Each January, the Winter Antiques Fair rolls into town, bringing with it the Outsider Art Fair, the New York Ceramic and Glass Fair, and Master Drawings New York.
If you’re unfamiliar with some of those names, artnet News is here to help with a guide to the week’s fairs and similarly-themed exhibitions on view throughout the city.
Soldier Whirligig (1850–1900). Courtesy of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
1. Winter Antiques Show
For its 63rd edition, the Winter Antiques Show and its 70 exhibitors bring together art and design from antiquity to the present day. A special loan exhibition, “Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum: Revolution & Evolution,” will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Colonial Williamsburg museum in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Location: Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue
Price: $25
Date and Time: January 19–29; opening Thursday, 5 p.m.–9 p.m.; open daily, 12 p.m.–8 p.m.
Minnie Evans. Courtesy of the Outsider Art Fair.
2. Outsider Art Fair
Celebrating its 25th year, the Outsider Art Fair eschews the mainstream, featuring self-taught artists from 62 international galleries. Don’t miss quilts created by the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, a community largely made up of the descendants of slaves who have, since the turn of the century, made hundreds of geometrically-patterned blankets using old clothes and other recycled fabrics.
Location: Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street
Price: $20
Date and Time: January 19–22; Thursday, 2 p.m.–9 p.m.; Friday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
A recently-discovered bowl believed to be the first piece of American-made true, hard-paste porcelain. Courtesy of the Museum of the American Revolution.
3. New York Ceramics and Glass Fair
The Ceramics and Glass Fair hosts 28 galleries, each bringing their best works in porcelain, glass, cloisonné, and enamels. One expected highlight is a deceptively simple-looking white bowl, recently excavated in Philadelphia and thought to be the first American-made example of the Chinese-invented hard-paste porcelain, a technique that European china makers had difficulty replicating. It’s being touted as the “holy grail of American ceramics” for its unique properties.
Location: Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street
Price: $20
Date and Time: January 18–22; Wednesday 5 p.m.–7 p.m.; Thursday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.
Charles-Louis Clerisseau, Architectural Fantasy with a Variant of the Borghese Vase. Courtesy of Dider Aaron, Inc., New York.
4. Master Drawings New York
Now in its 11th year, Master Drawings features 24 international galleries such as David Tunick, Inc., New York; Charles Beddington Ltd., London; and Wienerroither & Kohlbacher, Vienna. A wide range of drawings, watercolors, and oil sketches are on view on the Upper East Side. Expect to see works by Vincent van Gogh, Gustav Klimt, Il Guercino, Pablo Picasso, and Giorgio Vasari, among other Impressionist and modern masters.
Location: 24 locations on the Upper East Side
Price: Free
Date and Time: January 20–28; Preview Friday, January 20, 4 p.m.–8 p.m.; Sunday, January 22, 2 p.m.–6 p.m.; open daily, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Royal Robertson, Untitled (the Ten Commandment Laws or Dustdard Sinfulness Farm), circa 1980. Courtesy of Andrew Lemeshewsky Jr. and Shrine Gallery, New York.
5. “Known/Unknown: Private Obsession and Hidden Desire in Outsider Art” at the Museum of Sex
Over 100 works by self-taught artists, including institutionalized mental patients, offer an unusual take on sexuality in art, “fueled by secrecy and isolation,” according to the museum.
Highlights include a watercolor by Henry Darger, an outsider artist known for his unsettling depictions of young girls, photos secretly taken by Miroslav Tichý, a Czech Republic recluse who made his own cameras, of unsuspecting women on the street in the 1970s and early ’80s, and two 2016 watercolors by Aurie Ramirez, an autistic Oakland-based artist who depicts her own sexual fantasies, starring the rock band Kiss and characters from The Addams Family.
Location: Museum of Sex, 233 Fifth Avenue
Price: $18.50
Date and Time: January 19–September 16, Sunday–Thursday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.–11 p.m.
Pierre Gouthière for Marie Antoinette. Pair of Ewers, ca. 1785 Gilt bronze attributed to Pierre Gouthière (1732–1813) and Chinese porcelain from the Kangxi period (1662–1722). Courtesy of the Frick Collection.
6. “Pierre Gouthière: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court” at the Frick Collection
For the first time, Pierre Gouthière, the court bronze gilder and chaser for French Kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, gets a museum solo show, featuring 21 clocks, vases, and other ornate decorative objects by a man the Frick calls “one of the greatest artists of eighteenth-century France.”
Location: The Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street
Price: $22
Date and Time: Through February 19; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
John Bennett, Charger, 1877). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
7. “The Aesthetic Movement in America” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met showcases its holdings from the late 19th-century Anglo-American Aesthetic movement, with a wide array of art furniture, ceramics, stained glass, metalwork, textiles, painting, and sculpture.
Location: Met Fifth Avenue, 1000 Fifth Avenue
Price: Suggested admission $25
Date and Time: Through June 25; Sunday–Thursday, 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Friday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.
Louis C. Tiffany, mold-blown and iridzed glass vase produced by Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company. Photo by Demian Cacciolo © Smithsonian Institution.
8. “Passion for the Exotic: Louis Comfort Tiffany and Lockwood de Forest” at the Cooper Hewitt at Smithsonian Design Museum
Louis Comfort Tiffany’s gorgeous glass creations take center stage in the Carnegie Mansion’s Teak Room, which was designed by Tiffany’s former business partner, Lockwood de Forest, a key figure in interior and furniture design in the late 19th-century.
Location: Cooper Hewitt, 2 East 92nd Street
Price: $16 online/$18 at the door
Date and Time: Through March 26; Sunday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.