Thursday night to toast the 56th annual Winter Antiques Show (at the Park Avenue Armory through Sunday, January 31). The opening night party, the upcoming young collector’s night, and general admission to the show, all benefit the East Side House Settlement, which has offered education and outreach …

Dealers bring biggest & best to the 56th Annual Winter Antiques Show

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

There is no arguing with the idea that the Winter Antiques Show, which opened last night at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, is the BIG one. Now in its fifty-sixth year, its seventy-five dealers from around the world are showcasing some of the very best in the decorative arts, painting, and folk art. There is a lot to …

Antiques season in New York

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Winter Antiques Show This year’s fifty-sixth annual Winter Antiques Show will feature six new exhibitors—including two who specialize in early twentieth-century decorative arts, New York’s Liz O’Brien and Lost City Arts—to complement the always stunning array that is the show’s signature. Its loan exhibitions are also always remarkable in the way they transform a very small space into a lively …

The decorative arts on paper at Ursus Books

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

A charming array of original prints and watercolors from rare design books and folios is currently on view at the print gallery of Ursus Books in Manhattan in the exhibition The Decorative Arts on Paper.  Ranging from early works such as Thomas Sheraton’s The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book and Ackermann’s Repository of Arts to designs for art deco fabrics …

Vintage finds inspired by the pomegranate

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, An Enduring Motif: The Pomegranate in Textiles (through February 21) is a small exhibition of works from the museum’s permanent collection that spans a remarkably diverse range of techniques and geographic regions including the 18th-century French block-printed cotton fabric shown here. The pomegranate bears many symbolic associations—from the Greek myth of …

Poetry and painting

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

Among this year’s best surprises is the moving exhibition Bold, Cautious, True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era, which opened during the summer at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, and remains on view at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, through January 24, 2010. Taking its title from a Whitman …

The taste for Gothic

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

To wealthy American collectors during the Gilded Age, the appeal of medieval and early Renaissance art was considerable. Seeing themselves as the new aristocracy and wanting to re-create for themselves the prestige and trappings of European nobility, they sought objects that they felt embodied the chivalry, piety, luxury, romance, and magnificence of that distant age. Gothic Art in the Gilded …