NEW YORK – Five rare wooden sculptural masks made in India – recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art – will be highlighted in the special exhibition “Encountering Vishnu: The Lion Avatar in Indian Temple Drama,” opening at the Met on Dec. 19.
LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Fine Art Show, a new art fair dedicated to historic and contemporary traditional works, will launch in conjunction with the LA Art Show on Jan. 27-31.
SAN FRANCISCO – The second in the series of PBA Galleries’ auctions of Rare Cartography, Exploration & Voyages: The Warren Heckrotte Collection on Dec. 3, featured books and maps on the California Gold Rush and on the surveying and mapping of the West. Topping the list was a rare 1848 Map of the Valley of the Sacramento including the Gold Region (above), which sold for $39,000.
BIRMINGHAM – On Thursday, Dec. 17, Fellow will auction a beautiful gold tourmaline and sapphire butterfly pendant to raise money for Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
DALLAS (AP) – A rare Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card has sold at auction for more than $500,000.
ST. IGNATIUS, Mont. (AP) – All that’s keeping Jesus, Mary and Joseph from falling to the floor in the historic St. Ignatius Mission right now is some cheesecloth and Japanese rice paper.
And it’s going to take a lot more than that to produce a long-term solution to a worsening problem in a 124-year-old church famed for its 58 murals depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – About 500 bottles of counterfeit wine have been destroyed in a case linked to a California dealer who mixed cheap vintages and sold them for millions of dollars.
RHINEBECK, N.Y. (AP) – Charles Lindbergh would instantly recognize the plane with “Spirit of St. Louis” painted on its nose rumbling above treetops in New York’s Hudson Valley. There’s a 9-cylinder engine similar to the one used in his historic flight, an identical cockpit under a 46-foot wing and a look-alike of his wicker pilot’s seat.
BEACHWOOD, Ohio – Guido Gambone (1909-1969) was an important Italian ceramic artist in the 1950s and ’60s. His colorful vases in modern shapes with almost comic-strip-shaped animal figures were very different from designs by earlier Italian makers. He used thick glazes that left a rough surface.