John McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903), The Palaces, etching on antique Dutch laid paper, from the First Venice Set. Sold by Creighton-Davis Gallery. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Creighton-Davis Gallery. ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) – The University of Michigan Museum of Art is planning an exhibition of more than 100 works from its extensive collection of the 19th century American artist James McNeill Whistler.
The museum announced this week that “On Beauty and the Everyday: The Prints of James McNeill Whistler” will run Aug. 21 until Nov. 28.
The exhibition will explore Whistler’s life and career; his artistic themes and concerns; the tools and techniques that Whistler employed as a printmaker; and the interests and legacy of collector Margaret Watson Parker.
Most of Whistler’s works at the museum were from Parker’s collection.
While the exhibition is focused Whistler’s prints, the artist is widely known for the iconic painting of his mother.
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Online: University of Michigan Museum of Art: http://www.umma.umich.edu
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2006 photo taken by an Atlanta citizen and published on Wikipedia. Image appears courtesy of the author and Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. ATLANTA (AP) – Atlanta’s High Museum of Art is extending a popular exhibition that explores the golden age of automobile design.
“The Allure of the Automobile” was set to close June 20 but will now run an extra week, through June 27.
The exhibit features 20 rare cars dating from the 1930s to the mid-1960s. They include cars made by Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Bentley, Porsche, Cadillac, Corvette, Jaguar, and Aston Martin.
In addition to adding a week to the exhibition’s schedule, the High is also adding special programming and extended hours.
It is the first time the High has extended an exhibition beyond its originally scheduled close date.
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Online: www.high.org
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – The owner of a long-running classic car auction in northern Indiana hopes to keep it going, possibly by selling the business to someone else, after his license was revoked, his attorney said Wednesday.
The Indiana Auctioneer Commission permanently revoked Kruse International’s auction license Tuesday after hearing complaints about business practices that left dozens of people awaiting payment for cars and other items sold at Kruse auctions.
The panel also suspended Dean Kruse’s auctioneer’s license for two years, fined him and his company a combined $70,000, and ordered him to pay former clients the $300,000 he owes them.
Katie Blackburn, the commission’s assistant board director, said the civil fine is among the harshest ever doled out by the panel. And, she said, the fine could have been twice as big but the commission thought it was better for Kruse to pay his clients.
“That was the state and the commissioners’ primary concern – that he pay those people back,” she said. “They didn’t want the civil penalty to impede his ability to do that.”
Blackburn said Kruse must submit quarterly reports to the panel documenting his progress in paying back the $300,000 over the next 31/2 years.
For Kruse, the panel’s actions marked the end of the classic car auctions he first hosted in 1971 in Auburn, about 20 miles north of Fort Wayne, at the company his father founded.
Those auctions have drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Auburn each Labor Day weekend. Bidders competed to buy rare and classic autos, including cars once owned by Clark Cable, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Other buildings 110-acre site auctioned off collectibles, firearms and other items.
Kruse’s attorney, John Price, said his 69-year-old client would like to find some way to keep the annual auction alive, possibly by finding another auction company to run this year’s event. He said Kruse also is considering selling his company and the property.
Price said the annual auction is Indiana’s third-highest attended outdoor tourism event.
Kruse’s business problems started with the recession that began in 2008, Price said. People who bought cars at the September 2008 and 2009 auctions ended up owing Kruse millions of dollars. Kruse, in turn, owed the cars’ former owners money he didn’t have.
Although the 70 counts filed by the state attorney general’s office said Kruse owed clients about $1.5 million, by Tuesday’s meeting he had paid all but $300,000.
Price said Kruse took out a $4.5 million loan on his Auburn home and sold some of his possessions to help pay his debts. At one point, he owed about $7 million, he said.
Kruse has no plans to file for bankruptcy protection, Price said, noting that if his client was going to do that he would have done so before he borrowed against his home.
“The easiest thing in the world would have been for him to declare bankruptcy, washed everybody out and went on with his life, but he’s not that kind of guy,” Price said.
Auburn Mayor Norm Yoder said the Kruse auctions, the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Festival and a gathering of hundreds of owners of classic Auburns, Cords and Duesenbergs filled up hotels and restaurants in his city with car-lovers each Labor Day weekend.
He hopes Kruse can find some other company to stage the auctions so that the city still has three big events to lure in visitors.
“Obviously, when you have a three-legged stool and one leg gets hurt, it’s not going to be as good. These three events all support the other,” Yoder said.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) – Not everyone would recognize the treasure Garry Wells discovered tucked in a box of stuff he bought at an auction.
But Wells, an amateur history buff from Scotia, immediately knew the significance of the 1881 checkerboard map of Greeley, Howard, Sherman and Valley counties _ otherwise known as the Loup River Valley.
Recently, Wells found others who appreciated the role this 129-year-old map depicting land for sale by the B. & M. Railroad Co. played in Nebraska’s settlement.
Wells was among the approximately 30 people who brought long-saved railroad memorabilia to the first-ever “NET History Harvest for Railroad History.”
A joint project of NET Television and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln History Department, the goal is to digitize Nebraska’s railroad history through the memorabilia and heirlooms of “everyday” people, said Will Thomas, UNL history professor.
People shared their families’ railroad histories, and their railroad artifacts were analyzed, photographed, videotaped and documented.
The History Harvest is part of a digital research project: “Railroads and the Making of Modern America.”
In addition, NET will use the stories and artifacts to produce possible radio and television programs and enhance the digital history curriculum used by Nebraska schools.
“So often our history is the history of the leaders,” Thomas said.
History Harvest is a way of democratizing history _ making it accessible, open and relevant to ordinary folks – simply by telling their stories and looking at the things they have handed down through generations.
“It is the history of the people and of their families and of their experiences,” Thomas said. “We bring a different approach.”
Using that information, UNL history students will study historical trends to see how, in this case, the railroad shifted and shaped Nebraska and its people, said David Feingold, assistant general manager of content at NET.
Wells laughs when people in Scotia complain “nothing ever happens here,” then he talks of how power struggles between competing railroads and communities built and destroyed towns. And how railroads shaped the makeup of communities, simply by advertising their available land to certain ethnic and religious communities in other states.
Fred Wachal came from Columbus to share one of three land grant certificates his grandfather purchased from the Union Pacific Railroad more than a century ago.
He also brought a framed memory box with a black and white photograph of his mother’s cousin, Joseph F. Severyn, and the pristine pocket watch he used during his years as a conductor for the Union Pacific Railroad. Severyn died two days shy of his 27th birthday on Oct. 1, 1918, in France while serving in World War I, Wachal said.
Earl Ford, longtime railroad buff and curator of the Lincoln Area Model Railroad Club Museum, brought only a few pieces of the railroad memorabilia his family collected during their 142 years of service with the railroad – his grandfather’s Hamilton Rowley Special pocket watch; a 1917 photograph of his father and grandfather on a pumper car, and an 1885 Nebraska State Fair program advertising special rates on the Burlington and Missouri River trains to the fair.
Information gathered from the History Harvest should be available online by the end of summer.
But that is just the beginning, Thomas said.
Thanks to a grant, another History Harvest will be held in Nebraska City this fall.
Ultimately, the goal is to take History Harvest across the state, collecting stories and images that make us Nebraska.
“People want to be involved in telling our history,” Feingold said. “Digital technology allows us to do that.”
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Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, http://www.journalstar.com
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
‘Moonrise over Mojave’ by Maynard Dixon (California, 1875-1946) achieved an impressive $110, 450. Image courtesy of Clars Auction Gallery.
OAKLAND, Calif. – Redge Martin, president of Clars Auction Gallery, knew the May 15-16 sale would be one of the company’s strongest based on the important estates represented and the quality of consignments in both art and furnishings. When the final hammer dropped his expectations were realized. The auction resulted in $1.4 million in sales, fourth largest in the firm’s 60-year history.
Martin said that Clars Auction Gallery is already more than 50 percent ahead of last year at this time. A staff of top specialists in their fields, a long-standing reputation for the highest standards of operation, and aggressive national and international marketing campaigns all contribute to Clars’ success in a still delicate economy, said Martin.
Clars’ May sale featured art and antiques from several important estates and consignors including the Lane & Jenkins trust of San Francisco, the Frank Hinman estate of San Francisco, the Dr. Sydney Widrow estate of Hawaii and the Dr. Lawrence Loftus estate of Carmel, Calif.
The art category soared above all achieving strong prices for both contemporary and classic works. Several important works from California painters were offered, led by Moonrise over Mojave by Maynard Dixon (California, 1875-1946). The bidding opened at $75,000 and competition from the floor, phones and Internet quickly drove this work to a final sale price of $110,450.
Sunday Boating, an oil on canvas by James Weeks (California, 1922-1998), a scene of a group sailing on San Francisco Bay executed in rich tones of blue, was estimated to earn $20,000-$30,000 and sold for $28,440. Oaks in a Field of Poppies and Lupine by Percy Gray (California, 1922-1998) followed at $24,885. View of Mount Tamalpais from the Valley, also by Percy Gray, achieved $20,145, and a stunning coastal work titled Mt. Doud, Big Sur, by Arthur Hill Gilbert (California, 1894-1970) did well at $20,145. American artist Andrew Wyeth’s watercolor, painted on the title page of a book and showing an empty basket on a sloping hill, sold within the estimate at $28,400.
A framed gelatin silver photograph, Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite by Ansel Adams from the Widrow estate sold for $23,700. This same photograph is part of the current traveling exhibition of Adams’ work entitled Ansel Adams, Early Work.
Turning to the contemporary art category, Enrico Donati’s framed mixed media entitled Eclipse Anee 2000 earned $26,070. Persons of the Prism, a framed acrylic on canvas by Gordon Onslow Ford (California, 1912-2003) sold well at $13,035.
Clars reports that Asian art and antiques has been performing exceptionally well for them. This sale had a set of four Chinese hanging scrolls, executed in ink and color on paper and attributed to Liu Kuo-sung (b. 1932), which nearly doubled its high estimate by selling for $35,550.
Important antique furniture lots performed within or over their estimates, suggesting that the decline in prices has been reversed. Selling for well over estimate was a circa 1875 monumental American Renaissance Revival bedroom suite done in walnut and walnut burl. With a high estimate of $12,000, this suite sold for $18,960.
The Sunday session of the two-day sale featured several exceptional jewelry offerings from these important consignors. The headliner of this category was a 9-carat brilliant cut diamond ring set in platinum accented by 52 smaller diamonds. This dazzling piece of fine jewelry sold for $88,450 to a determined phone bidder.
Clars Auction Gallery’s next two-day Fine Estate Auction will be Saturday and Sunday, June 12 and 13.
The auction house is located at 5644 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland.
For additional information, call Clars Auction Gallery at (888) 339-7600, visit their website at www.clars.com, or email: info@clars.com.
Enrico Donati’s mixed media on canvas ‘Eclipse Annee 2000’ earned $26,070. Image courtesy of Clars Auction Gallery. Estimated to achieve $12,000 on the high side, the monumental walnut and walnut burl American Renaissance Revival bedroom suite sold for $18,960. Image courtesy of Clars Auction Gallery. The headliner of the jewelry category was this 9-carat brilliant cut diamond ring set in platinum accented by 52 smaller diamonds. A determined bidder prevailed, paying $88,450. Image courtesy of Clars Auction Gallery.
