The Winter Antiques Show marks its 62nd year as the most prestigious art, antiques, and design fair in America, featuring the “best of the best” from Antiquity through the present.
Held on January 22 through January 31 at the historic Park Avenue Armory in New York City, the Winter Antiques Show provides new and established collectors, curators, dealers, and design professionals with opportunities to view and purchase exceptional pieces showcased by 73 exhibitors. One-third of the Show’s exhibitors are specialists in Americana, with the rest featuring English, European, and Asian fine and decorative arts.
Every object exhibited at the Winter Antiques Show is vetted for authenticity, date, and condition by a committee of 160 experts from the United States and Europe. The strict vetting regulations and the vettors’ expertise ensure that buyers can purchase with confidence.
The 2016 Loan Exhibition is “Legacy for the Future: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art,” which celebrates the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. “Legacy for the Future: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art” pays tribute to the diversity and forward-thinking vision of the Museum’s collection, with highlights ranging from antiquities and Baroque masterworks to Hudson River School landscapes and contemporary sculpture.
The title of the exhibition is adapted from a 1936 public lecture given in New York City by former museum director Everett “Chick” Austin: “For we must have the great things of the past to enjoy and to study, but with that valuable experience and pleasure as guide and criterion, we must surely seek to live in the present and to try to create the new forms which are to be our legacy to the future.”
Founded in 1842, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is the oldest continually operating public art museum in the United States. The Museum’s nearly 50,000 works of art span 5,000 years, from Greek and Roman antiquities to the first museum collection of American contemporary art. Thanks to the enormous gifts of predecessors, the Wadsworth Atheneum’s collection is home to many significant works.
The Museum was the first in the United States to purchase works by Caravaggio, Frederic Church, Joseph Cornell, and Salvador Dalí, and was the first to exhibit major surveys of works by Italian masters, Surrealists, and Picasso. Highlights of the collection include a strong holding of Baroque masterpieces, such as Artemisia Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait as a Lute Player, and an important collection of contemporary art, including works by Ellsworth Kelly, George Segal, Kiki Smith, and Kara Walker.
The Winter Antiques Show is an annual benefit for East Side House Settlement, a community resource in the South Bronx that celebrates its 125th anniversary in 2016. East Side House’s programs focus on education and technology as gateways out of poverty and as the keys to economic opportunity. All revenues from the show’s general admissions and the net proceeds from the preview parties and other events go East Side House and contribute substantially to its private philanthropic budget. No part of sales made by exhibitors is received by East Side House.
Please note that, because of large crowds at the Show on the weekends, baby strollers are not permitted on weekends. This regulation protects the child’s safety. Also, for security reasons, the public is required to check all bags, backpacks, large purses, shopping bags, briefcases, tote bags, and any other item deemed too large by Security.