US

After 42 years as one of the American Midwest’s leading auction firms, Frank H. Boos Gallery have downsized operations, prompting a former employee to launch his own business in Detroit.

LONDON organisers Brian and Anna Haughton long ago conquered the Manhattan fairs scene, first with their flagship International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show, which celebrates its 15th anniversary next month, then with their specialist fine art and Asian art fairs.

THE United States has taken a lead in art restitution by setting up a website to track Nazi-looted art. The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal which has just gone online, will provide a database of museums collections – 70 have signed up so far – for checks on art that disappeared in Europe between 1933 and 1945.

International Fine Art Expositions are to repackage its portfolio of Palm Beach art and antiques fairs as the events move to a new venue for 2004. In an effort to distinguish the top-tier fairs from the proliferation of ‘tailgate’ events in southern Florida – and allowing IFAE’s vice-president Lorenzo Rudolf to place his own stamp on the fairs pioneered by David Lester – the three events held this year in a marquee will become two next year at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

Representatives of a US company trading in class action certificates are coming to London to meet UK recipients of vouchers relating to the Sotheby’s/Christie’s price-fixing settlement in the USA.

US: STAR lot in the Stair Galleries of New York State sale scheduled for September 6 is this set of 10 George III mahogany dining chairs (2 + 8) originally owned by The Rt. Hon. the Viscount Downe at Wykeham Abbey in Yorkshire.

Sotheby’s have acquired the inventory and reference library of H.P. Kraus, the venerable New York dealers in books and manuscripts, which they will sell in a series of auctions this autumn.

FROM September 25-30 some 34 leading dealers from France, Italy, England, Sweden, Canada and the United States will gather at The Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue, New York City for the fourth International Art and Design Fair.

WE frequently comment on the way in which successful dealers have to chase business wherever it may be and a case in point is Mayfair dealer Alistair Sampson who will not be seeing much of his Mount Street, London W1 showrooms once autumn is upon us.

NEW York’s Chinese Porcelain Company hold their autumn exhibition Recent Acquisitions, Fall 2003 from October 9 to 25 at their elegant galleries at 475 Park Avenue at 58th Street. Some highlights from the exhibition will be displayed on their stand at the International Art and Antique Dealers Show at Manhattan’s Seventh Regiment Armory from October 17 to 23.

Anyone who has studied the Americana market in any detail will know how important surfaces have become to its many folk art aficionados. Original paint is not just a bonus – it can often be the difference between $1000 and $10,000. And it can happen here, too.

A Massachusetts auction house is being sued for breach of contract and malpractice after a Chinese vase it sold for $23,000 returned to auction six months later at Christie’s Hong Kong where it brought $1.55m.

Coming up in new York: A large complement of classic American posters by James Montgomery Flagg are featured among the WWI and WWII images in Swann Galleries’ annual summer sale of Vintage Posters in the Big Apple on August 6.

S.J. Shrubsole, the well-known silver dealership of New York, have pleaded guilty to failing to collect around $75,000 in city and state sales taxes on over $900,000 worth of goods. The gallery also pleaded guilty to falsifying tax returns filed with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. They have now paid $150,000 in fines relating to the plea.

With a five-year non-compete clause behind her, Leslie Hindman has returned to the auction world with a new 12,000-square-foot auction room in Chicago’s West Loop.

Quimper collectors will no doubt recognise this plate as quite a rarity. Manufactured by Henriot, c.1917, the design depicts Uncle Sam offering his support to the French people within a Stars and Stripes border.

NEW York’s top fair, Brian and Anna Haughton’s International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show, is full with some 70 exhibitors and it is noticeable how many of the top dealers have gone for larger stands.

20TH CENTURY Decorative Arts in New York: American museums are not so squeamish about deaccessioning as British ones and Christie’s New York (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) headlined its 20th Century Decorative Arts sale on June 12 with 52 lots of Tiffany from the Museum of Modern Art.

More than half of the world’s leading collectors are now based in the USA, according to a survey conducted by the New York-based magazine ARTnews. The 13th annual review of the world’s most active collectors of art and antiques – assembled through interviews with dealers, auctioneers, collectors, museum directors, curators, and consultants – found that 105 of the top 200 collectors are American with eight of the top ten spenders from the world’s superpower.

WITH more than 1000 dealers spread over 101/2 acres few would argue with the claim of Atlantique City to be the world’s largest indoor antiques and collectables show.