Displaying items by tag: Americana

Leading authorities in the folk art field will present talks on the themes and ideas explored in the exhibition "A Perfect Likeness": Folk Portraits and Early Photography, part of Fenimore Art Museum’s Annual Americana Series.

The exhibition, “A Perfect Likeness”: Folk Portraits and Early Photography, which opens the same day and is on view through December 31, 2015, illustrates how early photography contributed to the demise of folk portraiture in the 1840-50 period. Established painters were deeply affected by the invention of the daguerreotype and their reactions to this early photographic method varied.

The inimitable Baltimore Summer Antiques Show will celebrate its 35th anniversary from August 20 to August 23, 2015, at the Baltimore Convention Center. Located in the flourishing Inner Harbor area of downtown Baltimore, the fair is the largest indoor antiques show in the country.

Produced by the Palm Beach Show Group, the 2015 Baltimore Summer Antiques Show will feature nearly 400 international exhibitors offering everything from furniture, silver, Americana, porcelain, glass, and textiles to major works of fine art, antique and estate jewelry, and Asian antiquities. According to Scott Diament, CEO of the Palm Beach Show Group...

Long before this quiet New Jersey couple met, little did they know that together they were destined to form one of the greatest collections of folk art in America. As a teenager, the wife saved her babysitting money to purchase her first piece—a small side table, at which her mother just shook her head. The husband grew up on a ranch in Nevada where he learned the skills to become a superb woodworker, gaining an understanding for the craftsmanship involved in antiques.

Their prairie-style home is set on a secluded hilltop and houses just a portion of their...

This remarkable secretary was the centerpiece of Allan and Penny Katz’s booth at the 2015 Winter Antiques Show this January. Alyce Perry Englund, the Richard Koopman Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, was among the many struck by the historic value and artistry of the secretary; the museum acquired the piece soon after the show. “We are thrilled to add this stunning piece to the collection,” says Englund, adding, “In addition to the exquisite craftsmanship, it tells a story so tragic and deeply-rooted in our country’s heritage, it is a treasure to behold for art and history buffs alike.” Allan Katz remarked...

Barbara Westbrook of Atlanta’s Westbrook Interiors believes that when it comes to designing a home, comfort is one of the most important considerations. An expert at crafting incredibly inviting spaces, Westbrook’s elegant yet effortless interiors reflect the character of the home as well as her clients’ tastes. Whether she is working on a traditional, transitional or contemporary project, Westbrook manages to cultivate a...

To continue reading this article about leading interior designer Barbara Westbrook's top InCollect picks, visit InCollect.com.

On Sunday, February 1, 2015, the 61st iteration of the inimitable Winter Antiques Show drew to a close at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. Over the course of the ten-day event, collectors, first-time buyers, museum curators, interior designers, and dealers, took to the show floor to browse and snap up fine art, furniture, and decorative objects from antiquity through the 1960s (Fig. 1).

The show kicked off on Thursday, January 22, 2015, with an Opening Night Preview Party that welcomed nearly 2,000 attendees, including Martha Stewart, Michael Bloomberg and Diana Taylor, Arie and Coco Kopelman, Ellie Cullman, Thomas Jayne, Bunny Williams and John Rosselli, Sandra Nunnerley, and John Douglas Eason. The Preview Party, which benefited the East Side House Settlement, a community-based organization in the South Bronx, gave guests an opportunity to peruse and purchase works before the show opened to the public on Friday, January 23, 2015.

The Walker Art Center, which is 75 years old this year, has acquired around 4,000 objects amassed by the late Chinese-American artist Martin Wong. The artist Danh Vo turned the hoard into an installation, "I M U U R 2," for a solo show at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2013 after winning its Hugo Boss Prize.

When the Walker bought the piece last September, it fulfilled Vo’s hope that the trove would enter a museum. The Danish-­Vietnamese artist made the work from the bric-a-brac that Wong had collected over four decades: Chinese teaware, calligraphy, Disney figurines, and assorted Americana alongside Wong’s own paintings.

On Friday, January 23, 2015, Allan Katz, a collector and dealer of period American folk art and Americana, debuted a new catalogue at the opening of the prestigious Winter Antiques Show in New York City. Brimming with beautifully photographed folk art objects and Americana, the catalogue offers a glimpse into Katz’s illustrious inventory.

Highlights from the catalogue include “Dude” -- a carved and paint-decorated wood and metal figure with fabric clothing. Created around 1910, “Dude” was part of Andy Warhol’s extensive American folk art collection. The Pop artist began collecting in the 1950s and in 1977, New York City's American Folk Art Museum featured his collection in the exhibition Folk and Funk.

On Friday, January 23, 2015, collectors, first-time buyers, and a variety of art, antique, and design professionals, including dealers, interior designers, and curators, will gather at New York City’s historic Park Avenue Armory for the prestigious Winter Antiques Show. Now in its 61st year, the distinguished event will welcome seventy-three exhibitors offering fine and decorative arts from antiquity through the 1960s, with one-third of the show’s participants specializing in Americana and the rest featuring European, English, and Asian objects. The unparalleled quality of the works exhibited at the Winter Antiques Show has helped establish the event as the most esteemed antiques show in the country.

At first glance, this exhibition might seem a bit quaint, its subject — textiles and the Civil War — evoking Americana more than American history. But this show, “Homefront & Battlefield: Quilts and Context in the Civil War,” which opened last month at the New-York Historical Society after originating at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Mass., does much more: It turns Americana back into history.

The show traces its thematic threads through that period’s fabric with such care that, after seeing the patterns, you will not easily look at coarse woven cloth, the American flag, quilts, mourning clothes — or perhaps even the Civil War — in quite the same way again. Textiles, we come to see, did not just reflect the war’s events or were just another element of the conflict; in many ways they were at the war’s heart.