Displaying items by tag: Philadelphia

Philadelphia was founded in 1684, decades behind Boston, Massachusetts (1630), Newport, Rhode Island (1624), and New York City (1639). Nonetheless, thanks to the navigable Delaware River, Pennsylvania’s rich farmland, and the tolerant attitude of its founding fathers, it quickly grew to eclipse in population, wealth, and commerce all coastal port cities in the British North American colonies. Many visitors marveled at the vitality of its merchants and commented on the industrious nature of its artisans, who included cabinetmakers, silversmiths, wheelwrights, cordwainers (shoemakers), potters, and blacksmiths.

Sotheby’s American Art auction, which took place today, May 22, 2013 in New York, garnered upward of $28 million, surpassing the sale’s high estimate of $24.4 million. Out of the 62 lots offered, 83.9% sold and 93.8% sold by value. This was the third consecutive American art sale at Sotheby’s to exceed its high estimate.

The auction’s top lot was the highly anticipated John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) painting Marionettes (1907), which achieved $5.2 million (estimate: $5 million-$7 million). Best known for his portraits of members of high society, Marionettes is a departure from Sargent’s usual subjects. The painting depicts men from Philadelphia’s large Italian American community performing Sicilian puppet theater at the turn of the 20^th century. When Sargent created the work, he was well established and considered to be the preeminent portrait painter of his time. The painting was part of Sargent’s personal collection for over 20 years and was passed down through the artist’s family to the owner who offered the work at Sotheby’s.

Proving the enduring strength of Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) in the American art market, six paintings by the artist sold together for $6.5 million, garnering double their overall high estimate of $3 million. Another work by Rockwell, He’s Going to Be Taller than Dad, was the object of seven bidders desire. The domestic scene of a young boy and his dog sold for $2.6 million, far exceeding its high estimate of $700,000.

At the sale, auction records were set for the modern painter Milton Avery (1885-1965), California landscape painter William Keith (1838-1911), and portraitist Irving Ramsey Wiles (1861-1948).

American art sales continue tomorrow, May 23, 2013 at Christie’s in New York.

Dallas’ Southern Methodist University and Philadelphia’s Cultural Data Project have joined forces to launch the National Center for Arts Research. The Center, which is the first of its kind in the United States, will conduct, analyze, and assemble arts research as well as investigate issues concerning arts management and patronage. The Center will make all of its finding public to art leaders, funders, policymakers, researchers, and the general public.

Through extensive studies and follow-up analysis, the National Center for Arts Research plans to create a comprehensive depiction of the health of the country’s arts sector. The Center, which launched on February 13, 2013, plans to collaborate with I.B.M. to create an interactive dashboard that will allow arts organizations to compare themselves to their peers.

Jose Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University said, “Arts organizations must have a more research-driven understanding of their markets and industry trends in order to more deeply engage existing audiences and reach new ones.” Along with management and patronage, the National Center for Arts Research will specialize in the impact of the arts on communities across the U.S. as well as fiscal trends and stability of the arts in the U.S.

Man Ray Portraits opens today, February 7, 2013 at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The first major Man Ray (1890-1976) exhibition to focus on his portraits, the show presents over 150 vintage prints and important works from international museums as well as private collections. A number of the photographs on view are on loan from the Man Ray Trust Archive. Taken between 1916 and 1968 in both Paris and the United States, many of the works have not been exhibited in the UK until now.

Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia, Man Ray spent most of his career in Paris. He made significant contributions to the Dada and Surrealist art movements and worked in a variety of media, but became best known for his avant-garde photography as well as his fashion and portrait work. Man Ray was keen on experimentation, which led to the production of camera-less Rayographs. With the help of fellow photographer, Lee Miller (1907-1977), who was also Man Ray’s muse and lover, he invented solarisation, a technique that involves recording an image on a negative or on a photographic print, reversing the image’s tone so that dark areas appear light and vice versa.

Arranged chronologically, the exhibition features Man Ray’s portraits of artists, friends, celebrities, and lovers including Miller, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Kiki de Montparnasse (1901-1953), and Catherine Deneuve (b. 1943). Man Ray Portraits will be on view through May 27, 2013.  

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia announced plans to build a new gallery to display their works on paper collection. The addition will be housed in the museum’s Historic Landmark Building, which was designed by the acclaimed American architect, Frank Furness (1839-1912). A $250,000 grant from The Richard C. von Hess Foundation will be used to fund the project.

Works on paper are a huge component of PAFA’s permanent collection, encompassing over 75% of the museum’s holdings. The collection features drawings, watercolors, sketchbooks, prints, photographs, and experimental media from all periods of American art. Highlights include a collection of photographs by Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), studies and sketchbooks by William Glackens (1870-1938), and works by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Arthur Dove (1880-1946), and Robert Motherwell (1915-1991).

The new gallery will allow the institution to significantly expand public access to its vast collection while keeping the light-sensitive objects safe. A separate space will be allotted for scholars conducting research and curators and faculty who will use the collection for educational purposes. PAFA has selected the Philadelphia-based architectural firm Atkin Olshin Schade to design the Works on Paper Gallery. Construction is expected to start early this year and last until Summer 2013.

Scaffolding still blocks the view of Auguste Rodin’s monumental "Gates of Hell" at the entrance to Philadelphia's Rodin Museum. And Rodin's famous sculpture of the "Burghers of Calais" has yet to be cleaned up.

But the museum has undergone a $9 million renovation and is once again open to the public.   

The Barnes Foundation's new home is well under construction in Philadelphia but a long and bitter fight continues over whether the world-famous art collection should stay in its longtime suburban home.

Montgomery County Orphans' Court Judge Stanley Ott presided over a packed two-hour hearing Monday afternoon on the ongoing Barnes saga. He approved the proceeding after a request from a citizens group that argued he didn't have all the evidence when he approved the relocation in 2004.

The Friends of the Barnes Foundation, a group trying to halt the multibillion-dollar collection's 5-mile move from suburban Lower Merion, said Ott was misled by the actions of the attorney general's office, which has oversight over charitable trusts.

Samuel Stretton, an attorney representing the group, argued that then-Attorney General Mike Fisher, now a federal appeals judge, failed to serve as a neutral party and instead was "essentially a cheerleader" in facilitating the collection's move by undermining and pressuring the Barnes' controlling board of trustees to go along with the relocation.

Barnes Foundation attorney Ralph Wellington said Ott had determined years ago that the citizens group has no legal standing in the case. He also said their understanding of the attorney general's responsibility in such legal matters is incorrect because Fisher's role was not to be neutral but to act in Pennsylvanians' best interest, which meant preventing the cash-strapped organization from closing or selling off its collection.

"It is baseless factually and filed by people who have no right to do so," Wellington said of the opponents' petition.

Dr. Albert C. Barnes, a pharmaceutical magnate, amassed a collection regarded as one of the world's greatest private holdings of contemporary art, which includes 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes, 60 Matisses, 44 Picassos and thousands of other objects.

He established the Barnes Foundation in 1922 to teach populist methods of appreciating and evaluating art. He tightly grouped his paintings with antique ironwork, furniture and African sculpture to illustrate universal aesthetic themes.

Marc Chagall was an enormously popular 20th century painter, revered by the public for his rooftop fiddlers, biblical lore, upside down lovers and fanciful visions of Jewish shtetl life in the old Russian empire. Art historians and critics, however, have always had difficulty placing him among the many currents of modern art; to them, he often seemed unique, special, one of a kind. Some also found him repetitive and sentimental.

But Chagall was not always a loner. In an innovative exhibition, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has decided to concentrate on his younger years when, far from unique, he and a band of mainly East European, mainly Jewish artists honed their craft in Paris. The show, "Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle," closes July 10. Made up mostly of paintings from the Philadelphia museum's own collection, the show, which displays Chagall alongside his contemporaries, goes nowhere else. The museum has a large collection of Chagalls mainly through the legacy of Louis E. Stern, Chagall's American lawyer. "I wanted to give Chagall an edge," said Michael R. Taylor, the museum's curator of modern art. "He's usually seen alone. Here I put him with ... the others, and he's more interesting."

Chagall arrived in Paris in 1911 at age 24. He grew up in a poor Jewish family in Vitebsk in what is now Belarus but was then Russia and studied painting there and in St. Petersburg. Like many poor artists in Paris and a few writers, he soon rented a cheap apartment and studio in La Ruche (the Beehive) at No. 2 Passage Dantzig in the rundown slaughterhouse district near Montparnasse on the Left Bank.

With government blessing, La Ruche had been constructed by a French philanthropist in 1902 to accommodate the throngs of young artists drawn to the city that was now the world's center of art. The building's name came from its cylindrical shape: 16 sides three stories high with scores of small studios looking on the city through large windows.

The French artist Fernand Leger once lived there. But most residents were foreign and over the years included the Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani, the Lithuanian painter Chaim Soutine, the Lithuanian sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, and many other Jewish artists.

Unlike Modigliani and Soutine, Chagall was not noted as a habitual client of the bars of Montparnasse. He was engaged to a woman back home, Bella Rosenberg, and did not socialize as much as the others. But he did absorb their ideas on art.

One of Chagall's first paintings in 1911, "Half-Past Three (The Poet)," shows the influence of the fashionable movements in Paris at that time. The subject of the painting was supposed to be a Russian poet who lived at La Ruche and often stopped by Chagall's studio for coffee, but Taylor believes Chagall may have been painting himself as well. The figure of the poet is cubist with his head turned upside down, symbolizing, according to Taylor, "the head-spinning impact of his [Chagall's] encounter" with cubism. The colors also resemble those used by the French painter Robert Delaunay, who was well known to the artists of La Ruche because his wife, the painter Sonia Terk, was a Ukrainian friend of theirs.

The influence of Delaunay, who often depicted cubist impressions of the Eiffel Tower, is obvious in Chagall's 1913 masterpiece, "Paris Through the Window," which gives the exhibition its title. The painting is supposed to show a scene of Paris as seen through Chagall's window at La Ruche. It is a fanciful, delightful, explosive scene.

The Eiffel Tower is there, much closer and larger than it would have seemed from the window, and it is set against the bright and yet transparent blue, white and red colors of the French flag. A parachutist seeps downward, a well-dressed man and woman float horizontally and an upside-down train chugs ahead. A strange cat bays from the window sill. Within the room, Chagall puzzles us with a two-faced man. Taylor believes the man is Chagall looking eastward toward the traditions of Russia and westward toward the modern painters of Paris.

Chagall once said, "In La Ruche you died or came out famous." By 1914, he had achieved a measure of fame with a successful solo exhibition in a gallery in Berlin. World War I broke out that same year, trapping Chagall while he was visiting his family in Vitebsk. He spent the war years there, marrying Bella in 1915. From then on, he once said, he would never declare a painting or print finished unless she approved. When the Revolution of 1917 pulled Russia out of the war, the new Communist government named him commissar of art in Vitebsk.

During the Vitebsk interlude, Chagall began to introduce traditional Jewish themes into his symbolic, Modernist paintings. This would set him apart from his old friends. In 1923, Chagall — now with a wife and child — made his way back to them in Paris.

PHILADELPHIA, PA. – The 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show has moved three times since debuting in 1995. This year, the 16-year-old fair founded by Barn Star Productions looked more settled than ever when it opened with mimosas and chocolates on Friday, April 8, continuing through the weekend.
 
The fair’s renewed glow comes from its winning combination of tenured exhibitors and its comfortable setting in what is affectionately known as the “Little Armory,” the small regimental drill hall between Market and Chestnut Streets. By contrast, the Philadelphia Antiques Show, the anchor fair that this one orbits, has been thrown into temporary disarray by two forced moves in the last five years.
 
But, in show business, what is good for one is good for all. Destination events like Philadelphia’s April fairs require quality, depth and variety to lure collectors from around the country. Thus Barn Star chief Frank Gaglio fervently wishes for the Philadelphia Antiques Show to be comfortably settled in a new home and is delighted to learn that Pennsylvania Convention Center, only a few minutes away from the 23rd Street Armory by taxi, is the Philadelphia Antiques Show’s likely new venue.
 
“Our goal is to stay at the 23rd Street Armory but it is imperative that our 2012 dates be consistent with those of the Philadelphia Antiques Show,” Gaglio told Antiques and Fine Art shortly after both fairs closed. “Together with Freeman’s April Americana auction, our two shows constitute, in a very loose sense, an Antiques Week in Philadelphia.”
 
Though dealers discourage frank discussion of it, vigorous trading among exhibitors is an industry mainstay. Thus it was promising that the 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show enjoyed robust early sales, with many Philadelphia Antiques Show exhibitors buying from their 23rd Street colleagues on Friday before their own fair opened.
 
“The hard-core collectors came through on Friday but business continued through the weekend. We see new collectors on Sunday, which is so important to us,” explained Bev Norwood of Norwoods’ Spirit of America Antiques.  The Maryland dealers made an early sale of a boldly graphic tailor’s trade sign of about 1850.
 
“This isn’t like New England. We sell on all three days here,” said Stephen Corrigan of Stephen-Douglas Antiques, whose stack of receipts offered a hopeful sign that the sluggish Americana market is recovering from its slump of several years. Catering to the middle and high ends of the market, Stephen-Douglas featured a petite green and red painted Pennsylvania corner cupboard, $12,500.
 
While the 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show benefits from the perception that it is an affordable place to shop, not everything is inexpensive. A bona fide masterpiece with a price tag to match, an 18th century tall-case clock from Germantown, Pa., was a much ballyhooed sale at Baldwin House Antiques of Lancaster, Pa.  Marked $330,000, the clock, illustrated in Timeless:  Masterpieces of American Brass Dial Clocks by Frank Homan, is signed by its maker, John Heilig, and dated 1789. Distinguishing characteristics include a brass dial that is engraved with a portrait of George Washington flanked by drums, cannons and flags.
 
“The date is a very important feature. Washington was going through Philadelphia for the first inauguration in New York. This clock is certainly commemorative,” said Bruce G. Shoemaker of Baldwin House Antiques. A dove on the clock’s second hand corresponds with the dove weathervane that George Washington ordered from Philadelphia for Mount Vernon in 1787. The clock’s rare mulberry wood case has tulip side windows.
 
Arts of Pennsylvania made a prominent appearance at Thurston Nichols American Antiques, where a signed John Bellamy presentation box carved with an eagle was $150,000 and a Berks County unicorn chest was $69,000. They joined “Portrait of Charles Seward’s Farm,” an oil on linen farmscape of circa 1875 that the Breinigsville, Pa., dealer recently attributed to Indiana painter Granville Bishop (1831-1902).
 
Hooked mats and assorted items made in the 1930s at the Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland and Labrador were strong sellers at A Bird in Hand Antiques of Florham Park, N.J. By Saturday, proprietors Ron and Joyce Bassin had marked up four choice mats from a collection of seven. All went to one collector.  Floral-embroidered, fur-trimmed suede glove and a carved stone walrus, all bearing Grenfell labels and marks, were other rarities on offer.
 
“We sold a big hutch table, a lot of early American glass and windmill weights. Good, expensive, small things,” said Ed Holden of Holden Antiques.
 
New Jersey dealer James Grievo parted with a tall-case clock and a slant-front desk. Cape Cod dealer Hilary Nolan wrote up an early walnut hanging cupboard and a red-leather covered Chinese camphorwood chest with unusual paw feet. A woodworker’s cabinet with trompe l’oeil decorations was one of Mario Pollo’s early transactions.
 
Other reported sales included a pair of Asian apothecary cabinets and a screen at John H. Rogers and a  ship’s eagle figurehead and an oval carving of a stag at Charles Wilson Antiques and Folk Art. Connecticut dealer Martin Chasen sold more than $16,000 in silver to one client while Massachusetts dealer Bill Union placed seven paintings with a single customer.
 
“’I’ve expanded the show’s parameters by adding Asian and French art and antiques. Next year, I’d like to have a glass dealer and a specialist in paper and manuscripts,” said Gaglio. The 45 exhibitors in this year’s fair included 12 new or returning dealers.
 
From Philadelphia, Barn Star Productions moves to New Hampshire for the Manchester Pickers’ Market Antiques Show on August 8 and Midweek in Manchester Antiques Show on August 10-11. For details, see barnstar.com.
 
Write to Laura Beach at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

PHILADELPHIA, PA. – The 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show has moved three times since debuting in 1995. This year, the 16-year-old fair founded by Barn Star Productions looked more settled than ever when it opened with mimosas and chocolates on Friday, April 8, continuing through the weekend.
 
The fair’s renewed glow comes from its winning combination of tenured exhibitors and its comfortable setting in what is affectionately known as the “Little Armory,” the small regimental drill hall between Market and Chestnut Streets. By contrast, the Philadelphia Antiques Show, the anchor fair that this one orbits, has been thrown into temporary disarray by two forced moves in the last five years.
 
But, in show business, what is good for one is good for all. Destination events like Philadelphia’s April fairs require quality, depth and variety to lure collectors from around the country. Thus Barn Star chief Frank Gaglio fervently wishes for the Philadelphia Antiques Show to be comfortably settled in a new home and is delighted to learn that Pennsylvania Convention Center, only a few minutes away from the 23rd Street Armory by taxi, is the Philadelphia Antiques Show’s likely new venue.
 
“Our goal is to stay at the 23rd Street Armory but it is imperative that our 2012 dates be consistent with those of the Philadelphia Antiques Show,” Gaglio told Antiques and Fine Art shortly after both fairs closed. “Together with Freeman’s April Americana auction, our two shows constitute, in a very loose sense, an Antiques Week in Philadelphia.”
 
Though dealers discourage frank discussion of it, vigorous trading among exhibitors is an industry mainstay. Thus it was promising that the 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show enjoyed robust early sales, with many Philadelphia Antiques Show exhibitors buying from their 23rd Street colleagues on Friday before their own fair opened.
 
“The hard-core collectors came through on Friday but business continued through the weekend. We see new collectors on Sunday, which is so important to us,” explained Bev Norwood of Norwoods’ Spirit of America Antiques.  The Maryland dealers made an early sale of a boldly graphic tailor’s trade sign of about 1850.
 
“This isn’t like New England. We sell on all three days here,” said Stephen Corrigan of Stephen-Douglas Antiques, whose stack of receipts offered a hopeful sign that the sluggish Americana market is recovering from its slump of several years. Catering to the middle and high ends of the market, Stephen-Douglas featured a petite green and red painted Pennsylvania corner cupboard, $12,500.
 
While the 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show benefits from the perception that it is an affordable place to shop, not everything is inexpensive. A bona fide masterpiece with a price tag to match, an 18th century tall-case clock from Germantown, Pa., was a much ballyhooed sale at Baldwin House Antiques of Lancaster, Pa.  Marked $330,000, the clock, illustrated in Timeless:  Masterpieces of American Brass Dial Clocks by Frank Homan, is signed by its maker, John Heilig, and dated 1789. Distinguishing characteristics include a brass dial that is engraved with a portrait of George Washington flanked by drums, cannons and flags.
 
“The date is a very important feature. Washington was going through Philadelphia for the first inauguration in New York. This clock is certainly commemorative,” said Bruce G. Shoemaker of Baldwin House Antiques. A dove on the clock’s second hand corresponds with the dove weathervane that George Washington ordered from Philadelphia for Mount Vernon in 1787. The clock’s rare mulberry wood case has tulip side windows.
 
Arts of Pennsylvania made a prominent appearance at Thurston Nichols American Antiques, where a signed John Bellamy presentation box carved with an eagle was $150,000 and a Berks County unicorn chest was $69,000. They joined “Portrait of Charles Seward’s Farm,” an oil on linen farmscape of circa 1875 that the Breinigsville, Pa., dealer recently attributed to Indiana painter Granville Bishop (1831-1902).
 
Hooked mats and assorted items made in the 1930s at the Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland and Labrador were strong sellers at A Bird in Hand Antiques of Florham Park, N.J. By Saturday, proprietors Ron and Joyce Bassin had marked up four choice mats from a collection of seven. All went to one collector.  Floral-embroidered, fur-trimmed suede glove and a carved stone walrus, all bearing Grenfell labels and marks, were other rarities on offer.
 
“We sold a big hutch table, a lot of early American glass and windmill weights. Good, expensive, small things,” said Ed Holden of Holden Antiques.
 
New Jersey dealer James Grievo parted with a tall-case clock and a slant-front desk. Cape Cod dealer Hilary Nolan wrote up an early walnut hanging cupboard and a red-leather covered Chinese camphorwood chest with unusual paw feet. A woodworker’s cabinet with trompe l’oeil decorations was one of Mario Pollo’s early transactions.
 
Other reported sales included a pair of Asian apothecary cabinets and a screen at John H. Rogers and a  ship’s eagle figurehead and an oval carving of a stag at Charles Wilson Antiques and Folk Art. Connecticut dealer Martin Chasen sold more than $16,000 in silver to one client while Massachusetts dealer Bill Union placed seven paintings with a single customer.
 
“’I’ve expanded the show’s parameters by adding Asian and French art and antiques. Next year, I’d like to have a glass dealer and a specialist in paper and manuscripts,” said Gaglio. The 45 exhibitors in this year’s fair included 12 new or returning dealers.
 
From Philadelphia, Barn Star Productions moves to New Hampshire for the Manchester Pickers’ Market Antiques Show on August 8 and Midweek in Manchester Antiques Show on August 10-11. For details, see barnstar.com.
 
Write to Laura Beach at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.