Henry Francis and Ruth Wales du Pont.

Trade News from around the World

The 48th Winter Antiques Show, a benefit for the East Side House Settlement, will not open at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue, New York City, on January 18 as originally scheduled due to the tragedy of September 11. The opening of the show has been delayed a day. The event will take place in the American Exhibition Halls of the Hilton New York, Avenue of the Americas, between 53rd and 4th, with a preview slated for the evening of Saturday, January 19, and a closing date scheduled for Sunday, January 27. “The show will go on as usual, with all of the fine exhibitors, and we are going to have a great show at this new location,” said Catherine Sweeney Singer, show manager. Dealers were officially notified of this change early this week.

An Irish museum told the Associated Press on October 31 that a bawdy Seventeenth Century painting in its collection has been certified as a work of Rembrandt, not one of the Dutch master’s followers. The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, said analysts at the Rembrandt Research Project in Amsterdam had confirmed “Hot Cockles” was painted by Rembrandt himself. The painting, which depicts a group of people playing a game that involved slapping one another’s bottoms, had been categorized as the work of one of the artist’s followers. The museum bought the painting in 1896. It is now on display in Germany and will move to the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam early next year before returning to Dublin.

AP’s Ed Johnson writes that the new owners of a painting purchased from an American who thought it was a copy of a long-lost masterpiece have discovered it is the real thing. “The Madonna and Child” by Andrea del Sarto, known as the Botti Madonna, vanished more than 350 years ago after the English Civil War. Once owned by Britain’s monarchs, it was sold off after the execution of King Charles I in 1649. Recently, the American owner of what was thought to be a copy of the Renaissance painting put it up for sale, the lawyer for the new owners said November 1. After buying the painting, the new owners took it to Professor John Shearman of Harvard University – a leading authority on Andrea. Through a program of conservation and research, Shearman proved the painting’s authenticity. Kerman refused to disclose the price his clients paid, saying only that it was “consistent with it being a copy.” He said they were understandably delighted their instincts had proved correct, and that they now owned a historic work of art “worth millions.” The work has been on loan to a gallery in London, Somerset House, and will be displayed at the Courtauld Institute Gallery, Somerset House in central London from November 13.

A one-of-a-kind painting discovered in a church storage room in Fairbury, Neb., is rekindling interest in a pair of Twentieth Century Danish artists who decorated buildings in Jefferson County. Denise Andersen, museum curator for the Jefferson County Historical Society, found the 1908 painting by James Willer while cleaning the Steele City Baptist Church. “I knew that James Willer and Charles Hansen had worked together in the early 1900s and were commissioned to paint designs on walls and ceilings of several buildings in the area,” Andersen told the Associated Press. “But I hadn’t found anything in my research mentioning either one of them actually painting a picture like this.” The rare painting depicts the story of Jesus healing Jarius’ daughter, which is told in the New Testament books of Mark and Luke.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has announced the appointment of Joseph Rosa as the new Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design. For the past two years, Rosa has been curator of architecture at the Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Rosa’s appointment coincides with the endowment of the new architecture and design curatorship at SFMOMA. Helen Hilton Raiser, who serves as a trustee of the museum, describes the endowment “as a tribute to the great convergence of artistry and technicality that occurs when a building is designed or a product is created. We need to celebrate the alchemy of what happens when great design becomes a functional, living thing.”

George Mansbach Kaufman, a collector of American furniture and noted philanthropist, died on November 1 in Norfolk, Va. With his wife Linda H. Kaufman, he had recently been named the winner of the Henry Francis du Pont Award for Decorative Arts and Architecture, to be bestowed by Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library at a ceremony in New York City on January 16, 2002. He was a former director of Landmark Communications, and past president of Ohef Sholom Temple, the Virginia Symphony and the Norfolk Historic Foundation. He served on the Collectors Committee of the National Gallery of Art; Lawn Society and Raven Society at the University of Virginia; and was a member of the Friends of Winterthur. Mr Kaufman also served on the Visiting Committee of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Decorative Arts Committee at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was the first chairman of the Friends of American Arts at Yale and was a past trustee of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. In 1977, the couple established the Kaufman Americana Foundation to award grants for the encouragement, promotion and enhancement of the study of American decorative arts or designs and related rdf_Descriptions, literature and illustrations. Through this foundation, they supported a number of scholarly books, articles, exhibitions, and research projects.

Elaine Dannheisser, 77, a major collector of contemporary art who ultimately donated most of her collection to the Museum of Modern Art, died in her sleep October 28 in New York City, reports AP. Dannheisser was a constant on the international art circuit for many years, continually selling and buying works, and rarely missing an exhibition, art fair, or show. In the mid-1990s, while a trustee at the Modern, she donated 75 works of art by 28 artists, which is one of the largest gifts in the museum’s history.

Several years of sleuthing and scientific analysis by scholars, curators, and conservators have culminated in a small exhibition, on the second floor of the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., that brings together previously separated sections of an altarpiece by the Renaissance master Fra Angelico (circa 1395-1455). The group consists of four panels, the wings of a tabernacle triptych that would have folded over a central image, which is currently unknown. The two from the Yale Art Gallery, one depicting the Angel Gabriel announcing the birth of Christ and the other the Virgin Mary, were given by Hannah D. and Louis M. Rabinowitz in 1959. The two other sections, from the collection of The J. Paul Getty Museum, show Saint Francis and a Bishop Saint on one panel and Saint John the Baptist and Saint Peter Matyr on the other. In the early 1990s, Laurence B. Kanter, curator-in-charge, Robert Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, made the association of the Yale panels with the Getty’s.

Ticket requests for an art exhibit on loan from the Vatican Museum in Lubbock, Tex., this coming summer are exceeding expectations, an official tells the Associated Press. About 67,500 reservations already have been made, with the exhibit still seven months away. “Traditions and Renewal: Medieval Frescoes from the Vatican Museums” will run June 2 to August 31, 2002. Admission is free but tickets are required. “Weekends for the month of June are sold out. That is, all times have been reserved on those dates,” said Gary Edson, executive director of the Museum of Texas Tech. However, times and dates remain “readily available” throughout the summer.

The Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms, Morris Plains, N.J., has announced the receipt of a $250,000 matching grant through the Save America’s Treasures program. The museum is one of 55 applications selected out of 368. The project will address several of the Log House’s critical needs including the stabilization of the buildings wooden elements, the electric system and the preservation and restoration of the first floor’s finishes.

In conjunction with the 75th anniversary of the restoration of Williamsburg, the Eighteenth Century capital of Virginia, the Campaign for Colonial Williamsburg – the foundation’s first-ever comprehensive fundraising campaign and its single largest undertaking since the restoration – was launched publicly in September. Its purpose is to help ensure Rockefeller’s original vision by supporting all aspects of Colonial Williamsburg’s educational mission with a special focus on three top priorities: planned preservation, enhanced educational programming and strengthened workplace environment.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, has purchased Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Venus and Cupid,” an important Seventeenth Century Baroque painting from one of the most crucial periods in the history of Italian art. The museum’s board of trustees also accepted the gift of a Seventeenth Century rosewater dish and a matching pair of ewers, or pitchers, from Rita Gans of New York. In addition, the board approved the purchase of “The Quintet of the Unseen,” a 2000 video installation by one of the most significant international video artists, Bill Viola.

Greg Manning’s Teletrade, Kingston, N.Y., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Greg Manning Auctions, Inc. and source for numismatists, has announced the appointment of Paul Song as a vice president of Teletrade. Working from Teletrade’s West Coast office in Southern California, Song will develop the company’s new auction series, Premier Plus, and obtain new clientele. Song is a former vice president of Sotheby’s Auctioneers, Inc. and Sothebys.com and a former director of Sotheby’s Rare Coins and Medals Department in New York.