In my last post, I alerted readers to possible changes afoot at Antiques Week in New Hampshire, the annual August gathering of Americana collectors. AFAnews can now confirm that promoter Karen DiSaia is moving ahead with plans for a new event that will precede the  August 9-11 New Hampshire Antiques Show in 2012.
 
Arrangements for DiSaia’s as yet unnamed fair are already well along. It is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, August 8 and 9, at Manchester’s JFK Memorial Coliseum, a venue that has been tested by several other promoters over the past decade. The facility is air-conditioned and equipped with parking, not insignificant selling points.
 
“A few years ago, a large group of dealers asked me if I could organize such a show but I only recently began looking into it seriously,” said Di Saia, who is finalizing her dealer list. Presenting 35 to 40 exhibitors, the new fair will emphasize Americana but other specialties have not been ruled out.
 
DiSaia organizes such stalwarts as the ADA/Historic Deerfield Show, the Washington Winter Show and the Connecticut Spring Antiques Show.  Her past credits include New York’s American Antiques Show, which she produced on behalf of the American Folk Art Museum. DiSaia recently took on the management of USArtists, the fine arts show and sale at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from September 22-25. Karen and her husband, Ralph, the facilities manager for a half dozen high-profile events, are longtime dealers who operate Oriental Rugs, Ltd. in Old Lyme, Ct.
www.disaiamanagement.com
 
Fairfield County Show
The DiSaias are also teaming up with Diana Bittel - the Philadelphia area antiques dealer who manages the Newport, Wayside Inn and Delaware antiques shows - to launch the new Fairfield County Show.  The 60-dealer fair benefitting Norwalk Hospital is set to preview at the Sono Field House, a new athletic facility in Norwalk, Ct. on Friday, December 2, continuing through the weekend. The Fairfield County Show fills a void left by the passing of two traditional mainstays, the Greenwich and Southport-Westport antiques shows. As its high-power roster makes clear, the Fairfield County Show will be strong in a full range of American fine and decorative arts but will venture into English, European and Asian categories as well.
www.fairfieldcountyantiquesandfineart.com
 
Ellis Boston Antiques Show
Boston-based marketing and p.r. wizards Tony Fusco and Robert Four are relaunching Boston’s oldest and best known fair, renaming it the Ellis Boston Antiques Show.  Set to preview Thursday, October 20, at the Cyclorama at Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street, the show will continue through October 23. Befitting its big city setting, the elegant presentation will feature 40 recognized specialists in formal English and American decorative arts - Alfred Bullard, Georgian Manor, Roberto Freitas and The Federalist, among them – as well as experts in folk art, Oriental rugs, ceramics, maps and prints, antiquities and jewelry.  About a quarter of the exhibitors are veterans of the old Ellis show. Prominent fine arts specialists include Vose Galleries of Boston and William Vareika Fine Art of Newport.
 
“We have no 100-year restriction, which we think is arbitrary for an antiques show today,” said Fusco, who promises twentieth century design in the booth of Andrew Spindler and others.
 
The show benefits Ellis Memorial, Boston’s first settlement house, founded in 1885. Funds are earmarked for the renovation of two historic buildings on Berkeley Street that are key to Ellis’s programming plans. Fusco, a founder of the Art Deco Society of Boston and a member of Ellis Memorial’s Preservation Committee, and Four also manage the fifteen year old Boston International Fine Art Show and the five year old AD20/21, incorporating Art and Design of the 20th and 21st Century and the Boston Print Fair.
www.ellisboston.com.
 
Pavilion of Art and Design New York
Produced by the Société d'Organisation Culturelle and Sanford L. Smith & Associates, the Pavilion of Art and Design New York looks to be one of the most interesting introductions to the fall show calendar.  Europeans account for the majority of its 49 high-end specialists in modern art, design, decorative arts, photography, jewelry and tribal art from the 1890s to the present. Big names from the United States include Barry Friedman Ltd, Hammer Galleries, Todd Merrill, Jason Jacques and Paul Kasmin of New York but it is the roster of European specialists – 13 from London and another 10 from Paris, plus dealers from Switzerland, Italy and Sweden – that makes this debut novel.
 
“This is completely new to America. Most of the Continental dealers have never done a show in New York,” says impresario Sandy Smith, whose stable of events includes the Outsider Art Fair, the New York Antiquarian Book Fair and the Art Show, organized by Smith on behalf of the Art Dealers Association of America.
 
Paris antiques dealer Patrick Perrin and the contemporary art specialist Stephane Custot of Galerie Hopkins Custot in London founded the original Pavilion des Arts & du Design  in Paris in fifteen years ago and followed with the Pavilion of Art and Design London in 2007. Coinciding with New York’s fall Impressionist, Modern, Contemporary art and design auctions, PAD NY runs from Thursday, November 10, to Monday, November 14, at the Park Avenue Armory.
www.padny.net
 
Metro Show NYC
Headed by Mark Lyman and Michael Franks, the Art Fair Company is at work on a new show to replace the American Antiques Show, a pivotal part of Americana Week in New York in January. Called the Metro Show, the updated fair will open at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Pavilion at 125 West 18th Street on Wednesday, January 18, one night before the 58th Winter Antiques Show and will continue through January 22. Veteran director Caroline Kerrigan Lerch is currently working with dealer-advisors Amy Finkel, Carl Hammer, Samuel Herrup, Tim Hill, Allan Katz and Frank Maresca to fill the 45-dealer fair. Expect to see returning favorites such as Galerie St. Etienne along with newcomers like Kevin Morris, a New York dealer in self-taught art and Japanese baskets.
 
“We are striving for an interesting mix and texture,” said Kerrigan Lerch, who is working to add twentieth century photography, design and decorative arts to what was once exclusively Americana. Lyman and Franks produce Spring Show NYC, organized on behalf of the Art and Antique Dealers League of America, plus the Sculpture Objects & Functional Art (SOFA) expos in New York, Chicago and Santa Fe. Do not expect to find contemporary craft at the Metro Show, however.
 
“There’s no overlap. This is not a contemporary show,” says Kerrigan Lerch.
www.metroshownyc.com
 
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