Author: Gary Sullivan
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The world has a brand new record for the highest price ever paid for a work of art. $250,000.00 I wish that the new record was for an Early American tall case clock or a piece of Boston Queen Anne furniture. Alas, it’s not. The record price was paid for a painting, which is not surprising given the tremendous numbers that fly around in the high end art market. I hope that some day the world will realize that the under appreciated masterpieces of American furniture are every bit as beautiful as
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Categories:
Current Events
Interesting Auction Sales
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I recently came across this article by Daniel Grant on AFA News. It examines the controversial California resale royalties law. According to the law, contemporary art collectors, auctioneers, galleries and dealers are required to pay a 5% royalty to original artists upon resale of that artist’s work. Amazingly, they are required to pay royalties to the artist’s heirs if that artist has died within the last 70 years..Several recent law suits have brought attention to the California law which
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Categories:
Current Events
Interesting Auction Sales
Curiosities
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I have just returned from the Winterthur 2012 Furniture Forum, where I lectured on the subject of northern clockmakers trading with the southern market during the 1st quarter of the 19th century. It was entitled “Clocks For Corn: Northern Clockmakers Trading With The South”.
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Categories:
Current Events
Scholarship
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The American Folk Art Museum and the Seaport Museum, two New York museums that weathered difficult economic conditions this year, may partner for a series of exhibitions at the Seaport Museum in 2012.DNA info reports that the news broke at a city council hearing last week, where interim Seaport head Susan Henshaw Jones announced the museums’ intentions:“‘We are very much hoping that the Museum of American Folk Art will do exhibitions in four galleries [at the Seaport Museum] starting in June,’
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Categories:
Current Events
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We have just acquired a few special items that will appear at the opening night preview party for the 2012 Metro NYC Show in January. If you are planning your visit to New York for the festivities, you’ll notice one major change in the Antiques Week schedule. There will be no 2012 TAAS Show, at least not by that name. In 2012, TAAS, also known as “The American Antiques Show”, also known as “The Folk Art Show” will live on in slightly different form. The venue has been taken over by The Art
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Categories:
Acquisitions
Current Events
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As a 12 year old interested in all things historic, I devoted a great deal of time to searching for the objects of my passion, antique bottles. I would scour antiques and junk shops and occasionally buy the interesting ones that I could afford. Those being under about two dollars. Being on a limited budget as I was, I preferred the free ones. Free because I would dig them at dump sites. Not the nasty land-fill kind of dump sites we have today, but abandoned 19th and early 20th century
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Categories:
Curiosities
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I realize that there are many different types of art and that the people to whom that art appeals are as wide ranging as the art itself. I have to say though, that I struggle to understand some types of modern and abstract art. Take the digital photo that was just sold at Christies in New York for example. I get the fact that it was produced by a highly regarded photographer. I also get the fact that it is thought provoking and interesting. What I don’t get is 4.3 million dollars! For one
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Categories:
Interesting Auction Sales
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Here is a story from Antiques and the Arts Weekly. I find it to be encouraging
First Major Museum For American Art Established In Almost A Half Century Opens
If you are a fan of adventurous museum buildings and great American art, you are going to love the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and its world-class collection. Marking a significant development on the US cultural scene, the institution, the brainchild of Alice B. Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, opened to the public on November 11. It is the first major museum devoted to American art established in almost a half century. [Read More...]
Categories:
Current Events
Historically Significant
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If you have not yet heard of the art-form called steampunk, please permit me to enlighten you. I’m a big fan of steampunk sculpture and I’m in fact a steampunk artist. By way of a definition, steampunk art asks the following question: What would objects look like if modern technology had existed in the Victorian, stem-powered era? Jules Vern’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, and the contraptions featured in the movie Wild, Wild West (1999, with Will Smith) are perfect examples of the
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Current Events
Curiosities
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The keno Brothers revealed a remarkable discovery on Anderson Cooper’s show today. They unearthed a fantastically early chest, made in 1685, which makes it one of the oldest surviving chests made in America. It descended in the family of the woman who currently owns it. She had some inkling that it was valuable because of it’s age, but was blown away when they gave it a value of a half million dollars on National television! So called “pilgrim century” furniture such as this was made in the
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Categories:
Current Events
Historically Significant
Curiosities