AFA 22nd Anniversary

2022 Antiques & Fine Art 69 Fig. 9: Watanabe Shikō 渡辺始興 (1683–1755), Flowers and Trees of the Four Seasons ( 四季花木図屏風 ). One of a pair of six-panel folding screens. Ink, color, gold, silver, and gilding on paper. Cleveland Museum of Art. Fig. 8: Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894), Young Man at His Window, 1876. Oil on canvas, 45 ⁄ x 31⅞ inches. Getty Museum (2021.67). measuring 78½ by 98¼ inches, and has been exhibited and published many times since it was first shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1978 traveling exhibition Art About Art . The decorative arts collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford , Connecticut, has increased with the acquisition of works of American silver, including a nutmeg grater dating back to 1810–1820 by Caribbean silversmith Peter Bentzon (Fig. 4), and a circa-1779 f lagon by Connecticut silversmith Ebenezer Chittenden. Bentzon, a free silversmith of color born in the Virgin Islands, trained in Philadelphia and went on to operate his own independent businesses in both Philadelphia and St. Croix. The nutmeg grater, along with a previously acquired marrow scoop attributed to the enslaved silversmith Abraham of Charleston, South Carolina, allows the museum to highlight metalsmiths of African descent. The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, jointly acquired Amy Sherald’s portrait of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old emergency medical technician who was fatally shot when police officers forced their way into her Louisville apartment in search of a drug dealer. Her 2020 death became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, and the painting was quickly put on display last April at the Speed Museum in an exhibition on Taylor, Promise, Witness, Remembrance . The work was acquired with a $1 million joint donation from the Ford Foundation and the Hearthland Foundation, a new nonprofit run by actress Kate Capshaw and her husband Steven Spielberg. Sherald, who personally orchestrated the sale, is using the proceeds to fund a program she is forming to support students interested in social justice pursue higher education.