This highly important 1789 John Heilig (Philadelphia) clock created to honor the inauguration of President George Washington will be offered for sale at the Hunt Valley Antiques Show, Feb. 19-21 in Timonium, Maryland. Image courtesy of Baldwin House Antiques and Armacost Antiques Shows.
TIMONIUM, Md. – A highlight of this year’s Hunt Valley Antiques Show, slated for Feb. 19-21 at the Crown Plaza hotel in Timonium, Md., is an 18th-century grandfather clock featured in the new book Timeless: Masterpiece American Brass Dial Clocks. The rare antique will be offered for sale by Strasburg, Pa.-based Baldwin House Antiques.
The tall-case clock, dated 1789, was created by noted Philadelphia clockmaker John Heilig to honor George Washington’s inauguration as the nation’s first president. Frank Hohmann, author of Timeless, regards it as one of America’s 100 most important brass dial clocks.
The clock’s face is inscribed with Washington’s name and includes an engraved portrait of the president surrounded by cannons, drums and flags. An image of a dove, inspired by the weathervane atop Washington’s home at Mount Vernon, appears on the clock’s second hand.
Washington passed through Philadelphia in 1789 on his journey to New York for his first inauguration.
The Hunt Valley Antiques Show brings together 50 of the nation’s top dealers, offering more than 10,000 examples of antiques and fine art. The event features formal and country furniture, artworks, ceramics and glass; textiles and rugs; silver, jewelry and equestrian antiques from five centuries. Every item is backed by a guarantee of authenticity.
For additional information, visit the promoter’s Web site at www.ArmacostAntiquesShows.com.
Andy Warhol (American 1928-1987) Self-portrait photo screenprint, 1978. Warhol signed approximately 100 of the prints at the opening of the exhibition at the Kunsthall in Zurich. Most were used as advertising/ Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Creighton-Davis Gallery.
MILWAUKEE (AP) – Andy Warhol kept boxes upon boxes of soup cans, receipts, fan mail and many other items, including thousands of photos he later used as inspiration for his giant paintings.
Now more than 180 colleges and university museums, and galleries around the United States are benefiting. The New York City-based Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has donated to them more than 28,500 of Warhol’s photos, worth $28 million.
“This is a little-known body of Warhol’s work,” Jenny Moore, curator for the foundation’s “Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program” said. “I think most people are familiar with the paintings and even the sculptures and … we really wanted the chance to let a broader audience gain access to his photographic work, which is of course the basis of so much of his artistic production.”
Each of the public educational institutions has generally received about 100 Polaroid and 50 black-and-white photos from the 1970s and 1980s, Moore said. They have gifted a majority of the photos since they started the program in 2007 but are still giving out more, she said.
The photos include celebrity snapshots, couples, nudes, painting ideas, party photos, still lifes and outdoor scenes. He often used the photos as the inspiration for portraits, silkscreen paintings, drawings and prints.
Four colleges and universities in Wisconsin received photos, including the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s Crossman Gallery. Gallery director Michael Flanagan said they received about 80 photos this month. He immediately put a few into their permanent collection exhibition, which ends Feb. 13. Warhol is by far the most recognizable name in their collection, he said.
“It’s nice for the students,” Flanagan said. “It’s a name that most of them recognize. Now they get to see the actual object.”
When Warhol died in 1987, he indicated he wanted the foundation to be dedicated to “the advancement of the visual arts,” Moore said.
“This is something he would have been very exited about,” Moore said. “For people to be able to see the kinds of things that interested him that made it into painting and prints.”
Moore said the foundation focused on institutions that could not acquire works on their own and those that could properly care for the photos. For those that already had Warhol in their collections, the foundation hoped to “enrich the breadth and depth of their holdings,” according to the foundation Web site.
“We’ve really tried to gift to kind of the smallest institutions all the way up to larger encyclopedic universities’ museums,” Moore said.
The museum at Bard College in Annandale on Hudson, New York, received 158 photos in early 2008 through the program. Marcia Acita, assistant director at CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, said more than a dozen graduate students used one of Warhol’s Polaroids of Marieluise Hessel, who founded Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture, for an exhibition last year.
Acita said they received nine Polaroids of Hessel. Warhol took them to help him come up with his acrylic on canvas silkscreen of Hessel in 1981, which the museum also owns.
Having such a famous artist’s work in hand enriches students’ experiences, she said.
Warhol published three books, one posthumously, featuring his black-and-white photos. There was Andy Warhol’s Exposures in 1979, America in 1985 and Andy Warhol’s Party Book in 1988. Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Official Flag of Haiti. DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) – The United Nations’ culture and education agency called Friday for a ban in the trade of Haitian artifacts to prevent the pillaging of cultural treasures in the aftermath of its devastating earthquake.
The director-general of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the agency is launching a campaign to protect art collections in the Caribbean country’s damaged museums and historical sites “so that we don’t find these objects [at an auction house] tomorrow.”
The U.N. Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization launched the appeal after learning “a lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan,” where cultural objects were looted after the U.S.-led invasions.
“This time, we’re trying to be involved in the very beginning,” Bokova said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, a gathering of international business and political leaders in this Swiss resort.
“We need to address this immediate problem …. otherwise somebody will say tomorrow, ‘Where was the U.N. when this happened?”’ she said.
Bokova appealed to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for security forces to protect Haitian heritage sites and urged a Security Council resolution temporarily banning trade in Haitian cultural property, to be monitored by Interpol.
She stressed the need to verify the provenance of cultural property, especially items purchased over the Internet.
“This heritage is an invaluable source of identity and pride for the people on the island and will be essential to the success of their national reconstruction,” she said in a statement.
Among the landmarks UNESCO wants to protect from looting are the heavily damaged presidential palace and cathedral in Port-au-Prince and buildings in Jacmel, a 17th century French colonial town that Haiti wants put on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
The looting of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion was widely condemned as a preventable tragedy. Serious damage was also inflicted on Babylon, as troops drove heavy machinery over sacred paths, bulldozed hilltops and dug trenches through one of the world’s greatest archaeological sites.
The National Museum of Afghanistan last year unveiled hundreds of looted artifacts, some dating back as far back as the 11th century, seized from smugglers trying to sell them on Europe’s black market. As lawlessness grows in the ancient mountain passes and along Silk Road routes, conservationists say looters are increasingly raiding sites that are unprotected and unnoticed.
In Haiti, Bokova said UNESCO is also working on getting children back into school after the earthquake as soon as possible.
“Education brings a type of normalcy,” she said.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Tuthankamen’s famous burial mask, on display in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, in a photo taken on Dec. 7, 2003. Image appears by permission of the author, Bjorn Christian Torrissen. Creative Commons License.
CAIRO (AP) – Egypt will soon reveal the results of DNA tests made on the world’s most famous ancient king, the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun, to answer lingering mysteries over his lineage, the antiquities department said Sunday.
Speaking at a conference, archaeology chief Zahi Hawass said he would announce the results of the DNA tests and the CAT scans on Feb. 17. The results will be compared to those made of King Amenhotep III, who may have been Tutankamun’s grandfather.
The effort is part of a wider program to check the DNA of hundreds of mummies to determine their identities and family relations. The program could help determine Tutankhamun’s family lineage, which has long been a source of mystery.
The identity of Tut’s parents is not firmly known. Many experts believe he is the son of Akhenaten, the 18th Dynasty pharaoh who tried to introduce monotheism to ancient Egypt almost 3,500 years ago, and one of Akhenaten’s queens, Kiya. But others have suggested he was the son of a lesser-known pharaoh who followed Akhenaten.
Tutankhamun was one of the last kings of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty and ruled during a crucial, turmoil-filled period when Akhenaten’s monotheism was ended and powers were returned to the priests of ancient Egypt’s multiple deities.
Hawass has announced ambitious plans for DNA tests on Egyptian mummies, including tests on all royal mummies and the nearly two dozen unidentified ones stored in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He has said the tests may show that some royal mummies on display are not who archaeologists thought them to be.
One of his top goals is to find the mummy of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s wife, the queen legendary for her beauty.
Hawass has long rejected DNA testing on Egyptian mummies by foreign experts, and only recently allowed such projects on condition they be done exclusively by Egyptians. A $5 million DNA lab was created at the Egyptian Museum, with funding from the Discovery Channel.
Sunday’s statement also said a robot would be sent into the Great Pyramid of Khufu to discover the secrets of its hidden passageways.
In a widely publicized television show in September 2002, a robot designed by National Geographic explored some air shafts in the pyramid of Khufu, discovering secret doors with copper handles.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-ES-01-31-10 1142EST
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
X-rays of Tutankhamun’s mummy taken in 1968 revealed a dense spot at the lower back of the skull interpreted as a subdural hematoma. Such an injury could have been the result of an accident, but it has also been suggested that the young pharaoh was murdered.
The Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda, painted 1503-1505 by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Oil on cottonwood, 30 1/4 inches by 20.87 inches. The painting is displayed in The Louvre, Paris.
ROME (AP) – The legend of Leonardo da Vinci is shrouded in mystery: How did he die? Are the remains buried in a French chateau really those of the Renaissance master? Was the Mona Lisa a self-portrait in disguise?
A group of Italian scientists believes the key to solving those puzzles lies with the remains – and they say they are seeking permission from French authorities to dig up the body to conduct carbon and DNA testing.
If the skull is intact, the scientists can go to the heart of a question that has fascinated scholars and the public for centuries: the identity of the Mona Lisa. Recreating a virtual and then physical reconstruction of Leonardo’s face, they can compare it with the smiling face in the painting, experts involved in the project told The Associated Press.
“We don’t know what we’ll find if the tomb is opened, we could even just find grains and dust,” says Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist who is participating in the project. “But if the remains are well kept, they are a biological archive that registers events in a person’s life, and sometimes in their death.”
The leader of the group, Silvano Vinceti, told the AP that he plans to press his case with the French officials in charge of the purported burial site at Amboise Castle early next week.
But the Italian enthusiasm may be premature.
In France, exhumation requires a long legal procedure, and precedent suggests it’s likely to take even longer when it involves a person of great note such as Leonardo.
Jean-Louis Sureau, director of the medieval-era castle located in France’s Loire Valley, said that once a formal request is made, a commission of experts would be set up. Any such request would then be discussed with the French Ministry of Culture, Sureau said.
Leonardo moved to France at the invitation of King Francis I, who named him “first painter to the king.” He spent the last three years of his life there, and died in Cloux, near the monarch’s summer retreat of Amboise, in 1519 at age 67.
The artist’s original burial place, the palace church of Saint Florentine, was destroyed during the French Revolution and remains that are believed to be his were eventually reburied in the Saint-Hubert Chapel near the castle.
The tombstone says simply, Leonardo da Vinci; a notice at the site informs visitors they are the presumed remains of the artist, as do guidebooks.
“The Amboise tomb is a symbolic tomb; it’s a big question mark,” said Alessandro Vezzosi, the director of a museum dedicated to Leonardo in his Tuscan hometown of Vinci.
Vezzosi, who is not involved in the project, said that investigating the tomb could help identify the artist’s bones with certainty and solve other questions, such as the cause of his death. He said he asked to open the tomb in 2004 to study the remains, but the Amboise Castle turned him down.
As for the latest Italian proposal, Vinceti says preliminary conversations took place several years ago and he plans to follow up with a request next week to set up a meeting to explain the project in detail. This would pave the way for a formal request, he said.
The group of 100 experts involved in the project, called the National Committee for Historical and Artistic Heritage, was created in 2003 with the aim of “solving the great enigmas of the past,” said Vinceti, who has written books on art and literature.
Arguably the world’s most famous painting, the Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre in Paris, where it drew some 8.5 million visitors last year. Mystery has surrounded the identity of the painting’s subject for centuries, with speculation ranging from the wife of a Florentine merchant to Leonardo’s own mother.
That Leonardo intended the Mona Lisa as a self-portrait in disguise is a possibility that has intrigued and divided scholars. Theories have abounded: Some think that Leonardo’s taste for pranks and riddles might have led him to conceal his own identity behind that baffling smile; others have speculated that, given Leonardo’s presumed homosexuality, the painting hid an androgynous lover.
Some have used digital analysis to superimpose Leonardo’s bearded self-portrait over the Mona Lisa to show how the facial features perfectly aligned.
If granted access to the gravesite, the Italian experts plan to use a miniature camera and ground-penetrating radar – which produces images of an underground space using radar waves – to confirm the presence of bones. The scientists would then exhume the remains and attempt to date the bones with carbon testing.
At the heart of the proposed study is the effort to ascertain whether the remains are actually Leonardo’s, including with DNA testing.
Vezzosi questions the feasibility of a DNA comparison, saying he is unaware of any direct descendants of Leonardo or of tombs that could be attributed with certainty to the artist’s close relatives.
Gruppioni said DNA extracted from the bones could also eventually be compared to DNA found elsewhere. For example, Leonardo is thought to have smudged colors on the canvas with his thumb, possibly using saliva, meaning DNA might be found on his paintings, though Gruppioni conceded this was a long shot.
Even in the absence of DNA testing, other tests could provide useful information, including whether the bones belonged to a man or woman, and whether the person died young or old.
“We can have various levels of probability in the attribution of the bones,” Gruppioni said. “To have a very high probability, DNA testing is necessary.”
The experts would also look for any pathology or other evidence of the cause of death. Tuberculosis or syphilis, for example, would leave significant traces in the bone structure, said Vinceti.
In the best-case scenario – that of a well-preserved skull – the group would take a CAT scan and reconstruct the face, said Francesco Mallegni, an anthropology professor who specializes in reconstructions and has recreated the faces of famous Italians, including Dante.
Even within the committee, experts are divided over the identity of the “Mona Lisa.”
Vinceti believes that a tradition of considering the self-portrait to be not just a faithful imitation of one’s features but a representation of one’s spiritual identity may have resonated with Leonardo.
Vezzosi, the museum director, dismissed as “baseless and senseless” the idea that the Mona Lisa could be a self-portrait of Leonardo.
The painting is “like a mirror: Everybody starts from his own hypothesis or obsession and tries to find it there,” Vezzosi said in a telephone interview.
He said most researchers believe the woman may have been either a concubine of the artist’s sponsor, the Florentine nobleman Giuliano de Medici, or Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a rich silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo. The traditional view is that the name Mona Lisa comes from the silk merchant’s wife, as well as its Italian name: La Gioconda.
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Associated Press writers Deborah Seward in Paris and Ariel David in Rome contributed to this report.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
A rare Patek Philippe gentleman’s 18K yellow gold chronograph wristwatch with silver dial face is estimated at $60,000 to 80,000. Fine timepieces by Cartier and Rolex will also be offered during the jewelry portion of Clars’ sale. Image courtesy Clars Auction Gallery.
OAKLAND, Calif. – Feb. 6 and 7 are the dates for Clars Auction Gallery’s February Fine Estates Sale, a two-day event that will feature 1,500 lots of fine art, important furniture and decoratives, and an impressive selection of timepieces. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding on both days.
Headlining the sale is a rare Patek Philippe gentleman’s 18K yellow gold chronograph wristwatch with silvered-dial face. The Model 1463 watch features 23 jewels and is expected to make $60,000 to $80,000 at auction. Fine timepieces by Cartier and Rolex also will be offered during the jewelry portion of the sale.
Arthur and Lucia Mathews will be represented both in the furniture and art categories. Coming from The Furniture Shop will be a carved and polychrome decorated bed, estimate $10,000-$15,000; and a carved dresser executed in walnut, estimate $6,000-$10,000. Turning to the art category, two paintings by the couple – Lucia (Californian 1870-1955) and Arthur (Californian, 1860-1945) – will be offered. The first, a framed oil on canvas titled Study for The Soil is estimated at $8,000 to $12,000. This work was created for a mural in the Oakland Public Library. The second, a framed oil on canvas laid to board titled Study of California Hills, also carries an $8,000-$12,000 estimate.
While the sale will feature a plethora of important art, three works by Isaac Israels (Dutch, 1865-1934) command special attention. A framed oil on canvas titled Man on a Paint Horse is expected to fetch $50,000 to $70,000, while his framed oil on canvas titled Man with a Mandolin is estimated at $30,000 to $50,000. Woman in Hat Reading, a framed watercolor on paper, is estimated at $20,000 to $40,000.
Other highlights in the art category include a collection of Jewish art deaccessioned from the Judah L. Magnes Museum, representing 19th century and contemporary artists such as Alek Rapoport, Julius Wasserstein, Maurits de Groot and Roberto Lupetti.
A fine collection of photographs including works by Ansel Adams will be offered, as well as a large collection of vintage lithograph posters from the late 19th and into the 20th century.
The Decoratives category will feature an extremely rare early Gold Rush-era gold quartz presentation cane that is dated 1856. Fine Lalique, Daum-Nancy and Tiffany Studios offerings will round out the offerings in this exciting portion of the sale. On Saturday, an extensive collection of Pacific Pottery will be offered.
For information on any lot in the sale, call Clars Auction Gallery at 888-339-7600 or 510-428-0100, or e-mail info@clars.com.
View the fully illustrated catalog and sign up to bid absentee or live via the Internet through www.liveauctioneers.com.
This framed oil on canvas titled Study for the Soil by Lucia Mathews (California, 1870-1955) and Arthur (California, 1860-1945) Mathews is estimated at $8,000 to 12,000. Image courtesy Clars Auction Gallery.
A very rare and early Gold Rush-era gold quartz presentation cane, dated 1856, will be one of the many highlights of the Decoratives category. Image courtesy Clars Auction Gallery.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – A major Southwest antiquities dealer who was forced to surrender five truckloads of American Indian relics to federal agents is expected to settle charges of digging up a grave and plundering artifacts from federal lands, his defense lawyer said Thursday.
Wally Bugden, a lawyer for Carl “Vern” Crites, told a federal magistrate in Salt Lake City that he was negotiating a plea deal with prosecutors.
But Crites told The Associated Press he was unaware of any negotiations and that a government raid of his home last year – the second since 1985 – was a misunderstanding that later forced him to give up his entire collection of thousands of artifacts.
“That was part of no deal,” Crites said Thursday from Durango, Colo., where he lives. “I had no choice. They came and took my things. It was either that or they’d come with a search warrant and take them.”
Authorities have said that Crites bragged in secret recordings of having sold pottery sets for $500,000.
The 75-year-old was one of 26 people arrested in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico last year in an investigation into trafficking of artifacts plucked from federal or tribal lands. To make the case, the government hired an antiquities dealer from Utah to secretly record $335,000 in transactions over two years.
Earlier this month, Bugden filed a motion seeking a copy of the operative’s FBI contract and demanding to know if the government ever promised leniency in exchange for his help.
“I still want all that,” Bugden said after Thursday’s court hearing. “I don’t think people have a born-again revelation and become a good Boy Scout. Generally speaking, they’re in trouble. They have some motive.”
The well-connected dealer, Ted Gardiner, a former CEO of a Utah grocery chain, was paid $224,000 for his services, according to court documents. Federal authorities insist Gardiner, who also ran an artifact authentication business, was never in trouble with the law.
Other defense lawyers have filed motions demanding the government reveal any criminal activity involving Gardiner that didn’t lead to charges.
Gardiner didn’t return a phone message left Thursday by the AP.
Two of the 26 defendants – one a Santa Fe, N.M., salesman, the other a prominent Blanding, Utah, physician, James Redd – committed suicide after their arrests.
Separately, Redd’s wife and daughter surrendered their own vast collections, pleaded guilty and were sentenced last summer to terms of probation. The rest of the defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Packing a federal courtroom Thursday, defense lawyers and prosecutors told Magistrate Sam Alba that a handful of other defendants were expected to settle charges with plea agreements. Alba gave lawyers until March 8, the date of another conference, to wrap up those talks. Other defendants are fighting charges.
The sweeping investigation broke early on the morning of June 10, when more than 150 federal agents descended on the Four Corners region in flak vests to execute warrants in New Mexico, Colorado and Utah’s San Juan County.
In the small town of Blanding, agents raided the homes of 16 people, some prominent members of the community, including a math teacher and the brother of a sheriff. Most were handcuffed and shackled as agents confiscated stone pipes, woven sandals, spear and arrow heads, seed jars and decorated pottery.
“The government is trying to change the culture of collecting. That’s what people did in southern Utah,” Bugden said Thursday. “This prosecution is trying to change people’s attitudes.”
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Associated Press Writer Mike Stark in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.
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Portrait of U.S. General of the Army Omar Nelson Bradley (1893-1981), painted by Clarence Lamont MacNelly (1920-1986).
CLARK, Mo. (AP) – A 57-year-old Missouri man has been kicked out of town after being convicted of paying a teenager to vandalize a monument to hometown hero Gen. Omar Bradley.
Rex Barstow Sr. was sentenced to 60 days in jail and four years of probation and must pay nearly $8,000 to cover damage to the statue in the town of Clark. A judge also ordered Barstow to stay out of the tiny community in southern Randolph County.
Barstow was convicted in December of paying a 14-year-old acquaintance between $20 and $60 to knock over a new stone monument commemorating the life of Bradley, a Clark native and famed Army general in World War II.
The memorial has since been replaced.
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Information from: Columbia Daily Tribune, http://www.columbiatribune.com
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ATHENS, Greece (AP) – Greek police say they have seized ancient statuettes and an engraved tombstone after a sting operation foiled an attempt to smuggle antiquities.
Authorities arrested three Greeks who allegedly negotiated the sale of the items to an undercover officer from the police’s antiquities smuggling division for euro1.4 million (nearly US$2 million).
Police said Thursday that archaeologists are working to determine the origins of the items – an engraved marble tombstone dating from the 4th or 5th Century B.C., a small bronze horse and a bronze statuette of an enthroned figure.
The suspects are to appear in court later Thursday.
Under Greek law, antiquities found in the country are state property, and it is illegal to possess, excavate, buy or sell them without a permit.
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NEW YORK (AP) – A Brooklyn man who worked as a security guard during the demolition of Shea Stadium has pleaded guilty to stealing Mets memorabilia.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said Gerald Tacopino pleaded guilty to petit larceny on Wednesday.
Tacopino was fined $500 and sentenced to a conditional discharge, provided he pays $842.50 in restitution. He also was ordered to stay away from the new Mets stadium, Citi Field, for one year.
The district attorney said various stadium items were recovered from Tacopino’s apartment in December 2008. They included Mets security jackets and shirts and seat bottoms and backs.
The 44-year-old man was hired to prevent looting of items that were being removed from Shea Stadium to be sold as memorabilia.
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