Hui | December 31, 2008
There was a moment of silence when my friend asked me why Egyptian art? Why a people 5,000 years ago whose language obsolete? Nothing is more striking than looking at this picture of head of Ramsess II lying on the rubbles. It is sad, mysterious, and marvelous despite of the damage. If we obliterate the [...]
Hui | December 29, 2008
I was born at the end of the Cultural Revolution (CR) in China. Like a typical single child in my generation, my understanding of CR could only come from other’s experience. The source, however, has not always been readily available for years. My parents have been silent about their roles and life in CR period. [...]
Hui | December 26, 2008
Perhaps it was too ambitious at the beginning, a design in the second half of Gilded Age when everything should be grand and opulent. The original design of the Brooklyn Museum by McKim, Mead and White would outshine Louvre and Met in its scale, but once the city of Brooklyn merged with Manhattan, the other [...]
Geo | December 21, 2008
The Brooklyn Bridge was an engineering marvel that changed New York. On completion in 1883, it was the largest suspension bridge in the world, the first steel-wire suspension bridge, and the first bridge to connect to Long Island. The bridge was lucky enough to be built when stereoview cards were popular, and so today is [...]
Hui | December 20, 2008
Those of you who have used ebay Live often will notice that all listed upcoming auctions are before Jan 1, 2009. Don’t be fooled. This is not because the auction houses have slowed down due to holidays, but eBay has officially ended its eBay live auction services and will focus on their traditional auction business [...]
Hui | December 15, 2008
Among all the paintings representing American Barbizon and Tonalism paintings in the ongoing “Path to Impressionism” exhibition at Newark Art Museum, Bruce Crane‘s “A November Scene” is the one which speaks to me the most. Everything in the picture is subdued: color, form and subject. The scene is not beautiful itself, but evocative, with a [...]
Hui | December 14, 2008
While browsing the website of Hudson River Museum, Eric and I found an attached house museum, “Glenview” which is regarded as one of the finest examples of Aestheticth century. Last Saturday a train of MTA Metro North took us to Yonkers and once again we were rewarded with a splendid river view along the railroad [...]
Hui | December 9, 2008
The past weekend, Freeman’s auctioneered around 170 paintings in its Fine American and European Paintings auction. The number of unsold items is close to 70, which exceeds one third of the total lots. Even worse, quite a few sold items were below the low estimates. European portraiture didn’t sell or didn’t sell that much, neither [...]
Hui | December 8, 2008
Museums are always collecting. I have found a tea pot in the Brooklyn Museum which was produced in the 1990’s for Target stores. Based on my observation, today major traditional American institutions mostly concentrate the contemporary arts. Such practice is NOT because they have changed their directions; on the contrary it is the direction that [...]
Geo | December 8, 2008
It’s not a secret among antique dealers that folks in the American South have a better appreciation for American Decorative Arts. I suppose to some extent this may extend to American paintings. I haven’t noticed a tour of American Art before 1880 being offered at the nearby Brooklyn Museum. Although there have been tours of [...]
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