Displaying items by tag: American Art Fair

The prestigious Philadelphia Antiques Show announced that they have appointed Catherine Sweeney Singer as Director of the event. She will be the first person to fulfill the newly implemented position. As the Director, Singer will work with exhibitors, the Show Board, and the Advisory Committee to help all branches meet their short- and long-term goals. The Kentucky-based art and antiques show management company, Keeling Waingwright Associates, previously oversaw the Philadelphia Antiques Show.

Singer is well known in the art and antiques world and beyond as she has served as Executive Director of the seminal Winter Antiques Show in New York for the past 20 years. In addition, Singer is the Director of the American Art Fair and has consulted on the recent iteration of Asia Week in New York and The New York Botanical Garden’s annual garden antiques show. Prior to her event planning, marketing and exhibition development endeavors, Singer was the first Associate Publisher and Advertising Director of Art & Auction and for the re-launch of Art & Antiques.

The Philadelphia Antiques Show, which is in its 53^rd year, is one of the finest Americana shows in the world. It will be held from April 26, 2014 through April 29, 2014 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.  

Show business in New York is a high-risk, high-reward endeavor. A successful event juggles the right combination of management, sponsorship, exhibitors and dates. Suitable venues are as scarce as hen's teeth. When renovations to the National Academy of Design forced the American Art Fair to find a new home this year, good management turned hardship to advantage.

Under the directorship of Catherine Sweeney Singer, the four-year-old show owned by New York dealers Alexander and Laurel Acevedo in partnership with New York and Connecticut dealer Thomas Colville opened with a by-invitation-only reception at its new venue, Bohemian National Hall, on Sunday evening, November 27. Seriously? To most of us, the busiest travel day of the year seems like a crazy time for a preview, but for buyers and sellers of American art, it works. Opening night was packed.

"We had over 500 people on opening night and they were the right people, a lot of museum curators and directors," said Colville. Guests included Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Carrie Rebora Barrett, associate director for collections and administration.

 The American Art Fair is the first major event of an entire week devoted to the exhibition and sale of American art, preceding not only the biggest auctions of the year, but Just Off Madison, the November 30 open house organized by 12 private dealers in American art. American Art Fair organizers budgeted just enough time before and after the sales for collectors to browse and buy, closing hours after the auctions wrapped up on Thursday, December 1.

On a quiet side street between First and Second Avenues, just two blocks from Sotheby's, Bohemian National Hall also seems like an unlikely choice. But in the brilliant hands of Daniel Meeker, a Yale-trained set and lighting designer with a long list of theater credits, this year's fair was an artistic triumph. Increased square footage allowed the show to expand to include 17 of the field's most prominent members. Exhibitors set up on three adjacent levels, with the third-floor mezzanine providing a clear view of the main trading floor. While a tight fit for sculpture and objects, Bohemian National Hall is a pleasingly intimate and domestic space for paintings and works on paper.

Meeker's genius was to create a simple but elegant set. He covered hard walls in raw silk and edged them with removable moldings. He limited the palette to Baltic and Mediterranean blue, mauve, pumpkin, silver and gold. Best of all, the sets can be used again next year.

Even with its condensed time format, the American Art Fair produced sales. Jonathan Boos of Michigan and New York got off to a good start with his sale of "Six O'Clock," Horace Pippin's 1940 oil on canvas of a mother and child by a hearth. Avery Galleries of Bryn Mawr, Penn., wrote up Charles Prendergast's "In Paradise," a mirror enclosed in a frame that the artist decorated with tempera and gold leaf.

The fair showcases traditional American art from the late Eighteenth through mid-Twentieth Century. Emphasizing the breadth of their inventories, exhibitors offered more 300 landscapes, portraits, still lifes and studies, along with a smattering of sculpture. Thomas Colville Fine Art parted with a drawing and five paintings by Metcalf, Dove, Sheeler and Glackens to customers from New York, St Louis, Alabama and the West Coast.

The American Art Fair moves to a new venue as it celebrates its fourth year and will be held November 28-December 1, 2011 at the Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street, New York City.  The gala preview on Sunday, November 27, marks the beginning of American Paintings week in New York.  Inaugurated in 2008 at the National Academy of Design, the fair focuses on the grand tradition of American art established early in the 19th century and gathers more than 300 works including landscapes, portraits, still lifes, studies, and sculpture.
 
The Fair assembles the premier specialists in 19th and early 20th century American art. Returning exhibitors include Adelson Galleries, Alexander Gallery, Avery Galleries, Debra Force Fine Art, Gerald Peters Gallery, Godel & Co. Fine Art, Hammer Galleries, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Menconi & Schoelkopf, Questroyal Fine Art, and Thomas Colville Fine Art.  New exhibitors include Babcock Galleries, Conner - Rosenkranz, Gavin Spanierman, Jonathan Boos, John H. Surovek Gallery, and Meredith Ward Fine Art.
 
The Bohemian National Hall was completed in 1897 in the Renaissance Revival style and was designated a New York City Landmark in 1994. After a five-year, $45 million renovation by the Czech government, it re-opened as a Czech-American cultural center in late 2008.
 
Fair hours are 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. daily, and to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, November 30. Admission to the preview is by invitation; and admission from November 28-December 1 is complimentary. For details, please visit www.theamericanartfair.com.