This object came in to the gallery for an appraisal. It appears to me to originate somewhere in Central or South America. The stone is similar to that found in the Atlantic Watershed area of Coast Rica. It is approximately 10" in height. Your comments would be welcome.Wednesday, July 29, 2009
What is it?
This object came in to the gallery for an appraisal. It appears to me to originate somewhere in Central or South America. The stone is similar to that found in the Atlantic Watershed area of Coast Rica. It is approximately 10" in height. Your comments would be welcome.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Quick Takes July 2009
Antiques Roadshow has been wild as in late June and July we have traveled through Raleigh, North Carolina, Madison, Wisconsin, and Denver, Colorado. In Raleigh the Asian appraisers found the most expensive objects ever appraised on the show. The Chinese jade collection, which was appraised by Jimmy Callaghan of Skinner's, Boston was estimated at $700,000 and $1,700,000. Raleigh will be featured as the lead off show for Season's 14's schedule in early January of 2010.
In the June Newsletter we published the article "Whose Data Is It?" which was a description of two Guy Van Rijn databases that now are operated by the Yale Archive and Danster Research. I promised an update and some interviews. We contacted James Ross who is a major collector of African art and was responsible for much of the funding for the Yale Archive. Mr. Ross referred me to Jock Reynolds who is the director of the Yale University Art Gallery. We haven't heard back from Mr. Reynolds. The blog also contacted Guy Van Rijn, who indicated that there were some changes in the works at the Yale Archive but that he expected to continue in an advisory position. We will continue to pursue this.
August is almost upon us and it is the season of Indian market in Santa Fe. Dealers are excited and upbeat but wary about what this important two weeks will mean for business. It is all about whether people will stay away or if they do come will they keep their hands in their pockets. The Sweeney Covention Center has been remodeled, renamed and is ready to go for both the Ethnographic and Antique American Indian exhibitions. The schedule is as follows: The Ethnographic Art Show, the 26th annual staging, will run Saturday and Sunday, August 15 and 16, 2009 from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with a preview opening on Friday, August 14, 2009 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM.The 31st annual Antique Indian Art Show will have a preview opening on Monday, August 17, 2009 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM, followed by shows on Tuesday and Wednesday, August 18 and 19, 2009 from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. There will also be auctions, local dealers, and collectors coming in for the contemporary Indian show August 22nd and 23rd. We will let you know how it goes.
ATADA (American tribal Art Dealers Association) does a very good job in listing stolen and recovered art objects. To ensure that you don't buy anything that doesn't have clear title periodically check this site: http://www.atada.org/theft.html . Remember in the US being a good faith purchaser is not enough to protect you from losing the object and your money.
Recently another site was discovered in Northern Peru revealing the 1500 year old tomb of the the Lord of Ucupe. The figure was wearing two funerary masks, a necklace of silver medallions, and a tunic and train of metallic plates. In the tomb archaeologists also found 19 headdresses, on a bed of war clubs.
There some amazing museum exhibitions in the U.S. and and U.K this summer and fall. 1. British Museum, London Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler 24 September 2009 - 24 January 2010 2. Metropolitan Museum, New York: Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul 23 June 2009 - 20 September 2009 3. Metropolitan Museum, New York: A Legacy of Collecting: African and Oceanic Art (Barbier Mueller Coll, Geneva) 4.
In the June Newsletter we published the article "Whose Data Is It?" which was a description of two Guy Van Rijn databases that now are operated by the Yale Archive and Danster Research. I promised an update and some interviews. We contacted James Ross who is a major collector of African art and was responsible for much of the funding for the Yale Archive. Mr. Ross referred me to Jock Reynolds who is the director of the Yale University Art Gallery. We haven't heard back from Mr. Reynolds. The blog also contacted Guy Van Rijn, who indicated that there were some changes in the works at the Yale Archive but that he expected to continue in an advisory position. We will continue to pursue this.
August is almost upon us and it is the season of Indian market in Santa Fe. Dealers are excited and upbeat but wary about what this important two weeks will mean for business. It is all about whether people will stay away or if they do come will they keep their hands in their pockets. The Sweeney Covention Center has been remodeled, renamed and is ready to go for both the Ethnographic and Antique American Indian exhibitions. The schedule is as follows: The Ethnographic Art Show, the 26th annual staging, will run Saturday and Sunday, August 15 and 16, 2009 from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with a preview opening on Friday, August 14, 2009 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM.The 31st annual Antique Indian Art Show will have a preview opening on Monday, August 17, 2009 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM, followed by shows on Tuesday and Wednesday, August 18 and 19, 2009 from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. There will also be auctions, local dealers, and collectors coming in for the contemporary Indian show August 22nd and 23rd. We will let you know how it goes.
ATADA (American tribal Art Dealers Association) does a very good job in listing stolen and recovered art objects. To ensure that you don't buy anything that doesn't have clear title periodically check this site: http://www.atada.org/theft.html . Remember in the US being a good faith purchaser is not enough to protect you from losing the object and your money.
Recently another site was discovered in Northern Peru revealing the 1500 year old tomb of the the Lord of Ucupe. The figure was wearing two funerary masks, a necklace of silver medallions, and a tunic and train of metallic plates. In the tomb archaeologists also found 19 headdresses, on a bed of war clubs.
There some amazing museum exhibitions in the U.S. and and U.K this summer and fall. 1. British Museum, London Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler 24 September 2009 - 24 January 2010 2. Metropolitan Museum, New York: Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul 23 June 2009 - 20 September 2009 3. Metropolitan Museum, New York: A Legacy of Collecting: African and Oceanic Art (Barbier Mueller Coll, Geneva) 4.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Featured Folk Artist: Howard Finster
"The Reverend Howard Finster had art showings across the world, including the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian Institute. He has taught many students in college workshops across the nation. He has been on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and featured in many magazines and newspapers including Time, Life, Southern Living, NY and Chicago Times. He was on the Johnny Carson Show, Good Morning America and has been interviewed by several TV broadcasts including Canada, England, and Japan. The Coca Cola Company is one of Howard Finster's greatest fans and Howard is one of their greatest fans. They commissioned him to paint an eight foot Olympic Coke Bottle to represent the United States art exhibit for the Olympics in 1996.Howard's art and messages have inspired people all over the world including children that visit him and learn about his folk art. He was honored with the Governor's Award and chosen to paint the Easter Egg for the annual Easter Egg Hunt at the White House. He is recognized with letters from leaders all over the country for his astounding works of folk art. Turner Publishing commissioned Howard to paint illustrations for the "Night Before Christmas" in 1996 and is available at the Finster Folk Art Gallery. This assignment brought this now 84 year old artist back in touch with his childhood. The illustrations are visions of a previous time filled with wonder from an eccentric world renown folk artist. he dedicated the illustrations to all the children of the world including the "Big Ones" and his dreams of restoring his Paradise Gardens. he painted a wooden box symbolizing the C.A.R.E. package for the programs 50th anniversary. It was presented to president Clinton on May 9th of 1996. He completed a painting to raise funds for the Habitat of Humanity and attended the annual convention in Atlanta where he signed many prints made from the painting. After the NY trip, Howard took Pneumonia and thereafter he had a lot of sickness. Howard's traveling was over except for the events at Paradise Gardens. He went from doing twenty to thirty pieces of art a week to three to five pieces until he left us to be with Jesus on October 23, 2001." Beverly Finster, daughter of Howard Finster 2009
Featured African Art Object June 2009
Ivory figure, Lega, Democratic Republic of te Congo. Ht. 5" Ex Jay Last,Beverly Hills, CA
Who's Data is It?
As we watch the social network Twitter.com playing an important role in a revolution, we can begin to appreciate how much we have underestimated the power of the internet. You certainly have heard how various banks, credit card companies, government ag
encies etc etc have cataloged and stored your information to do who-knows-what down line. Do we really know or rather can we really know the impact of our decision to give up data. In some cases you can't control it, so just go with the flow. In my mind there are two critical questions. 1. What are you going to do with my data and 2. who has access?
In the field of tribal art some obviously bright guys have figured out the importance of cataloging your data which is primarily comprised of photographic and descriptive information of your collections. The most important man in this effort is undoubtedly Guy Van Rijn, who is now the archivist of the Yale Art Gallery-van Rijn Archive of African Art. "The Yale Art Gallery-van Rijn Archive of African Art is a collaborative project based in Brussels. Currently, a copy resides at the Yale University Art Gallery. Yale University has plans for a future on-line version, when and how it will be accessible is, due to legal issues such as copyrights, not yet known." (http://users.telenet.be/african-shop/yale_university_art_gallery.htm). The Yale website describes the database in the following manner: "The Yale-Van Rijn Photographic Archive is the largest photographic digital database of African art, and is a division of the Department of African Art, established in 2004, at the Yale University Art Gallery. The Archive has been under development by Guy van Rijn, for several decades. In 2001, the project was acquired and funded for Yale by James J. Ross (Yale B.A. 1960). The ultimate goal is to make the Archive accessible online, but at present it is available for general research by appointment only at the Department of African Art at Yale, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, or at the Van Rijn Documentation Centre, Brussels, Belgium.
The Yale-van Rijn Photographic Archive comprises images of art from Africa south of the Sahara in collections worldwide. As such it is potentially infinite, but at the moment it includes mainly masks and sculpture and a few other forms in various media, from antiquity to the mid-20th-century and it will continue to grow as the archivist receives new images. Currently there are more than 100,000 images of African art drawn from private and museum collections, dealers, general archives, and the existing body of literature including books, articles, notices, and auction catalogues. The database may be searched by country, cultural group, and many other fields enabling the user to do a specific search. The Yale-GVR Archive may be used for research purposes only. In making these images and their related documentation available to researchers, YUAG’s Department of African Art provides an unparalleled resource for the study of African arts.
The Archivist solicits images from collectors of photographs and/or objects who would like to include their collections in the Archive. It should be noted that Yale makes no claims to authenticity of the objects illustrated (by any definition of the term, authentic), and the inclusion or exclusion of an image for any reason is at the sole discretion of Yale.
The Archive will also include opinions (including those concerning authenticity) in the Archive database submitted by third parties, at Yale's discretion. Yale takes no responsibility for these opinions, and in no way do they reflect an official position of Yale. We expect that this will provide a forum that will be useful to all researchers. In this working phase, we would ask visiting researchers who are using the Archive to exchange their own images and expertise from their fields of study in order to enlarge and refine the Archive and database for future users." In addition Van Rijn has also compiled the database, "Who's Who in African Art.".
Van Rijn is now a principal of and the archivist for Danster Research Center which is described in the following
manner:
"About us Danster Research is a newly established independent non-profit institute directed towards the research of traditional Arts and Crafts of Africa. Its aim is to foster and boost research as an independent institute and to provide support as well as infrastructure to those whose research is deemed to be invaluable to create a more comprehensive picture of the Arts and Crafts of Africa. We at Danster feel that such an independent research institute could fill in some of the lacunae and help the more institutionalized research institutes to complement their findings.
As we all know there always has been a bit of an uneasy relationship between the scholarly and the more mundane world of those commercially active in African Arts. Our independent position, however, allows us to support research in those fields we feel are somewhat neglected but where knowledge can be harvested, crucial to a better understanding of the African Arts and Crafts. Danster Research feels that there is a void to fill. Although research will be carried out on a completely independent base, Danster feels that cooperation with existing institutionalized research facilities is necessary and even indispensable if one wishes to grasp a broad and in depth comprehension of the Arts and Crafts of Africa.
Research
Danster Research feels that there are multiple ways to foster different kinds of research projects, benefiting scholars of different disciplines e.g. ethnographers, anthropologists and scholars from the sculpture of Africa. Financing and supporting projects will take up a large part of the funding but forgotten areas of research that need attention can and will also be focused upon and even coordinated and instigated by Danster Research e.g. collection of private documents, photographs; the acquisition of files and in general mapping out areas that deserve extra attention."
Pretty impressive by any standards and what a resource of information! Once you recover from the immediate flights of fantasy about what a difference this sort of data might make in your life as a curator, appraiser, dealer, or collector, the question always come down to who has access to the data and what do they do with it. One would think that this question is pretty straight forward and easy to answer. But it is not. Let's first dispense with Who's Who in African Art. That one is easy… you pay 80 euros and you get a copy.
The primary complication with the Yale Archive and Danster Research is that you have a mixture of non profit and for profit intertwined in both projects. Do commercial entities pay thousands of euros to sponsor projects that they can't access until various copyright issues are resolved? Are some very high end dealers participating because they are being told where all the masterpieces are now located? Can pieces that might otherwise not meet institutional provenance requirements be vetted by dealers by providing false data in the databases? Are some people being blocked from access to data while others are given access? Data providers are guaranteed to have their privacy respected. How is that done?. Are there layers of access? Why is there one copy of the Yale Archive in New Haven and one in Brussels. Are there different access protocols for both? I don't know the answers to any of these questions. I do know that several of the folks are involved in all three projects. The only one of the principals that I do know is Jim Ross, whom I respect as both a collector and as someone who has had the vision and resources to fund something as important as the Yale archive.
I hope to have some interviews in the coming months with the principals to answer some of these question. Now and in the future, data is a very valuable commodity that must respected and secured.
As we watch the social network Twitter.com playing an important role in a revolution, we can begin to appreciate how much we have underestimated the power of the internet. You certainly have heard how various banks, credit card companies, government ag
encies etc etc have cataloged and stored your information to do who-knows-what down line. Do we really know or rather can we really know the impact of our decision to give up data. In some cases you can't control it, so just go with the flow. In my mind there are two critical questions. 1. What are you going to do with my data and 2. who has access?In the field of tribal art some obviously bright guys have figured out the importance of cataloging your data which is primarily comprised of photographic and descriptive information of your collections. The most important man in this effort is undoubtedly Guy Van Rijn, who is now the archivist of the Yale Art Gallery-van Rijn Archive of African Art. "The Yale Art Gallery-van Rijn Archive of African Art is a collaborative project based in Brussels. Currently, a copy resides at the Yale University Art Gallery. Yale University has plans for a future on-line version, when and how it will be accessible is, due to legal issues such as copyrights, not yet known." (http://users.telenet.be/african-shop/yale_university_art_gallery.htm). The Yale website describes the database in the following manner: "The Yale-Van Rijn Photographic Archive is the largest photographic digital database of African art, and is a division of the Department of African Art, established in 2004, at the Yale University Art Gallery. The Archive has been under development by Guy van Rijn, for several decades. In 2001, the project was acquired and funded for Yale by James J. Ross (Yale B.A. 1960). The ultimate goal is to make the Archive accessible online, but at present it is available for general research by appointment only at the Department of African Art at Yale, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, or at the Van Rijn Documentation Centre, Brussels, Belgium.
The Yale-van Rijn Photographic Archive comprises images of art from Africa south of the Sahara in collections worldwide. As such it is potentially infinite, but at the moment it includes mainly masks and sculpture and a few other forms in various media, from antiquity to the mid-20th-century and it will continue to grow as the archivist receives new images. Currently there are more than 100,000 images of African art drawn from private and museum collections, dealers, general archives, and the existing body of literature including books, articles, notices, and auction catalogues. The database may be searched by country, cultural group, and many other fields enabling the user to do a specific search. The Yale-GVR Archive may be used for research purposes only. In making these images and their related documentation available to researchers, YUAG’s Department of African Art provides an unparalleled resource for the study of African arts.
The Archivist solicits images from collectors of photographs and/or objects who would like to include their collections in the Archive. It should be noted that Yale makes no claims to authenticity of the objects illustrated (by any definition of the term, authentic), and the inclusion or exclusion of an image for any reason is at the sole discretion of Yale.
The Archive will also include opinions (including those concerning authenticity) in the Archive database submitted by third parties, at Yale's discretion. Yale takes no responsibility for these opinions, and in no way do they reflect an official position of Yale. We expect that this will provide a forum that will be useful to all researchers. In this working phase, we would ask visiting researchers who are using the Archive to exchange their own images and expertise from their fields of study in order to enlarge and refine the Archive and database for future users." In addition Van Rijn has also compiled the database, "Who's Who in African Art.".
Van Rijn is now a principal of and the archivist for Danster Research Center which is described in the following
manner:"About us Danster Research is a newly established independent non-profit institute directed towards the research of traditional Arts and Crafts of Africa. Its aim is to foster and boost research as an independent institute and to provide support as well as infrastructure to those whose research is deemed to be invaluable to create a more comprehensive picture of the Arts and Crafts of Africa. We at Danster feel that such an independent research institute could fill in some of the lacunae and help the more institutionalized research institutes to complement their findings.
As we all know there always has been a bit of an uneasy relationship between the scholarly and the more mundane world of those commercially active in African Arts. Our independent position, however, allows us to support research in those fields we feel are somewhat neglected but where knowledge can be harvested, crucial to a better understanding of the African Arts and Crafts. Danster Research feels that there is a void to fill. Although research will be carried out on a completely independent base, Danster feels that cooperation with existing institutionalized research facilities is necessary and even indispensable if one wishes to grasp a broad and in depth comprehension of the Arts and Crafts of Africa.
Research
Danster Research feels that there are multiple ways to foster different kinds of research projects, benefiting scholars of different disciplines e.g. ethnographers, anthropologists and scholars from the sculpture of Africa. Financing and supporting projects will take up a large part of the funding but forgotten areas of research that need attention can and will also be focused upon and even coordinated and instigated by Danster Research e.g. collection of private documents, photographs; the acquisition of files and in general mapping out areas that deserve extra attention."
Pretty impressive by any standards and what a resource of information! Once you recover from the immediate flights of fantasy about what a difference this sort of data might make in your life as a curator, appraiser, dealer, or collector, the question always come down to who has access to the data and what do they do with it. One would think that this question is pretty straight forward and easy to answer. But it is not. Let's first dispense with Who's Who in African Art. That one is easy… you pay 80 euros and you get a copy.
The primary complication with the Yale Archive and Danster Research is that you have a mixture of non profit and for profit intertwined in both projects. Do commercial entities pay thousands of euros to sponsor projects that they can't access until various copyright issues are resolved? Are some very high end dealers participating because they are being told where all the masterpieces are now located? Can pieces that might otherwise not meet institutional provenance requirements be vetted by dealers by providing false data in the databases? Are some people being blocked from access to data while others are given access? Data providers are guaranteed to have their privacy respected. How is that done?. Are there layers of access? Why is there one copy of the Yale Archive in New Haven and one in Brussels. Are there different access protocols for both? I don't know the answers to any of these questions. I do know that several of the folks are involved in all three projects. The only one of the principals that I do know is Jim Ross, whom I respect as both a collector and as someone who has had the vision and resources to fund something as important as the Yale archive.
I hope to have some interviews in the coming months with the principals to answer some of these question. Now and in the future, data is a very valuable commodity that must respected and secured.
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