TEFAF chairman Ben Janssens.

http://www.afanews.com/blogs/blogs/too-big-to-ignore-ben-janssens-on-tefafs-china-initiative

A.E. Crowell running curlew, $247,250. Copley.

http://www.afanews.com/blogs/blogs/sporting-art-on-the-wing-after-market-setback

International cachet: At Sotheby’s, two determined phone bidders pushed this Ruhlmann table once owned by Andy Warhol to $1.5 million.

International auction houses are defying the sluggish economy by offering art and design with near universal appeal. Regional houses are finding their niche with homegrown fare.  See AFAnews.com:

http://www.afanews.com/blogs/blogs/20th-century-design-round-up-big-names-push-the-total-past-20-million

Albert Sack

Was Albert Sack the end of an era, or just its beginning? See AFAnews.com:

http://www.afanews.com/blogs/blogs/albert-sack-first-and-last

Sold at Keno Auctions in January for $15,860, this signed desk and bookcase is by Daniel Spencer, recently identified as one of four nephews of master craftsman John Goddard who worked as cabinetmakers.

http://www.afanews.com/blogs/blogs/beyond-blocks-and-shells-in-rhode-island

Shield’s Tavern in Williamsburg, Va., site of Bourgeault’s February 22 bash. Photo courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Art Basel Miami is not the only party scene. After-hours revelry is tradition at the Colonial Williamsburg Antiques Forum, which gets underway in Rockefeller’s other center on February 20. Read about the scene at AFAnews.com:

http://www.afanews.com/news/news/expect-serious-partying-at-this-years-antiques-forum-by-laura-beach

Coulter Brooks Art & Antiques

SANTA FE, N.M. – December is the best month to be in Santa Fe. Snow sugars the old town and farolitos – occasionally still the paper bag and candle variety of childhood memory – climb stepped adobe walls. Pinon scents the night air. At the nearby pueblos, feast day dances bind the generations in spiritual traditions as old as time.

A first stop is Coulter Brooks Art & Antiques at 924 Paseo de Peralta. Jan Brooks and Lane Coulter – who is known for such well-thumbed references as New Mexican Tinwork, 1840-1940; Navajo Saddle Blankets: Textiles to Ride in the American West and Converging Streams: Art of the Hispanic and Native American Southwest -are great sources for New Mexican decorative arts.
Lane pointed me to the exhibition “Nizhoni Shima’: Master Weavers of the Toadlena/Two Grey Hills Region,” at the Wheelright Museum of the American Indian through April 17. The show, which Lane calls eye-opening, is based on more than twenty years of research by Newcomb, N.M., dealer Mark Winter. It features rugs and tapestries made between 1910 and the present at the Toadlena and Two Grey Hills trading posts in northwestern New Mexico.

Banquito by William P. Henderson, courtesy Owings Gallery.

Owings Gallery, which has moved from the Plaza to spacious new quarters behind the Santa Fe Public Library, is another prime source for historic New Mexican art. I was lucky to catch the tail end of “An American Journey: The Art of William P. Henderson.” Like other members of the early Santa Fe art colony, Henderson worked in several media . To eke out a living in this remote spot, the painter founded the Spanish-Pueblo Building Company, an architecture and construction concern, in 1925, and made furniture to go en suite, a la his early employer, Frank Lloyd Wright. Owings Gallery rounded up an assortment of Henderson’s rare Mission influenced furniture, made of heavily adzed pine pegged together with oak and carved with Spanish floral and Pueblo geometric motifs.

Our Lady of Guadalupe ornament, courtesy of Susan’s Christmas Shop.

Santa Fe has always been a market town, but no one could have fully anticipated the runaway success of its new International Folk Art Market in July, which drew 22,000 visitors in 2010 plus acclaim from the Clinton Global Initiative and UNESCO. Along with the Winter Spanish Market, organized by the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, the International Folk Art Market’s three-day December pop-up shop helps make for a mall-free holiday.

Emmerling Vintage Interiors + Antiques

Another great success story is the year-old Santa Fe Flea, organized by Walter Borton, publicist for the California-based show promoters Caskey-Lees and a Santa Fe resident since 1996. During the winter, The Flea moves indoors to El Museo, a cultural center in the Railyard District. During the summer, it is outdoors and under tents and permanent structures at Santa Fe Downs, the old race track on the city’s south side. It has been years since Santa Fe had a traditional flea market like the old Trader Jack’s, which drew a national following for cowboy collectibles and the like. Congratulations, Walt.

The Flea’s most famous vendor is Mary Emmerling. The great popularizer of “American Country” style and author of 24 look books, Emmerling and photographer Dana Waldon recently opened Emmerling Vintage, a consignment shop at 518 Old Santa Fe Trail. Mary must be raiding her own private stash, judging by the great looking stuff at attractive prices. Mary is following up her 2006 book Art of the Cross with Art of Turquoise, due out this spring. Photographs by Santa Fean Jim Arndt illustrate these tributes to favorite Southwest design themes.

Los Poblanos Inn, Cultural Center and Farm

I hesitate to share one of my most cherished finds, Los Poblanos, the historic inn, cultural center and organic farm in Ranchos de Albuquerque, N.M.The former home of Illinois Congresswoman Ruth Hanna McCormick and her husband, Congressman Albert Simms, the old hacienda is one of the grandest commissions by New Mexico’s leading early 20th century architect, John Gaw Meem. Stay the night or take a cooking class surrounded by original art and design by Peter Hurd, Gustave Baumann, Robert Woodman, Walter Gilbert, Laura Gilpin and other New Mexico notables.

It’s always good to be home with family and friends in New Mexico. Next time, I’ll check out Americana Trading Company, a new antiques shop specializing in vintage guitars and Native American art, and try a few more restaurants in Santa Fe, maybe the best eating town its size in the United States. Locals say they like Jambo Café, specializing in African homestyle cuisine with European, Arabic and Indian influences; the elegant, upscale Restaurant Martín, run by the Guadalajara, Mexico, born chef Martín Rios;  and La Cocina de Dona Clara, a frugal choice said to have some of the best Mexican comfort food in town.

– LAURA BEACH

Carolyn A. and Peter S. Lynch Gallery of Eighteenth Century Boston, Level 1. Courtesy MFA, Boston.

BOSTON, MA. – The new Art of the Americas Wing is finally open at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston after ten years of planning and five years of construction. Anyone interested in statement architecture or in American art (that includes you, Canada and Mexico) should get over to see it soon.

With only slight immodesty, MFA director Malcolm Rogers has called the project “one of the greatest cultural initiatives in the American arts ever.” So what did Rogers get for his $504 million? To begin with, 53 new galleries spread over four floors, plus a giant glass atrium that is destined to become Boston’s next great date place.

The wing is the work of Foster + Partners, the London-based architectural firm headed by Norman Foster, maybe best known as the creator of Beijing Airport’s Terminal 3, which thrillingly resembles a snaking, vermilion dragon.

“Foster is a very good match for the MFA,” says our friend Richard Tremaglio, a Cambridge, Ma., architect, who describes the local taste in architecture as conservative with a dollop of Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus master who taught at Harvard, and his Crimson successors, men like Sigfried Giedion, Josep Luis Sert and Rafael Moneo.

Lord Foster, founder and chairman of the London-based architectural practice Foster + Partners, and MFA director Malcolm Rogers survey the Shapiro Courtyard of the new Art of the Americas Wing.

Foster’s brief was to design a structure that fit harmoniously into the existing cityscape, was inviting to the public and hospitable to the museum’s collections. The planners gave special consideration to Guy Lowell (1870-1927), who completed the museum’s Beaux Arts style headquarters on Huntington Avenue between 1909 and 1915.

The resulting 121,307 square-foot addition consists of a central tower wrapped in an envelope of glass and flanked by twin pavilions partially constructed of the same Deer Isle, Me., granite used in the original. Modernist in sensibility, the new wing conforms in scale but strips away the old museum’s Neoclassical flourishes. Inside, Foster provided an understated backdrop of stone, glass, steel and oak, which exhibit designers have dressed up with silks, papers, paints and architectural fragments meant to evoke a succession of period styles.

What follows is a highly opinionated guide. By the way, the collections database at http://mfa.org/collections is a wonderful tool for determining who among your friends and colleagues has sold or given the museum one of the 500 recent acquisitions among the 5,000 objects now on display.

Level LG

George Putnam Gallery of Ship Models and Maritime Arts. Level LG. Courtesy MFA, Boston.

Otherwise known as the basement, Level LG houses the museum’s collection of Mesoamerican art. After enviously checking out the hammered gold and jade, proceed to the immensely appealing gallery nearby that combines bravura maritime painting with ship models.

It is a rare treat to see the superb group of early Boston samplers on view in the next gallery, so enjoy it. Curator Pamela Parmal searched high and low for outstanding examples, many on loan from private collections. Admire the 1781 Betsey Bentley sampler, which sold for a record $465,750 at Thomaston Place auction house in Maine in August 2009.

The MFA has been collecting Native American artifacts since the 1870s but didn’t get really serious about it until the 1980s. A new gallery devoted to the indigenous art of the United States and Canada is just a sampling. Its most interesting feature is contemporary Native American art in all media.

Also on Level LG, study the reinstallation of the 17th century Brown-Pearl Room and, nearby, a circa 1690-1710 Massachusetts carved and painted oak cupboard base whose surviving red and black paint detail surpasses that on a comparable cupboard owned by the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Craftsman Peter Follansbee made the matching top to go with the base in 2009.

Level 1

“Eighteenth Century Boston” – known informally as the “Wow” gallery – is for all you Boston Patriots. As a gathering of the city’s Revolutionary War elite, whose high-style portraits and furnishings line the room’s red-flocked walls, the room viscerally evokes the past. At center is John Singleton Copley’s portrait of Paul Revere, accompanied by Copley’s engraved silver Sons of Liberty bowl, both of 1768.

Kristin and Roger Servison Gallery of the Arts of the New Nation, 1800-1830, Level 1. Courtesy MFA, Boston.

Immediately beyond is “Arts of the New Nation: 1800-1830,” showcasing “The Passage of the Delaware,” Thomas Sully’s monumental 1819 portrait of Washington on horseback. The canvas was recently reunited with its original Doggett frame, discovered in storage in pieces. Both contributed to the 20,000 conservation hours that went into opening the new wing.

You’ll definitely want to tour three surviving rooms from Oak Hill, the Danvers, Ma., house that Samuel McIntyre designed for the fabulously wealthy Elizabeth Derby West. Before you do, test your knowledge of regional furniture styles in an engaging display of 18th century chairs from assorted colonial capitals, including Barbados and Venezuela.

Spanish and French Colonial artifacts from what is now the United States are largely missing, a deficit partially offset by an imaginative gallery of pre-1900 Latin American art that is mostly from Mexico and Venezuela. Recently purchased from New York dealer Carlton Hobbs, an inlaid and engraved writing desk from Oaxaca, circa 1650-1700, is a highlight.

Level 2

Ruth and Carl Shapiro Gallery of John Singer Sargent, Level 2. Courtesy Chuck Choi.

Directly above “Eighteenth Century Boston,” a subsequent generation of Boston Brahmins crowds a gallery devoted to John Singer Sargent. “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,” Sargent’s 1882 nod to Velasquez’s “Las Meninas,” springs to life with the adjacent placement of the actual Japanese Arita porcelain depicted in the portrait. The 74-inch tall vases were given to the museum in 1997.

A flurry of new acquisitions, from porcelain and pewter to a labeled Cornelius Briggs extension dining table of circa 1843-45, accompanies the first-time installation of the Roswell Gleason Parlor and Dining Room, acquired by the MFA in 1977 and here interpreted to the mid-19th century.

Level 3

Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries of Abstraction: 1940-1970, Level 3. Courtesy Chuck Choi.

The display of 20th century art and design is far from encyclopedic but fun to browse nonetheless. Jazz Age design gets a fine retelling in the lively presentation of the John Axelrod Collection, a major promised gift to the museum. Spend some time in the gallery devoted to the 1940s and 1950s, where Abstract Expressionist art meets mass-manufactured furniture and tableware. Example: an amoeba-shaped 1949 ashtray designed by Russel Wright for Sterling China, an e-Bay purchase of 2006, is displayed next to a wax crayon on paper drawing that Jackson Pollock gave to his shrink around 1940. Instructive?  You decide.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is at 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Mass… For information, 617-267-9300 or http://www.mfa.org/thenewmfa.

"The Dwight House, Historic Deerfield"

DEERFIELD, MA. -If ever there is a place to see early New England art, architecture and design it is at the ADA/Historic Deerfield Antiques Show, set on the campus of Historic Deerfield and Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts each Columbus Day weekend.

Aleutian baskets

When we visited, fall was in the air and a cornucopia of choice fare was ripe for picking.

Sculpture, textile, pattern – how can you not love baskets? Marcy Burns, a Manhattan dealer in Native American arts, filled the bill with a choice selection of Aleutian baskets in mint condition.

Adam and Eve

A most whimsical Adam and Eve sampler whose maker found a motif – the apple – and stuck with it. Dated 1816, the silk on linen embroidery was a highlight at Elliott & Grace Snyder, South Egremont, Ma.

Stoneware & Redware

Folks gather ‘round when the Ohio dealers David Good and Sam Forsythe are in town. Their love of early American pottery is infectious. 

Table Rug

Kaffe Fassett and Jack Lenor Larson, move over. This table rug at Colette Donovan, Merrimacport, Ma., is a perfect 10+.

New England Furniture

No garden variety examples at Nathan Liverant & Son of Colchester, Ct. We love the John Bailey II dwarf clock, a perfect scale replica of a full-sized example, and the quirky Housatonic Valley, Ct., chairs. New England furniture at its best.

Prize Cow Portrait

Olde Hope Antiques in all its autumnal splendor, complete with a rare American prize cow portrait by Albany, N.Y., artist Thomas K. Van Zandt.

Carved Walking Stick

Judging by the portraits of George Washington and his horse, Pennsylvania folk artist ”Schtockschnitzler” Simmons probably carved this walking stick around 1890. Newsom & Berdan Antiques.

Architectural Elements

You want early? Fiske & Freeman of Ipswich, Ma., featured six English medieval oak architectural elements with bestiary carvings from about 1500-25. Otherwise try London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.

Who could resist the lovely Emily Miner Fox of Connecticut in her green velvet dress with a paisley shawl?

Ammi Phillips

A classic canvas by Ammi Phillips at Jeffrey Tillou Antiques, Litchfield, Ct.

Ralph D. Curtis

Own a piece of history. These portraits on panel of Sarah Thompson Gardner and her children have only recently been identified as the work of Ralph D. Curtis, formerly called the Skaneateles artist.

For more, see our coverage at Antiques and The Arts Weekly at www.antiquesandthearts.com.
Address: http://laura-beach.com/antiques/?p=110