Displaying items by tag: Decorative Arts

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.

On Thursday, January 22, 2015, Metro Curates will open to the public at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. Formerly known as the Metro Show, this year’s fair will feature a wide range of offerings, including ethnographic objects, applied and decorative arts, historic and contemporary textiles, and modern and contemporary fine art and design. According to Caroline Lerch, the show’s Director, “We believe that the new name best reflects the curatorial aims of the fair.” 

Organized by The Art Fair Company, the producers of a long line of prestigious shows, including SOFA CHICAGO and the AADLA Spring Show NYC, Metro Curates presents works in a remarkably unique and thoughtful manner. Exhibitors are asked to feature a single artist or themed exhibit in their booths, creating a swath of interestingly juxtapositioned displays that span a variety of movements, genres, and oeuvres. In addition to the specially curated booths, the intimate scale of the show allows visitors to spend time with each exhibitor and fully absorb and appreciate the compellingly diverse selection of materials.

 On Monday, January 26, 2015 at 5PM, Jay Robert Stiefel, a lawyer and well-known collector and historian of American decorative arts, will give a lecture entitled “Leather Apron Men: Benjamin Franklin & Philadelphia’s Artisans” at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The event is free and open to the public.

The illustrated talk will center on Benjamin Franklin’s work as an artisan as well as his role in fostering the public appreciation of his fellow craftsmen. America’s foremost founding fathers and the country’s first printing magnate, Franklin tended toward self-deprecation, writing in a 1740 issue of his “Pennsylvania Gazette” that he was no more than “a poor ordinary mechanick of this City.”

On Monday, January 5, 2015, Newport, Rhode Island’s Zoning Board of Review released its 4-1 decision in favor of a controversial visitor center planned for the grounds of The Breakers, a Gilded Age mansion built for the Vanderbilts. Many neighbors, preservationists, and descendants of the Vanderbilts, including the designer Gloria Vanderbilt, have voiced their opposition to the center, stating that it would detract from the integrity of the historic landmark.

The magnificent seaside mansion is owned and operated by the Preservation Society of Newport County, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and protecting the area's finest architecture, decorative arts, landscape, and social history.

The Lady Lever Art Gallery’s world renowned Wedgwood collection has gone on display in Moscow, attracting more than 10,000 visitors in just four weeks. It is the first time that the unrivalled collection has ever traveled abroad, with 140 items traveling to the Russian capital. The collection is on show at the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art as part of the UK-Russia Year of Culture 2014.

Objects from the world’s finest group of Wedgwood jasperware are on display, including a rare copy of the celebrated Portland Vase and the largest jasperware panel ever produced. Two rare enamel plaques painted by artist George Stubbs also feature.

The Design Museum of Barcelona, which boasts a 70,000-plus-piece collection, opened to the public earlier this month. The museum’s massive collection was formed by merging the city’s existing Museum of Decorative Arts, Ceramics Museum, Textile Museum, and Cabinet of Graphic Arts. The institution, which presents everything from medieval fabrics to modern furniture, encourages visitors to explore the evolution of decorative arts and design throughout history.

The Design Museum is located within the Disseny Hub Barcelona, a building in Placa de les Glories, a once-bustling area that has been the subject of an ardent revitalization project. Designed by the Barcelona-based architecture firm, MBM (Martorell, Bohigas, Mackay, Capdevila and Gual), the metal-and-glass-clad Hub includes a conference center, an education center, a library, an archive, an auditorium, and 16,400-square-feet of exhibition space.

Over 30 masterpieces from the celebrated Frick Collection will be seen outside New York for the first time as part of a special exhibition at the Mauritshuis in The Hague in 2015.

"The Frick Collection – Art Treasures from New York" will be the first major exhibition to be displayed in the new wing of the Mauritshuis following the opening exhibition of the museum in 2014. The exhibition will give visitors to the Mauritshuis a fascinating insight into the history of The Frick Collection and its founder, wealthy American steel magnate Henry Clay Frick (1849—1919). The works selected for the exhibition are masterpieces from the 13th to 19th centuries, which include not only paintings, but also drawings, sculpture and decorative arts, reflecting the outstanding quality and diversity of The Frick Collection. They perfectly complement the Mauritshuis’s own collection which focuses on Dutch art of the Golden Age.

The Clark Art Institute received the 2014 Apollo Award for Museum Opening of the Year during presentation ceremonies held in London on December 3.

The award, presented by Apollo, the noted international arts magazine, recognizes major achievements in the art and museum worlds.

The Clark received the award in recognition of its distinctive success in combining new construction, a subtle renovation of its existing facilities, and a significant rethinking of its landscape to create a unified new campus. Other museums nominated for the 2014 Museum Opening of the Year award included the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto; the Imperial War Museum, London; the Musée du Louvre’s Eighteenth-Century Decorative Arts Galleries, Paris; and the Mauritshuis, The Hague.

The Salon Art + Design Fair, the sister fair of the esteemed Paris Biennale, opened to the public on Friday, November 14, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. Produced in collaboration with France’s Syndicat National des Antiquaires, the Salon hosted a collector’s preview for VIP guests on the evening of November 13.

Launched in 2012 by Sanford L. Smith + Associates, the Salon welcomes over fifty leading galleries offering fine and decorative arts and design from 1890 to the present.

The Milwaukee Art Museum has hired a new curator to oversee its design and decorative arts collection. Monica Obniski will join the staff as the Demmer curator of 20th and 21st century design in January. She will lead the effort to rethink the display of MAM's design collection as part of a top-to-bottom renovation and reinstallation of the permanent collection.

For the last several years, Obniski has been at the Art Institute of Chicago as the Ann S. and Samuel M. Mencoff assistant curator of American decorative arts. She began her years at the Art Institute as a research associate and exhibitions coordinator in 2007.