Displaying items by tag: dealers

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.

Museum-goers are anticipating this fall’s debut of the Louvre Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, part of a long-term cultural agreement with the French government. One recent acquisition may surprise visitors: Museum officials in Abu Dhabi say they have paid Los Angeles’s Armand Hammer Foundation an undisclosed sum for a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington.

The 1822 painting shows the first American president sitting at a desk, one hand resting on a document, the other cradling a sword hilt. Other Washington portraits by Stuart have sold for around $8 million, according to dealers and auction records.

Each year,  the Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show welcomes a flock of eager collectors, leading art and design professionals, and top international dealers to the Palm Beach County Convention Center. A hallmark of the Palm Beach social season, the elegant show presents premier offerings ranging in style from classical to contemporary and thoughtful programming that fosters the understanding and appreciation of art and antiques.

One of the most highly-anticipated elements of the 2015 Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show is the Designer Showcase, which features six captivating vignettes created by the world’s most influential interior designers, including Campion Platt, Suzanne Kasler, Gil Walsh, William and Phyllis Taylor of Taylor & Taylor, Lars Bolander, and Jennifer Garrigues. The designers have been asked to create spaces using fine art, furniture, and decorative accessories from exhibitors in the show.

Many in the crowd of dealers, collectors, and onlookers attending Sotheby's main sale of Old Master paintings on Thursday January 29 remarked on the difference that a single day made when contrasting the sale with the dismal results at Christie's Old Masters sale the day before (see: Canaletto, Caravaggio Fail to Sell at Christie's Worst Old Masters Sale Since 2002).

The sale totaled $57 million, as compared with an overall presale estimate of $54–77.6 million. Of 104 lots offered, 73 (or 70 percent) found buyers. The stronger sold-by-value rate, 78 percent, reflected spirited bidding on a few key lots.

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.

The Syndicat National des Antiquaires (SNA) -- or the French National Union of Antique Dealers -- announced that it will launch a new fair aimed at young collectors this spring. Paris Beaux-Arts, which will be held at the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground center adjacent to the Musee du Louvre, will complement the SNA’s prestigious Biennale des Antiquaires.

The long-running Biennale des Antiquaires, which is celebrated for its elegant atmosphere, blue chip offerings, and elite guest list, specializes in rare antiques, fine art, jewelry, silver, and porcelain. The SNA intends for Paris Beaux-Arts to be equal to the Biennale in quality and range, but with a stronger emphasis on modern and contemporary art.

The lines that recently snaked around the Whitney Museum of American Art are gone. So is the hulking sculpture of Popeye that could be spied in the courtyard. Since the Jeff Koons retrospective closed there on Oct. 19, the only signs of life have been moving trucks and cranes as the Whitney prepares to exchange its Madison Avenue home, designed by Marcel Breuer, for its new place in the meatpacking district this spring. The Breuer won’t stay empty for long, however: In March 2016, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will take over, at least for eight years.

Although the arrangement was announced three years ago, the Met has been tight-lipped about what it will actually show in the Whitney’s old home. But loan requests went out in September to museums, collectors and dealers detailing the first show there.

New York City will welcome nearly 30 of the world’s leading dealers in Master Drawings from January 24th through January 31st when the ninth edition of Master Drawings New York hosts themed exhibitions in more than two dozen Upper East Side galleries between East 63rd and 93rd Streets.

Founded in 2006 as a way to draw upon and buttress the presence of collectors and museum officials during the important January art-buying events, including the Old Master auctions and The Winter Antiques Show, Master Drawings New York has become an important part of the winter art scene in its own right, attracting the most influential dealers not only in New York but in England, France, Italy, Germany and Spain.

Strict new regulations regarding the Endangered Species Act could freeze up the market for antique items containing ivory and other endangered species materials. The ban has been particularly detrimental to collectors, dealers, museums, and musicians -- all of whom often deal with objects containing ivory and other rare materials. While the goal of the ban is to stop the poaching of elephants and rhinoceros for purposes of illicit trade, a considerable number of law-abiding American are being punished in the process.

Last week Representative Steven Daines of Montana and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee introduced bills H.R. 5052 and S. 2587 in an effort to reverse the recent changes to the Endangered Species Act. Representative Daines and Senator Alexander are confident that a more effective legislative response can be crafted. While the goal of eliminating poaching is laudable, punishing antique professionals and enthusiasts is disastrous.

It is crucial that you support the bills introduced by Representative Daines and Senator Alexander. Please follow the links to contact your state’s Senators and Representatives.

Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Representatives: http://www.house.gov/representatives/

As legal jockeying continues in Detroit’s bankruptcy, the city and the Detroit Institute of Arts have jointly hired a New York art investment firm whose personnel could be called as expert witnesses to push back against creditors trying to force a sale of art in court.

Artvest Partners, a well-known company that advises attorneys, dealers, insurers, other art world professionals and collectors, has been engaged to provide a price range for the entire 66,000-piece collection at the city-owned DIA and assess the viability and practicality of selling art or otherwise monetizing the collection, said Bill Nowling, spokesperson for Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr.