Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Old Masters
In a Nutshell: Fine Print
When it comes to miniature books, smallness is the point. “What’s nice about them is the fact that they’re so complete and so tiny,” says Catherine Williamson, director of the books and manuscripts department for Bonhams & Butterfields in Los Angeles. “The entire text is there, it just happens to be on a miniature scale.”
Collecting: Blowing in the Wind
The weathervane collection at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont presents a visual feast of folk art. Dozens of antique wooden and metal sculptures that once crowned barns, churches, meeting houses, town halls and other structures symbolic of small-town America grace the interior of Shelburne’s Stagecoach Inn building. “We’re known for weathervanes,” says Jean Burks, senior curator and director of the museum’s curatorial department.
Books: The Other Hot Pot
Everybody now knows the story of the Euphronios krater, the sixth-century B.C. Greek masterpiece of vase painting that the Metropolitan Museum gave back to Italy last year. But what about the Euphronios kylix? A companion piece to the krater, this delicate drinking vessel shows an earlier version by the artist of the scene depicted on the krater—the body of the Homeric hero Sarpedon being carried off the battlefield of Troy by Sleep and Death.
In Perspective
By: The Editors EXHIBITIONS The Reach of Pieztsch: Picture Dreams, an exhibit drawn from the collection of Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch, is at the New National Gallery in Berlin through Nov. 22. Concentrating on Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, the couple acquired works by André Breton, Jackson Pollock, René Magritte, Ad Reinhardt, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy,…
Market: The State of the Fairs
By: Sallie Brady In recent memory, there has hardly been a more tumultuous year for art and antiques fairs. In fact, before booking fall travel plans, collectors would be advised to make certain their favorite fair still exists. This is not because dealers are not selling. Indeed, antiquities and Old Masters exhibitors at TEFAF in…
Market: London Calling
By: Sallie Brady Forward-thinking collectors are looking backward. That was the message of London’s July Old Masters auctions, proving to be a bright spot in a challenged art market by outselling the season’s Impressionist, modern and contemporary sales. Salesrooms were packed, aided by the capital’s inaugural edition of Master Paintings Week, which saw 23 galleries…
Exhibitions: Unearthing the Past
By: Jenna Curry Most Americans only think of Vietnam as the place where their country fought its longest war, but the Southeast Asian nation has a far richer and more diverse cultural history. Scholars believe Vietnam has been inhabited since the Stone Age. In precolonial times, because of Vietnam’s unique coastline, which extends 2,133 miles…
Film: Desert Explorer
Even in this digital age the iconography of the American Southwest—the horizontal expanse of land and sky, the mammoth cloud formations, the sculpted buttes and wind-scrubbed mesas, the lone saguaros and cottonwoods—commands considerable evocative power. When the California-born artist Maynard Dixon first visited Arizona and New Mexico in 1900, he met his muse in that wild terrain.
Golden Days
“Summer and its blossoms all winter in California.” Around the turn of the 20th century the United States Railroad Administration put slogans like this on thousands of travel posters, hoping to cash in on Americans’ desire to escape the cold, harsh winters of the Northeast and Midwest. But artists didn’t need slogans to entice them.
Subscribe to Art & Antiques for your Digital copy!
