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Sotheby’s said that fourth-quarter net income was the second highest in its history due to an increase in the commission that it charges on auction sales and a cost-cutting drive. The auction house said that income over the three months to December 31 was $73.6m (£49m), compared to a loss of $9.3m last time. Bill …
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What is an American? Today, as the 20th century — the so-called “American Century” — recedes in memory, the question can seem immodest or even grandiose. If we don’t know now, after decades wielding almost unimaginable superpower status around the globe, will we ever? Still, there’s another way to look at it. The question arises …
Continue reading “‘American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915’ @ LACMA”
There were all shapes and sizes – the large and the small, the young and the old, and even a heavily pregnant woman who had re-scheduled the birth of her twins so she could take part. But the one thing the 5,200-odd people who posed for the American artist Spencer Tunick at the Sydney Opera …
By Eliane EngelerAssociated Press Sunday, February 28, 2010 Ernst Beyeler, 88, whose early eye for undervalued Picassos and Impressionists helped him assemble one of Europe’s most famous art collections, died Feb. 25 at his home near Basel, Switzerland. No cause of death was reported. Mr. Beyeler became a widely respected art patron after World War …
No grand monument marks the spot in Maplewood Cemetery where Malvin Gray Johnson’s family laid him to rest 75 years ago.There’s no marker at all. Yet somewhere beneath this grassy spot lies the grave of the man whom one researcher calls “the most significant artist to come out of Greensboro.” After he left his native …
Continue reading “New attention for Harlem Renaissance artist with Greensboro roots”
I first laid eyes on this pensive gentleman in a civil rights newspaper from the sixties called The Southern Courier. http://www.southerncourier.org/ I was captured by his eyes because I felt like they held the story of his life. I took a picture of the newspaper itself so that I could paint him. He was a …
Nigel Freeman’s African-American Fine Art department at Swann Galleries surprised many market observers when it began holding sales devoted to African-American art. Leading up to his seventh semiannual auction of African-American art, which was held on Tuesday, February 23, and earned $1.24 million, Freeman took time to speak about how the idea came about, how …
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When Oprah Winfrey recently asked her former personal chef what he wanted for his 50th birthday, Art Smith’s first thought was a new treadmill.Aim higher, she told him.How about a check to help fund the sort of healthy eating programs for children called for by another of his high profile clients, first lady Michelle Obama, …
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Speaking at Prince George’s County’s annual Black History Month celebration last week, former Negro Baseball League player and Temple Hills resident Jimmy Bland fondly recalled the black families in segregated southern communities that housed and fed ballplayers like himself. “There were a lot of places we couldn’t go and a lot of places [where] we …
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Born and raised in Cincinnati, OH, I studied art at Wayne State University and the University of Cincinnati prior to moving to Los Angeles in 1978. Not having worked in the arts during the majority of my adulthood, opting instead to be a wife, mother and subsequently a single-parent, I devoted my life to the …
The Artist “Laid back Art ………… Laid back Life.” Called Darton X, Peter Oluwadare Adeniyi is internationally well known , not only in África but also in Europe. Born in June, 3rd 1968 in Ikere-ekiti, a small city in Ondo (State of Nigéria), Darton X has started painting since he was six, creating self-portraits from …
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The term “blackstream” was used by Black artists in the 1900s who were denied admission to the art mainstream. More recently, fine art appraiser Edward S. Spriggs of Atlanta, Georgia brought the term “blackstream” to our attention. Feeling there was a need to identify this important time of formative awareness of, belief in and commitment …
Collecting African American Art Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, former Executive Director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, has stated “…to give an object a home.” (-) “At the most private and personal level, that is the goal of the serious collector. Exercising taste, judgement, an intense love of a culture and its traditions, motivated by …
In the early 1950’s through the 1980’s a group of twenty-six African-American artists known as the “Florida Highwaymen” used vivid and bright colors to display the beautiful untouched Florida landscape. The Florida Highwaymen painted wind-bent palm trees, serene sunsets, churning oceans and bright red Poinciana trees. They painted from their garages and back yards on …
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By Lisa Kocian | March 19, 2006 As vice president and director of American and European painting and prints for Boston-based auction house Skinner Inc. and an appraiser on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow, Colleene Fesko looks at 10,000 paintings a year. In her career, she has come across incredible deals, ridiculous overvaluations, and everything in between. …
Continue reading “Buying Art as an Investment – What to buy, what to sell, and will it make me rich”